University, Izmir, Public Transportation, and other anecdotes

So it’s been a while. I’m trying to think what’s happened since I last wrote.

The biggest thing was probably that I once more found my life, to a certain extent, taken over my university applications. (Because I’m in Turkey, even when I think to myself English, saying “university” seems much more natural than “college”.) Luckily, I had some amazing options from which to choose. The Robertson Program, an amazing scholarship that is offered at UNC and Duke (Google it if you’re curious), paid for me to return to the states for a week to interview for a place as a Robertson Scholar at UNC. I had the chance to visit both UNC and Duke. In the end, however, I was not offered a spot as a Robertson Scholar, but I did get the chance to have some quality time with my dad – suit shopping, staying in fancy hotels (actually, just one fancy hotel), and eating all the meat I could in the course of 5-days. I hadn’t had one of those incredibly oversized, environmentally-unfriendly American steaks in 7 months. As Don King would say…

So for the past month I’ve been considering my options. Considering what a terrible year it was economically, and, by extension, for college admissions, I’m very lucky to have received only a small number of rejections, at schools that were tremendous reaches. To make a long story short, and spare my readers more waiting (I’m very aware it’s been months since my last blog entry), I’ll just go ahead and say it. I’m going to be attending Duke. Cool, right? I’m pretty excited to be done with high school. It’s just so incredibly rewarding to know that all those years of work I put in have paid off and I’ve ended up exactly where I wanted to be – maybe not at precisely the school I would have guessed 3 or 4 months ago, but at an amazing school, with genuinely knowledgeable and enthusiastic people, studying something that I love.

Yeah. I’m pretty damn excited.

I spent the last week with some AFS friends of mine in Izmir. Izmir is known for being the most liberal part of Turkey, and for having the most beautiful girls in Turkey. We toured around with the AFSers who lived there, mostly. I ate an entire fish, which is something I’ve always hated doing – it’s so much work. It’s worth it, though. I’ve heard for years that the eyes are the tastiest part, and it’s true, although the “eww” factor is definitely present.

I had a lot of time to think about my college decision whilst travelling to Izmir. I took a bus, and it’s about 7 or 8 hours each way. As the crow flies, it’s not tremendously far, but to get to or from Antalya you have to traverse the Toros Mountains. The road is not particularly windy, but instead you just have long, long bends that take you slowly from side to side. The panorama is beautiful. I’m glad I didn’t fly.

Turkish inter-city buses, in general, are awesome. Round trip, I think I paid about $45. That includes the “servis” that take me from the bus station back into the city, so you don’t have to pay like you would if you went to the airport. There is snack and beverage service on the bus – not much, but it’s about what you get on a short-haul flight in America these days. I elected to pay slightly more and take the “comfortable” service. The bus only has 3 seats abreast – 2 and 1, instead of 2 and 2 – so you get a nice wide seat and I didn’t have to have someone sitting next to me. The bus stops a few times so you can go to the bathroom. “Turkish transportation” is listed as one of my interests on my Facebook page, and it’s true – I find it to be, in general, convenient, cheap, and fairly reliable. I wish we had something like that in the US, although the US is simply much, much bigger.

So… that’s my post. Sorry I didn’t write more, but I’ll try to once more take up the writing mantle and keep the folks back home up to date.