Let's Go To Turkey

Don't get your hopes up.  The title of this probably makes it seem like I had this crazy cool trip to Turkey.  Not the case.

We got back from practice on Wednesday and were settling in for the night when I get a phone call asking if I wanted to go to Turkey the next day.  I really didn't have a choice because of something to do with my working Visa.  At first I wasn't too thrilled.  Then I started thinking, hey.. I get to go see Turkey.. I bet they have a Starbucks! Then I hear what time they are picking me up (two of the staff members) and I IMMEDIATELY went back to not being excited.  7 am they would be outside.  I know, I know..to most of you that's a piece of cake.  To me that sounds like at least 3 hours of sleep I'm missing out on, and if you know me you know I value my sleep.

Regardless, I woke up the next day at around 6.  Feeling a little more excited that I would get to have some coffee.  It was only about an hour long trip and we pull up to the first checkpoint near the border.  Then we are getting out of the car and watching the car go back towards the way we just came.  Wait.. What? Apparently he was driving a car under his wife's name so we couldn't drive it across into Turkey.  So then I'm standing here thinking, "okay so where are we going to rent a car from?" And even "he's going to go back to Haskovo and get his car?" wrong and wrong. Yes, we walked across the border from Bulgaria to Turkey.  It wasn't a little walk.  We ended up going through all of the customs checkpoints fine though.  We strolled right into Turkey where we hung out for a long time until we were told we could come back.  Long story short I got to eat some Burger King, drink Turkish coffee, and walk from one country to another.  By the end of the day, however, I was ready to be back at my place and would have rather ran 1000 lines at practice than do that again. The next day the staff would ask me "hey Jess you want to go to Turkey?" my response every time, "no."

The rest of the week was normal with the same routines of practice, eating, sleeping.  Yesterday (Saturday) a few of us traveled a few hours to watch a Bulgarian men's team play.  It was a great atmosphere and some pretty entertaining basketball.  I'm finding that the basketball over here is less power and strength but more craftiness and clever.  We watched two games and on all four teams there were Americans.  It was very cool hearing English out on the floor!  After every time the home team made a good play or did something to the crowd's liking, the fans would chant "Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!"  I definitely joined in on that on more than one occasion.

Now it's Sunday, we don't have practice, and all of the stores are closed.  My roommate and I are stuck between being bored and not feeling like getting ourselves up to even try to go anywhere. We get a channel on our TV that is ESPN America so I usually turn it on the evening to catch some NFL games.  Sunday mornings is also when I wake up and check to see how the Griff football team did because I can never stay up til 3 or 4 am when their games are happening.  Give me a newspaper and a cup of coffee and boom I'm my parents (old).

Hopefully everything is going great back home.  Even though I'm over here I still am excited for the holidays coming up.  We are trying to find out if we can get some pumpkins and decorate them.  Apparently some people over here celebrate Halloween so it could happen!!

Thanks for reading.

Until next time,

Jess