Istanbul, Turkey

After a day here I thought I should let everyone know that I have arrived. it is now 7:30 in the morning, it's hard to sleep through the turkish chanting coming from all of the mosques. Istanbul is one interesting city, it is very third world which is weird because i have not spent time in anything like it before. The city itself is divided into 2 parts, the European part and the Asian part. the European part consists of 9 millions people and the Asian part a little over 4 million. this is crazy to think about seeing as how minneapolis and st. paul combined are somewhere around 6 thousand. my hotel is in the european part but on saturday we have a free day and a group of us are going to take a ferry to the black sea which is in Asia, just to say i have been there :)

The city is filled with mostly shops, restaurants, apartments and alleys. there is hardly no grass anywhere which is kind of depressing for me. oh and there are stray cats everywhere too. the most interesting thing for me to look at in this city is the driving. i cant get over how insane it is. they hardly have street signs and just go wherever they please. there will be a street barely big enough for one car but it is still not a one way, they just look and if it looks clear they go for it. watching our bus driver drive is amazing enough in itself. our tour guide even said, if it red for the cars and you are supposed to walk, always look because its up in the air whether a car will go anyways or not. they also park wherever they want to, they'll just ramp up onto the sidewalk and get out of the car. i have some interesting pictures of this.

the pictures will come later though! once i get some more taken.
-Dustin, reporting from Istanbul, Turkey.