Well, I've finally gotten my act together and decided that this blog would be a great way to let all my friends and family know of my adventures here in Turkey. Although it's a fantastic problem to have so many people interested in how I am doing and what I am doing over here. I'm truly blessed. Of course I will still try to keep up the personal e-mails to you, but hopefully this will cover my experience a little more in depth. And props to Blake for suggesting I do this!

I've been in Turkey for a few weeks now. For the first week and a half, we were about an hour from Adana, right off the Mediterranean Sea. We stayed at the little community of Botas (pronounced Botosh) which is our team name and sponsor. We were able to go down to the beach for an afternoon and it was beautiful. The water was so warm, something I'm not used to from norther California. And it stayed shallow for about 50 meters out. I had to quickly adjust to the food as they were serving us cafeteria food and it was eat that or nothing at all. So either I got used to it pretty quickly or just got so hungry that anything would have tasted deicious. Now that we are in Adana, we can do our own grocery shopping and cooking, but I've tried to make a point of venturing out and trying new foods. My two housemates, Chrissy Givens and Carmen Guzman, thought I was crazy for eating something I had never seen or heard of. But most of the time it has been ok.

Chrissy and Carmen are the other two Americans. They are both my age so we are all experiencing this for the first time. The language barrier is something I've never had a problem with before. But it has actually been quite a fun challenge. For example, our landlord doesn't speak english and I had to tell him that we had no hot water. So I showed him a glass of water, said "Yok" (no) and started fanning myself. And then let the faucet run from the sink and shivered. He then led me outside our apartment door and showed me a switch, and just like that...hot water!

Fortunately, a couple girls on the team speak enough english to communicate with and both of our coaches can speak decent english. My head coach, Ceyhan (prounounced Jeyhon) and Olcek (pronounced Olgey) have been very welcoming as well as the other girls on the team. They have all gone out of their way to make sure I feel at home and have accommodated me in every way that they can. Our team went to a dinner last night, and it's so fascinating how all of us can enjoy each other's company and laugh together without knowing each other's language.

I haven't had much of an opportunity to explore Adana, since I've been a little sick this whole week, but I will be sure to let you all know of that when I feel good enough to wander. I hope this blog will be useful to a lot of you. Thanks for all the support back in the states and I am always in the mood for an e-mail! Talk to you again soon.