4 Days Left?!?!

Yup. 4 days left in Turkey. how it all went by so quick i do not understand. BECAUSE this adventure is almost over, i'll try and fill in some gaps right now. mainly, the reason why i'm here, my internship.

first of all, my internship did not go as planned. I was supposed to work with my boss but i barely ever talked to her and only as of this week is she on the same project as me (i think). This explains why i've felt so worthless and felt that this internship was kind of a fail. but it's nice to know it wasn't my fault.

i've spent pretty much the whole time here working on one grant proposal for a training session Amnesty wants to conduct with some of its members on the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). now although i have nothing against this, i will say that it was not what i was expecting to work on when i got here. I'm a poli sci major and i was much more interested in learning more about democratization, the Kurdish question, the Ergenekon case, etc etc. But I became an expert on women's rights instead...not really but i sure know a hell of a lot more now. The problem is I really never felt passionate about the work i was doing. Not to sound like an asshole, but I'm not really passionate about women's rights either. I think it's fair to say that I think it's something that i care about and think DEFINITELY needs to improve, but i also think global warming is a huge issue for every human being but i ain't doin' crap about it. my passion is politics and the such. For example, one of the most interesting things here was seeing a protest of about 300 people (not one of them a Spartan) calling for a free "East Turkestan." That would be Xinjiang province in China. Uighurs! Craziness. that's the kinda stuff I love. reading about UN laws on what discrimination against women is...not so much.

Halfway through this i was kinda lost. My work felt meaningless, it wasn't interesting, and it all seemed like a dead end. I'm happy to say now those feelings are gone. I still feel like my work is pretty meaningless, but I'm an intern. Individually we're meaningless but i think as a whole we're almost helpful. I'm fairly certain I want to take Turkish at UPenn next year; the language seems simple enough and I think it'd be real helpful to know considering the Balkans and the Middle East are the two regions I'm probably going to end up studying/working with the most. And guess where turkey is! in between em. Also I might finally understand old people's peasant speak in Bosnia cause im pretty sure it's all Turkish. Like how my grandma says "karpuza" for watermelon and I'm embarassed for her cause it seems so hick? Well, "karpuz" is Turkish for watermelon. Hopefully that will work and it won't kill me like German did. Genaaau.

What else? i went to the beach this weekend! that was awesome. got treated like royalty by a nice turkish grandma of a girl i met once. swam in the Aegean. ate a kumru sandwich, which is just cheese, herbs, and salami on a roll but dear god it is delicious. soooo much cheese. Oh, and I went to the ruins of Ephesus. i wondered aloud how weird it's gonna be when hundreds of years from now people go visit the ancient ruins of New York City. probably won't be as many marble columns. it was way cool though. i didn't know it used to be such a baller city but apparently it was the #2 city in the Byzantine Empire for a while. Also the site of the Seven Sleepers from the Qur'an, Mary's alleged final resting place, and the place where the Gospel of John was written. I know right? Lotta stuff. there's pictures of all of this but im kinda lazy to upload them now.

last day of work tomorrow. that's gonna be weird. i still remember the awkward, aimlessness of my first week and the BRUTAL heat that has now actually subsided cause of rain. nice. Friday and saturday will be dedicated to doing one final tour of the Grand Bazaar for gifts for people I like or those i want to think i like them and a visit to Topkapı palace (the biggest tourist attraction here...i was too cheap to visit before but why the hell not).

see some of you soon!