Travel Time

My travel journey began on Thursday morning. My mother made me perfect scrambled eggs along with two golden brown pieces of toast topped with butter and Kehe homemade jam. For those of you who don’t know, my family makes homemade plum, cherry, and when we have them, peach jam from fruit trees in our yard. It is, in essence, my home in a jar. It is the most delicious jam I have ever had. We double checked my packing, and realized I did not have my charger for my camera packed! What a disaster that would have been! No pictures, no videos, no memories. We packed that right away into my purse after that. Phew! I then had to say goodbye to my mother, which is always hard. After all, she is my mother, the woman who raised me and taught me all the life lessons imaginable, and who gave me the travel bug! Thanks mom!

I drove to the train station and boarded a Texas Eagle Double Decker train from St. Louis to Union Station in Chicago. It was a bit of an ordeal getting all my luggage onto the train with me. I’m very glad that Canada Air only allows one checked bag because otherwise I would not have been able to get on the train. The train was a sleeper, so the seats had additional leg room and a foot rest of sorts. I had two seats to myself, so I spread out and took a wonderful nap.

Then, when arriving in Normal, Illinois, where my home university is located, a good friend from school met me at the train station so that I could get a hug (or three) from her in addition to peanut butter m&ms. It was wonderful to see a familiar face in the midst of saying goodbye to my whole family.

Upon arriving in Chicago, I met up with my father who was in Chicago for a conference and was heading back to St. Louis later that day, so we had about 2-3 hours to chat. We looked at the historic part of Union Station, which I had never seen before, and its history through the ages in addition to the history of Chicago public transportation. We found my other train station to make my connection to a suburb, as I would be staying with family that night and needed to find the commuter train. While we were looking at pictures from the crusie, we realized that my train was boarding right then and he had only 15 minutes to get back to Union Station for his train! Thankfully, we both made it, but with only seconds to spare. I then made it to my uncle’s house, had some good ol’ fashioned American pizza, visited with my cousin, and headed to bed.

 

Friday morning my cousin drove me to the airport with about 3 hours to get through ticket and security, with many more hugs from her. I made it to my terminal in plenty of time. I could not print my final boarding pass while in Chicago and was told I had to wait until Istanbul. The main flight from Toronto to Istanbul was wonderful. One movie, two meals, and about 5 hours of sleep later we landed in Istanbul. Side note: Istanbul is huge! With a population of at least 12.5 million, it seemed to stretch on and on as we were landing. I saw the bridge that connects Europe and Asia! I cannot wait to travel there and walk on it, in addition to all the amazing historical sites. Ok, back to the airport: I thought I needed to get to my gate before printing my boarding pass, but apparently, after a 5 minute discussion with a security officer who spoke little to no English, I found out I needed to go to the ticket area to print my boarding pass before going through security. It was then that I realized that I was not in America anymore. My first experience with the language barrier in Turkey!

After the one hour flight to Ankara, including a full meal I might add, the group of 5 from my University waited in the airport for about 3 hours before the shuttle pick-up time to Bilkent University. While we were waiting, more and more students from other flights arrived. We had 4 more students from America, one from Canada, one from Germany, one from Singapore, and one from Malaysia join us. Upon arriving to Bilkent International office, we received our student ID cards that get us into our dorms, filled out some paperwork, and headed to bed! It was a very long day with many exciting things happening. It has hit me: I am here, in Ankara, Turkey. Look out world! 

This last picture is of a beautiful mosque that we passed on the bus on the way to Bilkent. Apparently there are larger ones in other parts of Ankara. Cannot wait to see them!