Thoughts from Vivian

I am going to back track a little. I am writing this during our 4 hour bus ride to kastamonu. Our vocational day was wonderful. I didn’t expect that we would see so much but we all agreed that we also were never rushed. The university for me was exciting they have accomplished so much in so little time. The earthquake museum was wonderful in a horrifying way. The pain of the people is palatable in the museum. We sat in a room and we experienced a simulation of the 1999 earthquake. My heart was racing and my breathing stopped for a moment. Just imagine this happened in the middle of the night. The thought of waking up to walls crumbling.

At the media group, I received something of a job offer. (Julie if you are reading this I didn’t accept). Apparently I have a nice voice for TV. The people there were generous with their time and true to all the photos and information that they took, we were in the newspaper today. (We all have copies we will show when we return). Monday was or first run thru of the presentation. Earlier in the day, we had scrambled to shortened our program since Levent the president of the group would have to translate. Afterwards, was music. Shake your groove thing in Turkey is an understatement. Young old we were all in the meeting space dancing to the music. The club presented each with us with a tea set from the local porcelain company and of course a picture of Atatürk. After the meeting we continued on to local bar/club. We took over the whole place. Music was blasting and all of us (sadly minus Katy) were shaking it up in Nero. Dave shocked us all. He was dancing inviting some of the local ladies to join us as we danced to the exciting Turkish music. As Sarah kept saying, every song is a shaky shake your hips song. We sampled the current in drink. A gin fizz. It was refreshing to watch men dance who enjoy it. The men also demonstrated the local male dance moves. I just followed and copied what the ladies did. We finally left and closed down Nero at around 12:45 or so. I got home. My shirt once I took off was able to stand up on its own due to the excessive of amount of dancing we had done. I still had to pack. I finally crawled into bed at around 3. I leave off now. Someone else will let you know of our bumpy bus ride and first day in Kastamonu.