Hopping, Skipping, and Jumping

After a 13 hour overnight bus ride, a 10.5 hour plane ride, a 6 hour layover, another (1 hour) plane ride), four hours of sleep, errand running, six hours of sleep, an all day wedding, five hours of sleep, two more plane rides (one being 9 hours), and a six hour bus ride, I was ready for a vacation.

Instead I got two days in Ankara, and another ten hour bus ride.

But AFTER that I got a real vacation, and I must say I deserved it. We'll ignore the fact that I had to sit through about five hours of people complaining about problems I didn't have to deal with, mostly because I'm good at forgetting how much I wanted to explode then. And because I like to focus on the positive.

I and thirty (or so) other Fulbrighters were dropped down in a Pirate-themed all inclusive hotel. What does all-inclusive mean, you ask? Well, first of all, it means all you can eat, pretty much all the time. In between meals, you can still get free food by memorizing the various snack, ice cream, and late night soup times. If you feel full, why not stroll over to the mini zoo, with various jungle fowl (including a parrot that meows) and two monkeys renowned for their hatred of life?

If that, or the tennis and sand volleyball courts, ping pong tables, archery...alleys(?), or trampoline don't strike your fancy, then try one of the two water slides. These are tremendous primarly because they aren't monitored, which means you can not only race your friends, but you can race them all at once. Or try to form a long human innertube train. Or try to go down on one innertube with two people (which, if your curious, results in everything but the tube touching the water slide). But most certainly it means you can scare all the little Russian children who the slide was meant for.

For those who say I don't love my country, they didn't witness the fury of my spike as I led our American volleyball team to victory against a squad of fat old, beet red (pun intended) Ruskis, crying "Sputnik" after each point earned. Never mind that our team had two Americans and four Turks.

Finally, cute kid pictures: