Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The end of my first semester abroad

But don't let the title mislead you. I am staying in Istanbul this summer. I will be living in an apartment, taking classes, traveling around a bit, and teaching English to prep students at Bogazici. This will be a great summer. I do miss home though, and all the fun things associated with summer, but I am certain I will find something to do here to keep me occupied. It is probably going to be something like Linear Algebra, and Partial Differential Equations...fun :( .

I have survived what was by the far the most grueling, wretched test I have ever had to endure in my life. I have taken graduate coursework at ISU and I would have gladly taken those finals over the finals/tests they have here. The math and economics coursework here is like nothing I have ever encountered. It is actually amazing as to why I became a Mathematics major this semester, considering the math I have done this semester almost destroyed me combined with learning Turkish. The only class that was fairly easy was Politics and Society of the Middle East and Turkish. However actually being able to use what little Turkish I have is challenging. Basically my skills can get by going from place to place, finding things to eat, describing medical symptoms (from getting sick) and swears along with slang (from roommates). Overall, I feel bad that my grades are going to average out to be a full letter grade below what I normally get. However, I can't be that upset because I competed against the best in Turkey, and went to and extremely tough school.

Either way, I finished my last final today, and I am happy to have survived. Now time to get out of Istanbul for a little bit.

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