50 cent's girlfriend

Yesterday we visited the Blue mosque....only the outside to take pictures and be touristy. We stopped at a restaurant to have a beer after our fishbread sandwiches that we ate at the bosphorus sea. Our waiter was super friendly and talked to each of us individually...of course he wanted to take a picture with me and called me 50 cents girlfriend. you can imagine how happy i felt to be associated with 50 cent of all things American to be proud of....clearly 50 cent is in the top 10. (please sense the sarcasm). The day started off utterly confusing, a group of us had emailed each other through the summer and wanted to get together for a nice hoorah before orientation. In the end there was Cesar from Spain, Francesco from Italy, Aneta from Poland, Julie from Germany, Michelle from Holland, Ivar from Sweden, Chi from UK, Alex from UK, Ahmed from Austria-Hungary, Mathieu from France, and Rasmus from Denmark there were a few more but i confess i cannot remember their names, but they represent Poland and Denmark. All together we speak 10 differnt languages...but everyone speaks english...fluently. I felt all kinds of bad that we had to communicate in my language, but secretly proud that everyone had a hard time understanding British english but complemented my American English.
The funny part of the night was when we went to a restaurant for dinner, it had a variety of choices, at least one entree from each nation in the world. I wasn't hungry so i had a white russian....but everyone else ordered a dish from their own nation. Understandable since we have 5 months to eat Turkish food but nevertheless it made me smile. Cesar had a spanish burger, Francesco had spaghetti and meatballs, Mathieu had crepes, and so on...highlight of my night.
Today i am taking a break from the group and meeting a friend from America and having Starbucks. Not that Turkish cuisine and coffee isn't amazingly good and meaty....but its always nice to have a good, weak cup of coffee.
chao!