First days in Istanbul

We arrived four days ago, though it somehow feels longer than that; a lot has happened since then, I guess. After an initial hiccup upon arrival (a miscommunication, resulting in no one from our school, ISTEK, to meet us at the airport), things have gone pretty smoothly. Once we were taken to our apartment--in the Kozyatağı area of town, on the Asian side--we met several of our new colleagues, all of them very friendly, of course, with interesting backgrounds and stories to tell.

There's a nice vine-covered picnic table down between the two ISTEK staff buildings, which is where we've met some of these new friends/colleauges. There's even an ISTEK housing staff person who brings us coffee or tea there, so we're getting downright spoiled!

It's still very warm (90s, mostly), and humid, and so today we're going to break down and buy ourselves a fan (otherwise the apartment is pretty well furnished) and miscellaneous items. We've got a Carrefour hypermarket kinda close (25 minute walk), and apparently an IKEA somewhere in the vicinity, too. Also a big traditional market nearby, which we hope to check out for fruits & vegetables.

The reason why we haven't done all this shopping yet is that we've just come back from a 2+ day-long orientation, at a resort that ISTEK owns, an hour outside of town. Now that that's over, we can focus a bit more on settling into the apartment, and checking out our school. Will post some pictures here soon, I hope.

Ok, enough blogging for now... back to unpacking and shopping!