Well, I’m nearing something that looks like it might resemble a document close to a rough form of a completed honors thesis.

And by that I mean: after a long process and a lot of doubt, I finished my first draft, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to turn out too terribly.

You know, given the daily onslaught of e-mails full of cool opportunities that an IU student faces (from advisors, programs they’re in, committees they’re on, lists they’ve signed up for, etc.), I just don’t believe there’s any way to truly make “rational” decisions about which to ultimately …

Maybe one of the most common underrealized great things about living in a foreign country is your opportunity to try so many different and interesting foods. Coming from Bloomington with 4th Street chock-full of ethnic restaurants, I think I’ve become conditioned to try the strange and the foreign when it comes to eating. Since freshmen year, it has been my personal goal to try each and every place on 4th Street before graduation, but I’ve still got quite a few left on my list..

However, since I’ve come to Istanbul I’ve made it a point to carefully document the things …

The title couldn’t be any more indicative of the truth.  I am not quite sure that I’ve been here for nearly 3 months already.  I’m a skeptic – it’s very hard to believe, more so than all the other scenarios in which I find myself overusing that bromide.  When I initially got here, I discovered not only the excitement of being in a completely different environment but also the frustration that comes with placing oneself outside of one’s comfort zone and having to readjust.  I remember specifically questioning myself as to whether I had made a wise decision in coming …

Now like I had said earlier, back in Eskişehir we had decided to go to an old Ottoman house. The outside was adorned with the bright crimson Turkish flag, emblazoned with Atatürk’s stern face, but the house was quaint despite its small claim to fame. The cream walls and neat wooden paneling around the windows gave the house a peaceful, quiet look, and it wasn’t much different on the inside with its dim lighting and ornately carved Armenian ceilings.

The house didn’t take too long to explore either. It was a simple duplex and most of the rooms were big …

For Kurban Bayramı, or Eid al-Adha, last week a group of friends and I decided to take a small day trip out to Eskişehir, literally the “Old City” in Turkish. It was only a short four and a half hours away from Istanbul by train and we all woke up around 4:30 in the morning in order to get to the Haydarpaşa Station in time for our 7:00 train. It was still dark when we left but we were able to catch the morning Ezan (call to prayer) echoing across the water and an amazing sunrise against the backdrop of …

Greetings everyone!  I have been in Spain for a little over two months now, and I´m loving every moment of it.  To those of you who are prospective students out there, I´d like to remind you that IU has one of the most extensive study abroad programs in the country with over 250 possible trip options!  If you are strongly contemplating studying abroad at some point during your undergraduate years, IU will offer you plenty of places to choose from, including destinations that would typically be considered more obscure.  I can speak from experience that coming to Spain is, quite …

Your study abroad experience is supposed to be about so much more than just your classes and studies; this is your opportunity to explore a different country, discover a new culture, meet interesting people. That’s why every chance I get I try to be out and exploring Istanbul. Problem number one, the city is massive. Number two, the traffic is unbelievable. But I manage to get by.
So yesterday, joined by a rather eclectic group of friends, we made it out to Kadiköy, an area on the opposite side of us across the Bosphorous, on the Asian side. To get …

So now that I’ve been here for about a month, I’ve had a lot of time to think about the differences between the universities here in Istanbul and Indiana University. One of the things you’re told pre-study abroad is to take into consideration possible differences in teacher-student relationships abroad and more general educational system differences, but you don’t really think about it until you get there and experience it. It’s interesting for me to see how truly different some of the mindsets are of the students here.

Having become accustomed to a rather diverse liberal arts education, it was kind …

In one of my classes this week, I’ll be giving an informal presentation on a “field trip” I took with one of my classes in Germany this summer, which was called “The Sociology of Urbanization.” We visited Freiburg’s newest district, a planned community intended to counter the city’s growing housing shortage. But the district of Rieselfeld is not just a city suburb, some collection of housing developments with no grocery, school, or bank in walking distance. Rather, as the urban planners who led our tour explained, it’s built to be a true community: safe, walkable, diverse, and, although well-connected by …

The last five days have been filled with nothing but saddening news for Turkey.

Just a couple of days ago, on October 19th, twenty-six soldiers were killed by rebels in the southeastern province of Hakkari, to be pursued shortly after by a Turkish led incursion into Northern Iraq. The Turkish news rolled continuous footage in the following days of the soldiers’ bodies being returned to their hometowns, their caskets draped with the crimson Turkish flag and carried through the streets borne on the shoulders of the men, the women screaming and cursing the PKK, the terrorist organization advocating an independent …