Merhaba...Hello

Facts about the Turkish language...which I have been studying for the past couple of months, in preparation for my upcoming trip...

- Turkish is the 7th most prevalently spoken language in the world (out of almost 4000)
- Turkish is spoken by over 200 million people
- About 90% of the population in Turkey speaks Turkish...probably not a surprise, but what about...
- over a million speakers of Turkish live in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Greece
- more than 1.5 million speakers of Turkish live in Germany and near half a million live in other European countries.
- Turkish was originally written using the Arabic alphabet. In 1928, Kemal Ataturk changed the alphabet to the Latin and traveled around the country teaching the new alphabet to his people, who were now predominately illiterate!!
- The Turkish language continues to evolve today and students in primary schools throughout Turkey learn new vocabulary words (to replace foreign words that often inhabit the language) every year!!

As you can imagine...it's a tough language to learn! I am doing my best and just hope to be able to haggle in the marketplace and politely say hello to our contacts and colleagues in Istanbul!

We had a meeting last week and went over the itinerary briefly. We'll be visiting Hagia Sophia on our first day, which should be pretty incredible. This, for me, is an iconic symbol of Istanbul and since I teach it every semester, will be great to actually experience. I'm sure that my comprehension of the site will be greatly improved through interaction with it.

Most of the rest of the week is not set in stone, but we will be spending our mornings in meetings and our afternoons wandering the city and seeing the sights. We will be taking a boat trip around the Bosporus (Bogaz in Turkish), which will include visiting the yali, which are the old houses that line the Bosporus.

On our last day, we have an optional trip to Ephesus, which is an ancient city built by the Romans. It is a beautiful city...although Suzanne and I are considering hitting the baths for the day and relaxing there instead of going to Ephesus!! We're looking into it! :)

That's it for now...