Another catastrophe avoided

You've probably heard about this. I feel like I was one of the last to hear about it, and I was actually trying to ride on the Red Line. Funny how you can be annoyed with the delay in the Metro and have no idea what's going on. I was supposed to be meeting up with a friend, and I had to let him know I'd be late because of a delay on the Red Line, which really isn't all that uncommon. Delayed for "technical problems" huh? That's what 6 deaths is?

I decided to get off the line at Farragut North and walk to my Foggy Bottom destination because it was nice enough outside. That's when I got the first text from my dad -- "are you in the red line train wreck?" uhhh.....what? "it was slow moving for sure. I'm meeting someone in foggy bottom so I got off at farragut north and am walking." text back from pops -- "whew!"

Next text from a classmate who I had just spoken with the night before about my ungodly commute on the Orange and Red Lines. "Okay 2 metro trains collided on the red line ... Are you okay?" ohhhh so that's what was causing the delay, yeah that would do it. "Yeah, I didn't realized that's what happened. I was stuck in the delay though. Thanks for asking!" It was at this point I figured I should change my facebook status to let everyone know I wasn't in the crash. I got a few more texts and calls from friends checking up. The love is greatly appreciated. Then I started to think about it....

Flashback to 2007 -- I was in St. Paul to work a youth conference. I had gone over to the conference site, met some people who were also working it, and we all went back to the hotel together to get ready for dinner. While we were there, a few people turned on the TV and learned that the I-35W bridge collapsed, the bridge we had all crossed just a few hours prior to the collapse to get from the Minneapolis airport to our hotel in St. Paul. Immediate calls to the family and coworkers before news traveled back to them to worry.

And then let's throw in the Air France flight that disappeared 2 days after I was on an Air France flight coming back from Turkey.

Add those two incidents with which I feel somewhat connected with today's Red Line crash...I kind of started to freak out on the walk to Foggy Bottom. Still a little shaken up about it.

Turkey - Transition Day

The last two teams presented to their client (with whom I sang American karaoke at a Turkish bar on Monday night) yesterday. That meant yesterday was cause for celebration. To close out the residency, and once we got back in Istanbul after our 3 hour bus ride back from Bursa, we took a dinner cruise along the Bosphorus with a DJ and open bar. There was much dancing and rejoicing. And we of course rocked it out to our favorite new song, Hadise's Düm Tek Tek (YouTube is blocked here, but I found it on Google Video). Listen to it and love it. We are bringing it to the States.

That's our boat.I'm on a boat.
Rumeli Hisari, built in 4 months when Sultan Mehmet was only 19 in preparation for conquering Constantinople.

On Friday I'm getting on a Turkish Airlines flight to Bodrum for a week at the all-inclusive Aegean Dream Resort, discounted by the GW alumna who had our professor when she was in undergrad. Gotta finish those damn reflections so I can really be on vacation...

Turkey - Day Eight

Tourist Day. We had a tour guide take us around to the Hippodrome, Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia, and the Sunken Palace Cistern. We closed out the day with a helicopter tour of Istanbul. Yeah, that's right. It was pretty ridiculous. I took 143 pictures over the course of the day. Here is just a dabble. I'll probably try to set up a Picasa page or something, because I'm over 300 pictures already for the whole trip.

Hippodrome....looks vaguely familiar...
If you look closely you can see the pictures of the horses & chariots.
Blue Mosque, aka Mosque of Sultan Ahmet I, from afar. You can't see all of them in this picture, but this is the only mosque in the world with 6 minarets.
Part of the courtyard area of the Blue Mosque.Dome of Blue Mosque.

Didn't need to cover my head, but they were giving wraps to women whose shoulders were showing too much. I thought I'd be okay in my t-shirt. I guess not.Aya Sofia. Was a church in Constantinople. Then the Ottoman Turk sultans turned it into a mosque. Then Atatürk, who founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and wanted the country to be more Western, turned it into a secular museum.Istanbul is an example of how East.......meets West. (Images from the leftover Christian artwork from when the Aya Sofia was a church.)
Cistern from when Istanbul was Constantinople. Those lights didn't exist back then, though.Medusa. She is kept at the back corner of the cistern so people wouldn't turn to stone from looking at her. Don't look at her eyes.
Helicopter time. My group looking back and telling me to ride in the front since I had my Flip video camera. They received no protest from me. Stay tuned for the video of the ride.
Blue Mosque (front) and Aya Sofia (back). Now you can see all 6 minarets on the Blue Mosque.

Birdseye of the underground Grand Bazaar. Reinforces why it's so easy to get lost in there and you should keep a buddy. So huge.

What a day. Tomorrow we go to Bursa so the other 2 groups can meet and present to their client. The school part of the Turkey trip is over halfway finished. I still need to do a bunch of visit preparation forms and 5 reflections. Unfortunately I can't just turn in this blog...

Tamamlandı!

That's Turkish for completed, finished, DONE!! My team gave our client presentation today and ROCKED IT! I'm so proud of how well we did, and our client really loved it. A second team presented after us for the same client on a different topic (and they were phenomenal as well), and when they finished, and took questions, our client said, "I have a question for both groups: would they be interested in being hired at ITKIB?"

Not only did the team do an amazing job, but I got an incredibly kind compliment from my professor on my part of the presentation specifically. I was an unprepared wreck of nerves last night as we ran through some stuff in her room at 10pm, so it was especially nice to hear.

A third group presented today for a different client, and they were all offered jobs as well! ("I have a question - when you finish your studies, will you come to work for Pantera?) GW MBAs represent! We all feel a thousand pounds lighter. What a marathon. And the other two groups don't present until next week (after we go to another city on Sunday), so we can all celebrate together tonight.

Post Presentation Picture: Elation and Exhaustion

Also, yesterday was an incredible day for site visits and the Istanbul experience. Will write about it at some point. For now, it's time for a group dinner and celebration down by the Bosphorus. It's going to be a good night. But we can't be out too late, because we have tourist day tomorrow! Hooray!

Point of Power

Pardon the pause in daily Turkish updates as I work to finish the Power Point for my group's presentation on Friday. Rest assured, the tummy is better, I'm going on site visits and ohhh am I eating some delicious food.
Here's my team at our site visit on Tuesday to Mavi Jeans. "Mavi" means "blue" in Turkish. Get it? Blue jeans. Pretty creative.

Turkey - Day Four

Updates on drama

• Professor still doesn't have her luggage. It's back in the States from Brazil, but stuck at JFK. Delta says it's Turkish Airlines' responsibility. Turkish Airlines says it's Delta's responsibility. She order some suits online and they should arrive tomorrow. All the client gifts are in the luggage, along with her audio recording equipment she needs for the research she is doing in London after this project. At least we make her laugh.
  
• The invalids are feeling better. We went on our first client visit today and I was able to eat food. Lots of food.
• Presentation is coming along. Looking forward to Friday afternoon.
  

Today was a cool day. We visited Mavi Jeans, which for those of you who are not fashionistas, is a pretty high end brand. It's the leading brand in Turkey, does really well globally, and has one retail store in the Union Square area of NYC.

Wall o' jeans.

Next we went to a carpet store, which was kind of random, but it was cool to hear about that side of the textile industry, when we've been focusing on just textiles and apparel for the past 8 weeks. He taught us the difference between high and low quality wool and silk rugs. We saw some that were as much as 35,000 (I'm not sure if that was lira or USD, but it's still A LOT!). They were beautiful. We sang "A Whole New World."

On a magic carpet ride.

We finished at the carpet store a little earlier than expected, so we went to the Grand Bazaar to fill time before dinner. Wow. What a zoo. Huge. And talk about history. It was built over 500 years ago when the Ottoman Turks overtook Constantinople and it became Istanbul (cue They Might Be Giants). I didn't buy anything there, though, because we are going to Bursa on Sunday, and our professor tells us the market there will be cheaper and we will need to bargain less.

Just one of many entrances.

We closed out the night with an AMAZING dinner and alumni mixer at the Hotel Sultanhan. We ate on the terrace level, which had floor to ceiling windows, and were able to go on the roof top to see some ridiculous views of the city. Couldn't stop taking pictures. Here's one of them.

That's me, just Bri, in Turkey.

And it turns out I don't like Turkish coffee. That was kind of a disappointment. I'm not going to give up on it yet. I didn't have it with sugar. I will try again with sugar.

Bona Fide

It's official. I'm truly an international traveler now.

Our professor sent out an email last night when she got to the hospital saying WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. She appreciated that we were slow to call her last night because we were worried about her rest and well-being, but she emphasized that she needs to be called immediately in case of a problem. It's her job to take care of us, and we also mean a lot to her. We should notify her if we "get lost, in trouble, or don't feel well (even stomach problems)."

Hmmm....well, since you asked...

I'll save you the details, since you can probably figure those out, but let's just say the delicious stuffed potato didn't agree with my stomach as well as it agreed with my taste buds. I wrote to her to let her know, saying I had taken 4 Pepto tablets because I was worried about the 1.5 hour bus ride to our first client meeting this morning.

Cue page long email response -- stay in the hotel, don't risk it, yes it's your client, but this is more important, don't take meds, drink water, could be bacterial, let me know if you get a fever, drink water, but not tap water, eat the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, apple sauce, toast), no dairy, trust me, I have experience. Alright, then. Luckily, today is probably the least eventful day on the itinerary, so if it had to happen, I'm glad it happened today.

So here I am, in my hotel bed, with 2 1.5L bottles of water near me and bread from breakfast to last me all day. At least it will give me time to work on the Power Point for our presentation on Friday, but yeah, this sucks. And it's 2am back home right now, so no one is on GChat to keep me company...whomp whomp.

I'm so happy to join the international travelers' club. :-/