Day 2- Still travelling and Arrival

Ok- I just typed a very detailed entry and it didn't save. Hannah said I should consider this a sign that I should not type that much and I'm going with it, despite the fact that I did want this to be literary as well as pictoral. Oh well.

I woke up on the plane after sleeping about an hour (yay for neck pillows and eye masks). After landing, I waited in line after line before finally getting to the terminal. I hung out on the internet, cleaned up, and read a little while waiting. I also discovered that Hannah had missed her flights and would not be meeting me in London. While I was writing, I nearly missed my own flight to Istanbul and had to run like crazy to my gate. I ended up making it and met a very nice lady on the plane who I gave my email address to and she gave me a silver ring. We went through visas, passport check, and baggage together and then I went out to find Asli and her mom Belgin waiting for me. I was so happy to see them and be in Istanbul.
They took me the scenic route along the Bosphorus to her grandfather's house. He allowed me to call home from there. We stopped in at her aunt's house around the corner before heading to their downtown apartment to clean up and eat some fruit before heading out to meet her best friends from high school for dinner at a seafood restaurant. I tried all kinds of foods- they bring them out in dishes which are passed around- from olives and feta to octopus. Then Belgin came to get us to go to the airport so we could pick Hannah up around midnight. Hannah was a little upset from all of her 30+ hours of travel, and very glad to see us. We all went back to the apartment and ate fruit and showered before passing out. Of couse we also wanted to get on the new sleep schedule (7 hours ahead of us in EST). I also exchanged $60 for 80 YTL (new/yeni turkish lira) at a rate of 1.35 courtesy of Belgin- the actual rate is 1.33.