Adventures In Türkiye!: Ankara

I just returned from Ankara (a second time). The purpose of the trip was for us NSLI-Y students to have a security briefing, sightsee, and go over some orientation we missed due to our mishaps in traveling on the way here. It was really exciting because I hadn't seen the four other NSLI-Y students living in Samsun since we had arrived in Turkey. We went to the top of Ankara Castle and took a bunch of awesome pictures of Ankara. After that, we went to the archaeological museum which I didn't know we were going to. I was soooooooo excited/happy to see it. My love for archaeology grew even more and it's just so fascinating. We also went to Ankara's biggest mall. The girls and I shopped around, but because it was so big I didn't really get anything. We had about two hours, yet it flew by and I ummm sort of got lost.. :( I found this really interesting French store (they had a sweatshirt that had sushi on it!) but the other girls wanted to go somewhere else. So I said I'd meet them at the entrance...well, I went to the wrong entrance. But it was okay cause I was right near the correct entrance and I found them/they found me. I was a little scared, that was a BIG mall. Anyway, we have fun. The next day we went to the U.S. Embassy and had our security briefing by foreign service officers from the U.S. It was really interesting - Turkey's level of terrorist threat is: HIGH. However, as long as we use common sense we will be fine. We went to memorial of where Atatürk is buried. It was really beautiful and incredibly interesting to see. Gosh, we did so much in a short amount of time! We also visited the head of TOMER language school, and got t-shirts and bags! Later that night we got caught in a thunder storm. It was the most intense one I had ever seen/heard. We ran in the rain for a little while which was super fun, and then settled down at this cafe. And fun stuff occurred :) The last day we were there, we had orientation at the AFS office and chilled. It was really sad saying good-bye to the Samsun students when we were in the airport. We are all super close, and the next time I'll see them is in November I think :/ Here are some photos from the trip. Also, I included photos of the school uniform. Yes, I went to school for one day and it was really funny. I'll tell more details later :)