Good friends in a small world.

As I'm writing this I'm sitting on the rooftop terrace of my hostel, watching an orange harvest moon crest over the city of Istanbul.  The city lights from the Asian side reflect off the calm golden horn straight, merging with the softer lights of the boats and seaside restaurants.  The air is mixed with numerous languages from people staying at the hostel - from German to Italian to Turkish to English - and also the sounds of vendors hawking food and trinkets from the busy street below.  Only an occassional horn breaks the norm (a welcome relief from previous cities visited).  It's hard to believe I'm actually in Turkey, half way across the world from home and off to Bulgaria tomorrow.  My bus won't leave until tomorrow evening, allowing me one more day in this city which I plan to use to visit an underground waterway system.

After traveling with only one person for five days, you learn a lot about them...perhaps too much.  Although I should not be surprised by this from spending so long with Bob and Carrie in India, and the same 25 people on my semester abroad in University, it was different somehow.  I must admit, when I first asked Elli to come I was myself hesitant - sure we became friends in India but that was so long ago.  I worried after a brief friendly reunion we would have nothing to talk about and be like "uhhhh..." for the next four days.  But I could not have been any farther from the truth.  In fact, we talked so much that by day two I felt we had nothing left to talk about, but on day three there were new topics.  And by day five, we'd covered so much that we even started telling each other the same thing over again -- but neither of us stopped the other because at least hey, it was something to talk about haha.  I learned more about Austrian and European culture in the last five days than I have my whole life (and I could not be more grateful), and I know she feels the same about American culture.  

Sharing a final tea before she left, I remarked how amazing it is that two people, having met each other for only a few weeks in India - one from America and one from Austria - would ever be sitting with each other having tea in Turkey one year later...certainly neither of us ever forsaw this in our future one year ago!  And what a beautifully small world we live in to allow this happen...

I'm very excited to meet up with my family in Italy, but first I hope I learn as much about myself in the next week traveling alone as I did this past week about Austria traveling with Elli.

CM