So, thank you to Beth for forcing me to look up info about the country I'm visiting. Turkey has a fairly robust economy with a combination of agricultural and industrial products. Up to 35% of its products are agricultural. Until recently, it was making substantial gains in its GDP every year.
In a side note, my professor (the one who leads the trip and will here after be referred to as Safi) says that a year ago, people in Istanbul would come up to him once they knew he was an American, say "Bush" in an angry tone of voice and then hock a loogie at his feet. Now, they come up to him and say "Uubama!" and give him the thumbs-up. So, I picked a good time to go in a political sense.
As the title of this post notes, I've started the massive amount of spending this trip will entail. I bought my plane ticket and a whopping $1200 flew out of my bank account. That hurt a little bit. I hate spending money, and this ticket is nonrefundable, so I'm definitely going. Which is scary, because I can't help thinking that something like a civil war or nuclear attack will occur that will keep me from going. Plus, I nearly had to beat up the travel agent to get her to make my name on the ticket match the name on my passport so I wouldn't be accused of being a terrorist when I came back to America from a Middle Eastern country. But all is well now.
I'm currently nervous about the trip. I'm afraid that everyone going won't like me or that they'll be really annoying. I'm worried about money and about being too exhausted from this semester to have fun. I'm sure these are just jitters, but at this point, I can't get too excited without failing the rest of my semester.
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