Night 54: Oh, We're Halfway There! ... Whoahhhh, Livin' on a Prayer!

I've had Bon Jovi stuck in my head since we were halfway to Petra almost a month ago. I blame Elizabeth.

Yeah, so I'm halfway done with the semester. Halfway to home and Christmas and my own bed and unlimited internet that doesn't conk out on me every other day and ENGLISH.

I'm excited. Can you tell?

Yeah, other than being excited about being at the halfway point, not much is going on here. Maybe that's why this halfway thing is so exciting. I knew October was going to be long, but I didn't know it was going to have so many un-blog-worthy days. Most of my time in the past couple of weeks has been spent in class, studying, reading, and watching TV with Lara and Janet. Also Skyping when my internet is working. It's been a homesick-filled month. BUT things are going to get exciting really quickly. Even though I have midterms this week, and I have my hardest exam on Sunday (3-hour MSA exam, blech), I'm going to Ajloun to go hiking tomorrow. We'll also be painting classrooms in the school with REAL paint. Woooo. Also, I'm going to Istanbul next week for a solid seven days! I am pumped, and I'm sure there'll be a ton of great stuff to post in November (not to mention pictures)!

Also, as most of you probably know, there was a pretty bad (7.2) earthquake in Eastern Turkey this week. This is not going to effect my trip, as the quake was hundreds of miles away from Istanbul. It was a pretty devastating earthquake though; I don't even want to talk about how many people died (fortunately it was during the day, so people weren't in bed sleeping). And I feel strange about being a tourist in a country that's receiving aid without doing something about the fact that there was a natural disaster in the area. So if any of you feel like donating/have enough money for that kind of thing (trust me, I know how guilt-making it is to see a link to donate to a good cause when you have next to no money in your bank account, so no pressure), here is a link to the GlobalGiving Turkey Earthquake Relief Fund: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/turkey-earthquake-relief-and-recovery-fund/.
Here is a link on statistics and updated info on what's going on in the area, as well: http://earthquake-report.com/2011/10/23/very-strong-dangerous-earthquake-in-eastern-turkey/.