First Team, Chios

Hey Everyone,

Alot has happend since I last wrote. I have finished training and received my first team last week. It was a two day program called OSA, Outer Space Adventure I think. They were a GREAT group of kids and so much fun. It was really odd being on the other side of things, being the counselor instead of the camper, but was really fun. They were all english speaking sixth, seventh and eigth graders from a school in Ankara.

Some of the other counselors have arrived since I last wrote. Sara, is a Camp counselor from Huntsville's Space Camp, Tom is a college student from Kansas. Darren is an NYU student who is from southern California. We have more counselors coming this week. Two weekends ago, the three counselors that were here, Me, Steph and Felicia went on a boat trip. It was the owner of the free zone's boat. It was very nice and alot of fun. We went to a place called Donkey Island, in which wild donkey's were there that we fed fruit, pretty odd but fun. We each have turkish buddies that are counselors for the turkish speaking programs that help us out around town and get us aquanited with the city. Two of our turkish buddies came on the trip, my buddy Ali and Steph's buddy Nurcon. (C is pronounced as J here so it sounds like Nearjohn) The new counselors are going on the boat this weekend. Beth and Bashar were also on the trip, Bashar is Beth's husband. Beth has been wanting me to write about her more in my blog, so here it is ;) We have been hanging out with the turkish counselors quite a bit, they are so much fun.

This past weekend Stephanie, Felicia and I went to the greek island of Chios. It was about two hours away. It was SO much fun. It is a beautiful island that has really nice people and alot to do. The night life was really fun and people are just out chilling next to the water through the night. Greek food is awesome.

The summer program starts on June 12th. It is really why we are here and I am looking forward to it starting. It will be great to meet all these people from all over the world. During the summer there is a week called EPAL week. During the school year students from California and students from Turkey do experiments with each other thru webcam, e-mail and phone calls. Then this summer they all meetup at Space Camp Turkey, to actually meet each other and get to work togethere in person. So during this week they wanted to have a special guest speaker, so I suggest the astronaut that I had talk at my high school's aerospace conference, sure enough they were good with it and he wanted to come so they are flying him over in July. It will be nice to see a familar Nashville face.

Sorry I have been slow on posting, I will try to post more. Also, in the next couple days I will post a bunch of pictures from my first team and from greece. I hope everyone is having a great summer, drop me a line at mgd2i@mtsu.edu