Hurray the cast's off! I went back to the doctor two days ago at the urging of the ESN (Erasmus Student Network, they're the exchange student people) coordinator because the cast was starting to turn my toes a funny color. That and I absolutely didn't need it since my foot isn't broken. So now I'm back to the original soft elastic bandage that I started out with. Even the swelling is going down, and it doesn't hurt quite as bad. I only have a bunch of bruising, especially on my three middle toes, some minor swelling, and a lot of stiffness in the foot. I'm supposed to go back next week so that the doctor can give me some rehab exercises to do.

Orientation has been hectic. We're constantly doing things, and it totally does help my foot since it needs to be resting and elevated and not constantly walked on on uneven ground. My day consists of:
1. Wake up at around 7:50ish, shower, eat breakfast, get ready.
2. Walk (or in my case hobble) to Turkish class from 9:30-1:00
3. Eat lunch for 1.5 hours. Usually I finish before then so sometimes I hobble back to my dorm and leave my backpack.
4. Go on field trip somewhere. Yesterday it was to Ataturk's mausoleum, today it was going to the house of Parliament, although I didn't go because I'm resting my foot for an all day field trip that's tomorrow in Beypazarı.
5. Get talked at in some sort of presentation.
6. Eat dinner.
7. Try to internet. I only recently figured out how to get it in my dorm building, although I still can't get it in my room.
8. Go to bed

A couple of nights ago I went out to a bar with a big group of people, although I was only drinking a single beer and trying to offset the fact that I hadn't had dinner by chowing down on the Doritos that were on the table. I wish they had nachos.

So I'm scared shitless that I'm not making any friends. I don't remember welcome week freshman year being this hard for friend making. I think its because I basically missed the first two days of being here because of my foot and I also seem to have next to nothing in common with most of the exchange students. Plenty of people know who I am, considering the fact that I had a HUGE cast on my foot for the first three days, and I basically limp around everywhere, and everyone always asks how I am, but nobody is really my friend. It doesn't help that we didn't get cell phones until today (which I payed 165TL for which I think is excessive but that's all they had for a shit phone that doesn't even have a color screen and only has 10 minutes of talking time on it right now). For example, there was a group of girls that I met on the first day, was getting along fine with them for a while, then realized that we had nothing in common with each other (i.e. they've been going out every single night which isn't my thing, plus one of them skipped Turkish class because she didn't like being called on. Lame.), and then about 15 minutes ago I was informed by the one girl of the group that I actually really liked if it's OK if I look for an apartment with someone else because one girl's parents want her to have a single yadayadayada. So now I've been voted off the island in the apartment search. And then the girls that I actually do want to live with are living in dorms for the semester. I'm almost thinking about moving into a double dorm room just so that I don't have to live with people that don't seem to want me to live with them. It's really super frustrating/stressful. I can't wait until school starts in 2 weeks because that means that this whole hell will be over with. I would just like not to be miserable and alone for the entirety of the semester. It really makes me miss home...a lot. This is not the way that I was wanting this whole thing to go.

I can only hope that this whole situation only gets better from here on out.