no idea what is coming

tonight is the Ferdag's final round volleyball game! Me and a few others are going to the game...more importantly Nick, Jeemy, and I are going all out. I'm talkin body paint, signs, and alcohol. Should be amazing. I really cant think of what I would like to do more than get myself a delicious drink, and go cheer on my friend....and just so happens that there are plenty of other lil girlies cruisin around in little shorts :)

lets hope that we dont get kicked out for being too loud or something. Actually, that would be a good story. Now I just gotta make it through the walk of shame from my crib to the gym with a red painted face haha.

pictures to come...........wish me luck....

bugles

sometimes I sit down to blog, and I really dont have anything interesting to say. On those days, I pretty much have done nothing but school work. So, yesterday I filmed myself doing just that, school work. Here I am, reading and taking notes...and eating Patos Critos (turkish bugles)...and drinking a red bull. Between the frame rate and being 25x faster, pretty much just looks like I was sitting outside and eating bugles haha. enjoy!

seriously?

yes I agree the bus is large...and baller...and the driver is sketchy...

but no one has noticed what makes the picture so amazing.

until that happens, no more blog posts from outlaw meat :)

soak it up

this picture is possibly one of the greatest pics I have ever taken. It was taken at the bus depot on my way to the Bulgarian border. It is so good, it deserves its own post. Enjoy

19

19 days until I get on the metal bird

Ben Spies is straight dominating (number 19). I mean, he has never even been to Assen in his life, and he lead BOTH of the first two sessions. The man is a beast. How do you learn a track that fast, much less be faster than tons of other riders that have been racing there for years

...in other news, John Hopkins further proved how overrated he was by crashing on his 4th lap and dislocating his hip. Yeah, more money he gets for doing nothing.

I met a couple guys last night at the gym. One was from Zimbabwe and the other was from Congo. How cool it that!! The guys were really chill, I enjoyed talking to them a lot. They told me they could tell I was American as soon as I started talking by my "accent". Kinda cool, I have never been told I have any kind of accent, especially in America. Well, except for when I was a little kid....I had a mega southern accent haha. What did I say on that pontoon boat ma? something like "man its haaaardddd" hahaha

Today is my traditional "feel good friday." I'm on a pretty strict diet during the week while I exercise, but on Friday I make it a point to eat whatever I want...hence "feel good." Usually it involves some kind of American food goodness. Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Coca-Cola....but today was my first trip to KFC. and what a disappointment that was haha. Didnt have mac n cheese, mashed potatoes, normal biscuits, or even potatoe wedges. The popcorn chicken was good though. Oh well, live and learn!

aight, I gotta stop being so lazy, time to do some work. I only have about a week and a half left in my schooling here. Woot woooooooot! love peace and colonel grease

re[format]tarded

so my awesome hard drive crashed again yesterday...3rd time since Christmas. If nothing else, it has made me get into a good habit of backing all my work up daily. Not to mention I can completely reformat and get my laptop back to exactly how it was in record time now. I'll be getting a new, free, hard drive from western digital when I get back to America...so its all good.

In light of my laptop dying again, I ordered my new Mac Mini just now! I know I know, I didn't need to order it right now cause I won't be back for three weeks. Well, I did it anyways....so accept it :) I opted for the Mini mainly because of how Apple is really leading the way in trying to make more sustainable and energy efficient products. The Mac Mini is the world's most energy efficient desktop computer. When at idle it runs on less energy than one of those fancy spiral bulbs (compact fluorescent), and runs on less than 1/4 of the energy of the older standard bulbs (incandescent).

I got it with the little 120GB hard drive, but boosted the ram to 4GB of DDR3, and it has a2.0GHz processor. Nothing extreme, but plenty for what I will be using it for...mostly image editing and presentation boards. I also got the wireless keyboard & wireless mighty mouse.

oh and did I mention it is mini? 6.5"x6.5"x2"!! amazing

in other news, I updated my playlist to your right. I am officially obsessed with Brutha - She's Gone. think New Edition, minus bobby brown and being old....enjoy!

neck and fo-head veins

I went to the Beşiktaş (pronounced Besh-ick-tash) soccer game on Sunday night with Jeremy, Daniel, and Saygin. It was soooo cool, exactly what I expected.

I cant even describe the intensity of the fans. In America we cheer, in Europe they scream. Screaming until their neck and fo-head veins pop out. They absolutely love their team. It was a little strange though. The crowd was led by a few "cheer leaders", and were chanting stuff 95% of the game. However, most the time it seemed like the crowd was more interested in looking away from the field to the cheerleaders. Kinda weird.

I've embedded a few videos for ya to get an idea of what it is like. Check out how awesome our seats were!!

this is a video of the start of the game. Pretty much puts our "War Eagle" chant to shame. Sorry about the shaky camera, it was CRAZY at the beginning.

this is a short clip of pretty much what I did all game. Boo everytime the other team got the ball hahaha

death by burger

here is the video of probably the most fattening meal I've ever eaten in my life

enjoy!

death by burger

so today was d-day. Nick and I finally took on the challenge we have been planning all semester. We went to McDonalds and got a Mega Mac....supersized. If you don't remember my previous analysis of mickey d's, the Mega mac has 4...yes 4 meat patties. It came with the biggest thing of fries I've ever encountered, and a 3/4 liter coke.

we took it on, and finished ALL of it in less than 20 minutes! I was disguistingly full, but completely satisfied. I filmed the entire event, so tomorrow I'm going to make a time lapse video and put it up on youtube! You will be able to watch me consume the 754 calorie / 46 grams of fat Mega Mac, the 500 calorie / 25 grams of fat french fries, and the 310 calorie coke....for a grand total of 1564 calories :)

gotta get back to work, studio is kicking my butt right now. be on the lookout tomorrow!

roman intruders

in a few hours we have some Auburn students that are studying in Rome coming in! I'm really excited to see them, I havent seen them since Christmas. Only bad part is we have a tooooonnnnnnn of work due Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. So, I'm gonna try and hang out with them as much as I can...but I'm gonna have to spend a lot of time up in studio doing work.

I'm going to a soccer game on Sunday night! I have always wanted to go to a European soccer game, and I finally am! I'm sitting on the sidelines with all the crazy people, and I'm bringing my video camera. I've already been warned to not bring anything small in my pockets, like lighters or coins. They make you pretty much empty your pockets so you wont have anything you can throw at the players on the field! I am soooo pumped!

I've been training really hard this week and working pretty hard in studio, so I'm gonna take it easy tonight. hope everyone is having fun in America, cause I know I am having fun here!! take it easyyyy!

epcot of friendship

probably the coolest part about studying abroad is meeting the most amazing and random people ever. Today at the gym I met a dude from Hungary. I mean, how many people know someone from Hungary...I dont even know if I could point it out on a map very quickly haha. here is a short-list of places of the people I have met thus far...I'm probably gonna forget some

-France

-England

-Australia

-Switzerland

-Finland

-Germany

-Turkey

-Morocco

-Brazil

-USA : places like Idaho.. I didnt realize people actually lived there

well, that least seemed a lot more impressive until I typed it out haha. oh well. Never would've met any of the people if I stayed in Auburn!

*side note*

I went to a womens volleyball game today. Besides the obvious apppeal of the tiny spandex shorts, the game was incredibly entertaining! I mean, I was wayyy into it. I'm talkin, I was boo-ing the ref...but there were about 20 people in the entire gym, so he was looking right at me and Nick boo-ing. haha, yeah it was slightly awkward for a second.

My friend Ferdag is on the team, so we went to support her. They won the semi-final match today, so they are going to the finals!! You best believe I'm gonna be there...thinking about painting something amazing on my chest. Now if I can just get someone to translate "I heart women's volleyball and the spandex shorts that come along with it" into turkish...I could possible paint that across my chest, and probably wrap around my back and onto my arms. I guess I could just spin the whole time so people could read it

its the final countdown

what up! I watched the MotoGP season opener last night, well...when I say "watch" I actually mean this: sit infront of a blank screen and wait 2 minutes for the rider positions to update. Pretty lame, but it works I guess. I watched the highlights on youtube this morning, seemed like a pretty boring race, except for when Pedro got punted haha. Nothing new, Stoner running away and Rossi is the only on remotely close. Hayden ran his fastest lap of the weekend on his last lap of the race. Still about 2 seconds slower than Stoner though, so I guess that isnt a real hot fact. I mean, he had a 130mph highside two days before the race, so I give him mad respect. I'm confident he will get the GP9 figured out, its just gonna take about half the season. I'll still be pulling for him every round!

It is officially less than one month until I get on the plane to head back to Daytona!! I'm super pumped. I'm still really enjoying my time here, but I am ready to see my friends and family, get back to Florida weather, and good ole American food.

*side note* they were playing "Sweet Home Alabama" in the gym yesterday haha, probably the only time I wasnt angry after it came on. I actually enjoyed it this time...weird.

Sorry about the short and less frequent blog posts. I havent really been doing much during the week except tryin to get some school work done and training. However!! I have been cooking for myself a lot recently, slowing becoming a skinnier and slightly less hairy Emeril Lagasse

hahahaha holy crap I am a really ugly fat person hahaha. that right there is motivation for me to exercise for the rest of my life haha

a beastly bday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEASTRO!! I'm sad I can't be there, but I'm sure my fam is taking good care of ya! Three years ago today I adopted her, and I have loved every second of it. I hope she hasn't forgotten about me when I get back!! I cant wait to get back and see her :)

well, almost

haha well I went to the bulgarian border....never crossed it. Again, the main reason we went was to get our visa's renewed. So after taking care of that and eating lunch at the police for free (!), we were informed that the nearest bulgarian city was an hour away. Well, we decided it wasnt worth it cause our time would be really really limited after the extra hour. So, instead we went to a city called Edirne, Turkey. Beautiful little town, pictures to follow.

overall it was an amazing day trip, look for a more detailed blog soon.

life update

whattt upppppp. My blog posts have been fairly uninformative recently. Time for a change...yes we can! sorry, had an obama moment there. I am sooo pumped to see him as my president when I get back. I'll try and stay in some kind of chronological order...if possible. Dont judge me if I cant haha.

Last week I was talking to my friend Ferdag, and I was asking her if there was any place here I could get some tacos or burritos. She said there was this place "El Torrinto" or something similar to that, but she had never been. So, we took a chance and made a short trip by metro/foot out to try it. Turns out, it is 100% legit. Just like any of the themed mexican joints in America. The food was DELICIOUS, although a little expensive. We bought ordered the nachos supreme, and it lived up to my high expectations. Def a little bit of home, and it was much needed. I want to go back, but after we left the metro we went on a straight trip to Narnia. We had to cross highhways and cut through malls, fight off beastly lions tigers and bears. Haha, nah, I think I could find my way back with my nose though. Below is a pic of the double d-lish meal

A little bit of debby-downer news now. I think I am going to push back my triathlon date to something closer to august. I just cant seem to stay in good health here. The food here just doesnt cooperate with my body. I keep getting stomach and butt "episodes" haha. Well, I have been good for the past week, so I'm hoping it is all gone. I am cooking just about all of my meals at the crib now, trying to avoid as much of the cheap food as I can. Gotta shout of my roomie, Jeremy (aka JEEMY hahaha), he showed me a really simple and amazing egg sandwich that I have been making a lot...pretty much everyday for dinner. I was worried about too much cholesterol from the eggs (two a day), but I did some research and apparently two eggs a day can help lower your cholesterol levels [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,410509,00.html]. So that worked out beautifully.

I have a few more trips planned before I get on the metal bird and go over the pond. Tomorrow I'm going to the Turkish/Bulgarian border. I have to get my visa renewed...if not I am illegal on Monday. Hahaha, so yeah, should be fun. The city we are going to was the first capital of the Ottoman Empire, little history lesson. We are going by bus in the morning, and the best part is it is going to cost me about $25 round trip to go to Bulgaria hahaha. Awesome.

At the end of April, me and all my friends are going to a city called Alanya in southeast Turkey. It is right on the Mediterranean Sea, so I am pummmmmmped about being able to swim there. We are going for 3 days/4 nights. We are staying in a 5 star hotel, all meals and drinks paid. All that plus the bus ride down there is only going to cost me about $175. So crazy, I have no idea how the people got the deal so cheap. So it should be amazing. Below is a picture of the Alanyan beach

lastly, today I went to the movies and saw Marley & Me. Its actually called "Marley & Ben" over here because 'me' translates as 'ben' in turkish. Haha, sounds like a gay man flick or something. Anyways, it was a cool experience. When me and my friend Jenny bought the tickets, they let us choose from a digital screen where we wanted to sit. Then, they gave us our tickets with our seat numbers on them. It was absolutely genius, reserved seating (apparently everywhere except America does this). About halfway through the movie, it looked like the movie film just was pulled off or something. The lights came on, I was like "great, it broke". Nope, it was an intermission hahaha. For real, they had like a 10 minute break to let people get up and do whatever it is that is so important they can wait 120 minutes to do. The movie was in english, with turkish subtitles. And btw, the movie was horribly depressing at the end. But, good overall.

Alright, I'm off to the little market to pick up some turkish ice cream. We will see how that is! Sorry for the long post, I just had a lot to update. MOTO GP STARTS IN ONE HOUR AND 38 MINUTES! love peace and turkish mexican nachos grease

sometimes I wonder

what I am doing...and why I am doing what I am doing....

a great example is the audio on my latest video haha. It is a product of YouTube blocking my audio on my last video because I sampled 90 seconds of a linkin park song. So, I made my own music...and I'm pretty sure no one else on the planet has anything like it.

this is my video I turned in today for one of my classes. The assignment was to creative a narrative of the two places we visited (Cengelkoy and Kuzgunuk). hope you enjoy it!

in my mind

I'm gonna give you a little peak into my mind right now:

-cheetos in turkey are delicious. they are mini.

-I should probably brush my teeth after those delicious cheetos

-I need to get back to work

-the video I'm making is gonna be fun

-why do I always have ideas that take forever to animate

-what if that cat would have scratched Obama?

-I wonder if the cat was my lil Lutfen

-my right hand is unnecessarily cold

-is that how you spell 'unnecessarily'

-why isnt there a spell check on blogger.com

-oh wait, upon further inspection, there is

-it is really cool how they are making the Empire State Building LEED gold

-I miss NYC

-you know what they have in NYC

-Chipotle

-I would kill for some brotha slumpin Chipotle

haha I am suprised I kept you attention that long. sorry, that was fun for the first 10 thoughts. Then I started thinking about what I want to think...then it lost its rawness.

I have a ton of work to do! Hopefully tomorrow morning I can post up my fresh new video...be on the lookout!

turkish kitties

there is something manufactured in the the Pryor DNA strand that makes us complete kitty freaks. Some of us (lindy) have the trait a little stronger than most haha. I'm guilty as well. Last week I went to this little coastal city called Kuzguncuk. There are kitties everywhere in Istanbul, but I never have my camera. On this day, I did. So I snapped away. enjoy!

aubie cat??

queen beastie

fluffy fertilizer

sun?

I think I got a little sunburned yesterday. The way our aprtment is oriented, my balcony faces west. So it blocks the effing freezing northern wind, and it allows the 3pm-6pm sun to bead down upon my Casper-esk body. Me and a bunch of my roomates sat outside for a few hours shirtless. It was nice.

Not much else has happened this weekend. Just been laying around, doing a whole lot of nothing. I'm starting to get antsy about coming home, I need to stop thinking about it though.

So I missed Road Atlanta this year (I've been going there every year for the past 5 years), so that probably has something to do with my mood. Oh, and also World SBK was in Valencia this weekend. I have seen the results, but I want to know what happened. It is possible for anyone to copy/paste the race transcript and race times? I cant get any website to load. It has taken me about 30 minutes just to get this far on blogger.com.

ok, I'm gonna go relax some more. Maybe watch a movie, talk to ya soon!

dirty dozen

me and a-tom went to visit Tarik (my professor) yesterday. He is doing incredibly well, considering he had emergency open heart surgery about a week ago. It is just a miracle he is still with us. He told us that his heart actually stopped completely twice, and they managed to bring him back both times. The doctor told him that 97% of the people that have their aorta leak/rupture the way his did die. He is part of the 3% that make it, and I am so thankful for that.

I had this brilliant idea to bring him some american goodness when we visited. So, we hit up this Dunkin Donuts we randomly found a few weeks back and picked up a dozen donuts. I kinda went crazy...ended up eating 4 myself hahaha. In hindsight, donuts probably wasnt the best thing to bring a man trying to recover...hmmm...seemed like a good idea at the time haha

There is a big square down the road from me, and they just installed this awesome advertisement..

it is pretty much the coolest display ever. I got a picture with the little gangsta fantalien (yeah, I made that up)

I have a lot of work to do this weekend, so I'll be sitting infont of the computer the whole time. hit me up on skype!! do it

doodle time

hey hey hey. Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking...better yet...scheming about my summer plans. The list of to-do's is quickly growing, hopefully I'll get a few things figured out and post up a blog about all that soon. One of the things I'm looking forward to it painting a new helmet. Its become somewhat of an expensive tradition of mine to get/paint a new helmet every year.

so, in the spirit of tradition, here are a few quick photochops of the meatbucket|v4.0

right side. gonna be painted matte black with gloss black vinyl. no clear coat

left side. the camo is going to be pictures of me and members of my family's face posturized and distorted. the boom box will be cartoon looking with music notes coming out and going throughout the camo. all of this part will be clear coated

the pictures kinda hide it, but the helmet is not gonna be split down the center. the camo will be about 3 inches off center to the left. The fun part about this helmet, compared to my previous meatbuckets, is that is going to be 90% vinyl work. That means, many many hours of photoshop work to make sure everything is going to get cut just right. I CANT WAIT hahahahaha

62 degrees

so, as you can see in my previous posts, I was rockin shorts just a few days ago. The cold has returned once again. I'm thinkin...dang it is now April, it should be warm! I looked on weather.com to see when it will be getting warm again, and apparently the average high in Istanbul for the entire month of April is 62 degrees. Yup, 62. Horribly depressing.

I wanna give a quick shoutout to my sis! Moving to Chicago at the end of the summer for pharm school! congrats, you def earned that. Oh, and see if you can get a place with a decent sized guest room...and a its own bathroom. I plan on frequenting your place hehe, so I need certain accomodations :) jk

aunt donna, I hope everything is going well for you. I gotta be honest, I am a little out of the loop and I'm not sure what all you are getting checked out, but its all good for ya. You are def my number one comment maker, and I cant afford to lose ya! I mean, no one else comments anymore, so I might change the name to "MEAT & DONNA = TURKEY" whaddya think??

I thought about pulling some kind of April fools joke on my family, but I figured that could potentially be a horrible idea haha. So, I'll let ya off the hook this year. Expect near year to be double doom.

gotta go! love peace and excessively cold weather for an excessively long period grease