Life in Jesus IronMoon Dorm

So when I last left my mark in the blogosphere, I had just moved in to my temporary dormitory.  So much has changed since then.  To start with, I have moved to another, much nicer dorm.  Isa Demerary Yurt (or translated into English, Jesus IronMoon Dorm) is apparently one of the nicest public dorms in METU.  It is so desirable that you have to be in the top 5000 students or so in the country to get a room in it.  You could also be an exchange student, and find yourself there under no circumstances of academic merit, which I think attracted some resentment from my temporary dorm mates.

So how nice is Isa Demeray?  Whereas Dorm 9 was better than a Belarusian dorm but worse than a Serbian dorm (this information was provided by my new Serbian and Belarusian friends), Isa Demeray is roughly the quality of a dorm you would find in America (except for the squat toilets again).  The dorm is spacious in the work and sleeping rooms, forgoing bunk beds but keeping the four to a room arrangement.  The space breakdown per person is probably about the same as at Mudd, but the bathrooms are public (and did I mention squat toilets?).  A couple of added features include a kitchen, a computer lab, two restaurants and a study room that looks strangely like a sweatshop sans sewing machines.  As another perk, the three massive Demeray dorms stacked next to each other have a nifty soviet-era vibe.

Because the dorm only accepts the best students, the population breakdown makes me have flashbacks to Mudd.  There are a lot of unkempt beards, people shuffling down the hall with their eyes on their toes and the like.  My roommates include Johnny, my fellow Mudder (they like to keep exchange students doubled up, apparently) a quiet guy name Emere and a fairly personable guy named Yusuf.  Yusuf and Emere are both first year electrical engineering students studying for their English qualifying exams.  If they pass at the end of the year, they will be able to take real classes.  If not, they will be stuck doing English for another year.  Fortunately Yusuf seemed amiable to the idea of helping me practice Turkish by speaking in it a good deal of the time.  In reality he is mostly out of the room playing a bizarre card game that seems to mostly require card counting.  Still, I appreciate the thought.  Emere on the other hand has mostly remained silent on that and every issue.