The limit is 250 and I am at 283. What would you cut out? Please help me! Also, does it fit the intellectual vitality prompt enough? I think so considering the word limit. I had much more to this essay, about how it affected me, but I had to cut it out :(
I step off my private helicopter onto Turkish soil, where a woman in a headscarf greets me with a warm smile and hands me a pink-lemonade. Soon, I am on the beach. The sand, like the sea, rolls up and down in waves; the stark contrast in color is all that differentiates sand from sea. The sand's current pulls me in, and I run with it, over the waves of sand, toward the sea...
"BEEEEP!"
My alarm clock pulled me out of the warm Mediterranean sea and plucked me back in my room. In class, Turkey fluttered in and out my head. My middle school brain only knew two things about the country: its people were Muslims, and it was named after a bird. What on earth had inspired such a dream? I thought one thing: destiny. From that moment on, I acquired an insatiable interest in Turkey. I spent weeks reading about my favorite historical figure, Ataturk, and the separation of church and state in an almost homogeneously Muslim country; months trying to convince my mom to buy that seaside apartment in Fethiye; and two laborious years teaching myself Turkish.
My Turkey infatuation awoke my love for other languages and cultures and I decided I would devote the rest of my life to diplomacy. Currently occupied with Spanish and French, I can no longer devote my every second to Turkey, but it hasn't been forgotten.
Just recently, one of my teachers lectured that Turkey would never enter the European Union as long as church and state remained entwined.
My hand shot in the air. "Actually, Ataturk removed Islam as the state religion in 1928 and..."
Nobody bad-mouths Turkey while I'm around.
I step off my private helicopter onto Turkish soil, where a woman in a headscarf greets me with a warm smile and hands me a pink-lemonade. Soon, I am on the beach. The sand, like the sea, rolls up and down in waves; the stark contrast in color is all that differentiates sand from sea. The sand's current pulls me in, and I run with it, over the waves of sand, toward the sea...
"BEEEEP!"
My alarm clock pulled me out of the warm Mediterranean sea and plucked me back in my room. In class, Turkey fluttered in and out my head. My middle school brain only knew two things about the country: its people were Muslims, and it was named after a bird. What on earth had inspired such a dream? I thought one thing: destiny. From that moment on, I acquired an insatiable interest in Turkey. I spent weeks reading about my favorite historical figure, Ataturk, and the separation of church and state in an almost homogeneously Muslim country; months trying to convince my mom to buy that seaside apartment in Fethiye; and two laborious years teaching myself Turkish.
My Turkey infatuation awoke my love for other languages and cultures and I decided I would devote the rest of my life to diplomacy. Currently occupied with Spanish and French, I can no longer devote my every second to Turkey, but it hasn't been forgotten.
Just recently, one of my teachers lectured that Turkey would never enter the European Union as long as church and state remained entwined.
My hand shot in the air. "Actually, Ataturk removed Islam as the state religion in 1928 and..."
Nobody bad-mouths Turkey while I'm around.
