I think not.

You see, when I landed, I immediately started talking with the Lebanese guy who sat one seat away from me. And as it is with Lebanese people, they immediately ask where you´re from and if it´s a familiar location, they start to ask you about people you may know from there. More often than not, you´re clueless about the names thrown at you.

But in that case, I was not clueless. In fact, Joseph, the guy I met on the plane, turned out to be from my grandmother´s village. More so, in fact, he was a distant member of her family. And apparently, he was on good terms with her brother. Where does Joseph live? Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Apart from yours truly being impressed by that at first, Joseph then asked me if I knew a girl from a neighboring village. I replied positively. She was a person I befriended during the many common biology courses we took together as we both finished our Biology degree. Why was Joseph asking? He was her sister´s boyfriend – for two years now. Yes, he made me guess and I did.

So naturally, being the chit-chatty person that I am, I kept on walking with Joseph and we sat in a Turkish cafe in Istanbul and ordered Turkish tea.
For the record, Turkish tea is like your regular tea. But Turkish. Get it?

So for an hour, I sat with Joseph. Then a very random tweetup with Samer, who happened to be in Istanbul airport at the time, was set up on twitter. So Samer joined us and we discussed politics, life, Lebanon, Algeria, Brazil, peace, violence… and then it was time for me to board.

I got to my terminal and behold… the whole group was shouting at me that I got lost. They thought I decided the exit the Istanbul aiport since we don´t need a visa. I know it was the first time I traveled but come on, I´m not that stupid. Try to tell that to a priest though.

Was being reprimanded worth “getting lost”? I think so.