This past week has flown by and I completely forgot to blog. Well, maybe I remembered but just chose to ignore it.
We made our move to the Hotel on Monday which is about a mile down the road from the Superdorm. The lobby of the hotel is very impressive. It has marble floors and chandeliers. However, it is a training school for hotel management so the rooms don't live up to the wonderful lobby, but the Hotel does boast a dependable wireless connection and complimentary breakfast! Zafer, a long time member of the Term in the Middle East Program, lectured on the Ottoman Empire. He is a very intelligent man, owning Turkey's largest personal library collection, but very disorganized in his lecturing. It was a very interesting topic, however, trying to decipher what it meant was another story. We enjoyed a night out at a Mexican Restaurant near our new hotel and it was delicious!! It was a taste of home in Istanbul! We also explored the nearby shopping mall, Akmerkez, that is full of internationally known clothing stores and a wonderful market where we bought lunch supplies at.
On Tuesday the Global Group joined us for class with Zafer. Another confusing lecture later we found ourselves on the bus to go to Dolumbache Palace. In the mid 1800s a new palace was constructed in a more Westernized Baroque and Rococo style. It was absolutely magnificent, if just a bit over the top, but as Sultan I suppose you can decorate your home however you want to . The harem wasn't as impressive as Topkapi's, but there was a cavernous ballroom that was incredible. We made our way across Istanbul back to the hotel to study for our test on the Ottoman Empire the next day. We had a relaxing evening trying to figure out what the Tanzimat Reform Period was.
On Wednesday after the test, which was surprisingly not too difficult, I decided it was getting time to do laundry. However, our hotel has only a very small sink and a shower so it was a bit of a difficult process to try and actually clean all of the clothing. Leaving it too soak in the sink for a while, we went out to Taksim, a bustling commercial street, for dinner. We went to a small restaurant where we enjoyed a wonderful meal and had the opportunity to watch people as the celebrated Iftar, the meal the breaks the Ramadan fast every day.
On Thursday after a class lecture on modern foreign policy in Turkey from a wonderful professor! It was incredibly interesting, with the only downside being we had a test on the information the next day already. We found a wonderful little ice-cream and cafe spot to study and had a relaxing evening as we tried to catch up on rest, an apparently impossible task on TIME.
Friday started off with class in the morning and a test in the afternoon. Three of us chose to go the track after class and get a quick workout in before it downpoured and it was nice to make use of the wonderful Bogacizi Universitisi track. We dined out that night at a nearby cafe, which has amazing corba (soup) and sen tost (a panini with chocolate, bananas, and chopped walnuts). It was also accompanied by a conversation with our waiter using only phrases from our Turkish phrase book, resulting in a conversation ranging from "Where can we go camping?" to "Do you have any pets?" Needless to say it was a very entertaining conversation.
On Saturday morning we went to a service at a Jewish Synagogue, Neve Shalom. The Synagogue had been bombed about 6 years ago and security to get into it was incredibly tight. Previous to arriving in Turkey, Barbara made reservations with the Synagogue. When we arrived we were called one at a time, by our passports (which they kept while we were in service) to go through a metal detector, have our bags searched, and have our cameras tested to make sure they were not explosive devices. In the service, women set separate from the men as usual, though we were the only women there, and we noticed that underneath every seat in the Synagogue were hardhats. We assumed these hardhats were filled with emergency supplies just in case another bombing were to occur. It was very strange to me to experience this kind of security in a religious place, especially in a country that has been noted for religious tolerance since the Ottoman Empire. After service we were invited to join them for an after-service meal that was delicious and just another sign of the hospitality that we have encountered here in Turkey. A group of us ventured to the Archaeology Museum after the service, where it torrentially down poured for quite sometime, causing us to venture back early to the hotel, with just a small stop at a pizzeria!
On Sunday, our one completely free day for the entirety of our stay in Turkey, we woke up early to go to English Catholic Mass in Taksim. It was a very interesting Catholic Service, where contemporary music was combined with Catholic Tradition and a variety of immigrant groups. It was nice to go to a service in a language that I understood, even though it was hard to hear the Priest. Sundays are also the day of the week in Istanbul when a wonderful artisans bazaar is open in Ortokoy, which is right on the Bosphorus. We explored and shopped in this area for quite sometime before returning to our hotel to do laundry, massive amounts of homework, and watch a movie.
About half the group woke up this morning, Monday morning, at 4:30 before the sunrise call to prayer to eat a quick breakfast before fasting today for Ramadan. It was a struggle to get up this early, but after some yogurt, cheese, bread, and about 2 liters of water, I wandered back to bed. However, the 2 liters of water that I had quickly consumed kept me up until we had to go to school this morning. Fasting has been okay so far today, mostly because the food and water I consumed this morning has tided me over until now. The vast majority of people are simply exhausted; I napped through our lunch hour today. The interesting aspect of Ramadan fasting is that nothing can pass your lips between sun up and sun down, meaning no water, a characteristic of fasting I have never before experienced. When the evening call to prayer happens, at about 7:30 in the evening, we will celebrate Iftar in a restaurant first eating dates to break fast and moving onto bread, lentil soup, salad, a main dish, and desert (it sounds so wonderful right now!!!)
I cannot believe we only have 3 more days in Istanbul before we leave for excursion in the countryside of Turkey! The time here has flown by! Tomorrow we are going to a Besiktas and Manchester United game in Turkey, which is going to be an incredible experience because soccer is a such a big sport in Europe. We are not allowed to bring anything that could be used as a projectile...just a tad scary!
Well I'm off to take a nap and celebrate Iftar!
Allahaismarladik
