Turkey Day 2, Friday June 1^st 2012

Jamie and I went to bed around 9:30/10, wide awake but super tired at the same time. Jamie said she slept ok, I on the other hand woke up a bunnnccchhh. There were strange noises, a squeaky bed, and general unfamiliarity to keep me from sleeping well. The other two dorm of students knocked on our door at about 8:30 to see if we wanted to go to breakfast in the cafeteria place. At first I wasn’t going to go, but then I realized there was little chance of me falling back asleep, and I was hungry, so might as well. Jamie stayed to sleep some more. The five of us went to the place where we first ate yesterday, on campus. Kinda a cafeteria type of deal. This time, though, we didn’t have Nihan, our fantastical guide/aide/student assistant/life saver with us, there wasn’t a menu on the counter, and there didn’t appear to be any American/international students (yesterday at lunch/dinner/whatever meal it was) there was a large amount of very nice students who were very willing to help the new kids out. This morning, there were like 4 other people in the whole place. Sooo, the other 4 got coffee, and I was brave and adventurous and went for a bagel looking thing. The girl in front of me had just picked it up and paid, so that’s what I did too. It was super similar to what was in Greece(I’m like 99.99% sure it’s exactly the same, but the Turks and the Greeks would disagree), but basically a super skinny bagel that was made with sesame flour and covered in sesame seeds. Dry, but good. We sat out on the porch, and a fellow American found us shortly after we sat down. She’s not a student here, but her fiancé is, and she’s staying with some friends of hers for the summer. She seemed nice, and we all bonded over the challenges of the Turkish language (seriously, the words sound COMPLETELY different than what they look like they should sound like, if that makes any sense). I went back to the dorm so Jamie wasn’t alone, and the other 4 went off campus to find some foodstuffs. Jamie and I got ready and went to the on campus bookshop to see if they had Ethernet cords, but they didn’t. (the dorm we’re in didn’t come with one, and there is no wifi in the dorms. That’s maybe driving me kind of insane). However, we found a little grocery shop store and a clothes store on campus, which is pretty neat. We hung out on campus for a little while, trying to use the internet while we could, and ran into Nihan on our way back to the dorm.

We met up with the others back at the dorm, and had an AWESOME afternoon. We took a (long and bumpy) bus ride and the city is sooooo cool. Mosques everywhere, random wells, crazy traffic, small stores with apartments towering over them, more or less your typical overcrowded developing city. After the bus ride, we took a ferry across the Bosporus (!!!!!!!!) to the European side of the city. Istanbul is divided into the European and Asian sides, and Yeditepe is on the outskirts-ish of the Asian side. The views on the ferry were awe inspiring. Words just don’t describe how BIG Istanbul is. Blows NYC and Athens out of the water, in my humble opinion. We actually saw a dolphin on our way, and that totally made my day because they’re one of my favorite animals of all time (along with giraffes, elephants, belugas, and of course unicorns) and Nihan says they’re pretty rare in the straights so we were lucky to see it. From the water, minarets spike out every few blocks, and the building rise and fall steeply and suddenly. Istanbul is much, much steeper than Athens, if that’s possible to believe friends in/who’ve been to Greece. We saw some cool sites from the water, but we’re actually going to be touring them in the next couple of days, so that will be awesome.

Once we made it to the European side, we walked all around the city. We went around a spice bazaar, a mini bazaar, had legit Turkish coffee (O, you would probably explode into little beans of coffee and rainbows because of how happy you’d be with all the coffee. I’m pretty sure you’d never leave, you’d be so hooked on the coffee). I didn’t enjoy it, because it is like COFFEE coffee and I don’t really like coffee to start with, but the other students liked it, and the fortune telling with the grounds was cool. We just walked and walked pretty much, up and down, and I feel like we only saw a small fraction of the city. We wandered into an Algerian corner (that used to be the French section) and we wandered the hugeeeee shopping area that is part of the ‘heart of Istanbul’ (idk if I believe that though). We got lunch at a place Neehan said was good, and like yesterday the food was a tiny bit off from what I was expecting (yesterday, it looked so Greek, but tasted so spicy. Pretty much the same food, just prepared differently and with different side items). This time, Nihan recommended some sort of tortellini pasta dish, which was interesting because it came covered in what was more or less Greek yogurt (tastes like sour cream, kinda tart). An adjustment for pasta lol. Other people got ‘pancakes’ which were stuffed with either spinach or potato, but had a spicy kick too. Greek people- think like the crepes in platka, but the dough was a lot thinner and drier, and the actual dish was served on a cutting board, you didn’t eat it like a sandwich. After eating, we walked around more and more, and saw some amazing city views, from the top of a smallish hill and from the top of some semi famous café place that let us stand up at the top (after like 10 flights of stairs) for 5 minutes. Beeeeyyooouuuuuttteeefuuullll. Then we made the walk back to the ferry, and took the bus back to Yeditepe. The ferry was about 25/30 minutes, and the busride is about 50/60 minutes. I think we are going to go grab dinner soon, and head to bed shortly after. We have a busy, exciting day tomorrow, with the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, and some other really really realllyyyy neat things! J