Oh! The Places You'll Go!: February 2012

Today we took a very chilly walk in the neighborhood of Taksim... which during the day is a hotspot for bars and clubs .... literally there are thousands of bars and clubs in this neighborhood! But by day it resembles Church Street in Burlington, VT but probably 500x bigger.

Today we walked around Taksim and visited a Catholic Church, a Synagog turned into an art gallery, the Turkish Jewish museum, and the Patriarchy for the Greek Orthodox. I thought that all of these places were fascinating but we literally ran through all of them and did not spend much time on any of the specific religions.

We also had a lecture about Islam at the University that was very out there and not very organized... so basically I did not fallow what the man was trying to say.... but kinda got the gist meaning that religions have largely survived on the teachings and their followers making the different religions practiced today what they are.... I also realized that it is very hard to have a objective discussion on religion and how religion and politics interact with each other without people not getting heated and upset, today in class many people got very annoyed and upset by the discussion even though it was really to just learn about what religion is and how it interacts with society

Either way the walk was beautiful and I saw a lot of fantastic structures.

Turkish pride

Catholic church

Cute little owls being sold in Taksim

The entrance to the Turkish jewish museum

Today we went to the Asian side of Istanbul to visit the Tuesday market and have some friendly competition between the group.....

The market challenge to find all of these items on a paper and try to haggle down as much as possible and who ever got most of the items for the cheapest would win a prize. Anyone who knows me knows that I do not believe in such thing as friendly competition and in my mind its kill or be killed.... so obviously my group was out to KILL.

We started out smoothly knowing what a few things were such as an Elma (apple)... we then met a lovely little lady who helped us find some apricots and almonds with the shells intact. We then ran off on our own and tried to find the rest of our items, most people were very nice and would walk us to the stand that had the items we were looking for, some of those items were a pomegranate vinaigrette/sour/concentrate thing, special turkish homemade noodles.

During one of our pursuits to find what stuff for our challenge some man selling pears wrote something in Turkish on our paper.... needless to say when we showed our Trojen program leader Burak he was very upset and alerted the authorities.... and basically the note said something vulgar and completely unneeded...

** on that note I would like to say that this is not the only experience like this that I have encountered but at the same time most people are very respectful and caring and have no problem helping you out with whatever you need so those who have not experienced Turkey do not get the wrong impression. Turkey is a great place and most of the citizens that we deal with are much like Burak in the fact that they are very concerned with our well being and want to make Turkey a great place for visitors.

On the note we left the market and went to lunch. On the way to lunch we revealed what we had found... My group did not spend the least but be got the most of all the items.... so basically we KILLED the competition.... exactly what we planned to do.

After lunch we took a ferry back to the european side (the ferry station brings us back right next to our school!). Dev one of the two guys that are in our group bought all of us a carnation for valentines day.... haha he thought he was the shit... till our turkish teacher told him someone last spring semester did the same and that he was not as original as he thought....

To end the day in turkish class we learned phrases such as "fuck off", "What are you doing", and "mother fucker" so that if we have experiences similar to the ones in the market we will be prepared.