Monday, May 19

This morning was our first day of the program. We met at a teahouse at the base of Galata Tower at 10:30 and Prof. Shields treated us to a cup of Turkish tea, which they call chai. They serve it in this little fluted glass with two cubes of sugar and a little tea spoon - I haven't decided whether I'm a two-cuber or a one-cuber yet. The tea is pretty bitter, but with the sugar it soooo good. Turks drink it all the time here - you can get tea pretty much anywhere. After that we went up Galata Tower and got some really cool views of Istanbul. The tower itself, which is my landmark in finding our flat, is historically very interesting. It was built in 328 AD, which is during the Byzantine times, but was rebuilt by the Genoese in 1348 (it was destroyed during the Crusades). One really interesting fact about the Tower - during the rule of Sultan Murat IV (1612-1640), Hazarfen Ahmet Celebi actually flew from the tower to Uskudar using artificial wings. This really amazed me - Uskudar is on the Asian side of Istanbul whereas the Tower is on the European side. That means that Celebi jumped off of the Tower, flew over the Bosphorous, actually landed on the other side and didn't die. That's innovation.

After the Tower, we went over the Golden Horn and to Spice Bazaar, which was built in 1664 in order to fund the building of Yeni Cami (The New Mosque). Don't be fooled by its name - not only spices are sold here. There were basically four different types of shops that were repeated over and over again - the scarf/pashmina shop, the spice/Turkish delight shop, the painted tile and ceramic store, and a few hanging glass lamps stores (my favorite!). Whenever you passed by a vendor they would say "Yes, please!" Which I guess means "Yes, please come into my store." They would also say other things to try to get us to come in - mainly because we were clearly tourists, and apparently clearly Americans. Most of them would yell, "I speak English!" There were also several doner restaurants and we got a chicken doner for a lira fifty and took it outside (the market is inside) to eat. There we saw this old man who was selling leeches. I was intrigued and decided to take over my Turkish phrasebook and talk to him. Unfortunately, he spoke English so I didn't get to practice my Turkish. He was selling them for medicinal purposes - mainly eczema, he said. It was very interesting.

Then we went into Yeni Cami, which was sooo cool. When we got into the courtyard, the call to prayer began and many Istanbullus came to say their second prayer of the day. In the Muslim faith, there are five calls to prayer - one at first light, one at true noon, one in between noon and sunset, one at sunset, and one two hours after sunset. I have heard all of them except for the one at sunrise - but I am going to make myself hear that one before I leave!

After the call to prayer ended, we donned our headscarves, took off our shoes, and entered into the mosque. It was beautiful, serene, and intriguing to see how another religion practices their faith. I can see how the Muslim faith is attractive to some people - the calls to prayer are haunting and evocative, and there is a strange and foreign beauty to the rigidity of their worship ritual. After going to Yeni Cami, Prof. Shields and William (her husband) went to go visit one of their carpet-maker friends and the rest of us were left to our own devices. We decided to go into the mausoleum where six sultans were entombed. It had the same protocol as the mosques (headscarves on, shoes off) and seemed to be almost as holy. I even saw one man who looked like he was crying. Turkish people somewhat deify their rulers - take Ataturk, for instance, whoe likeness hangs on the wall of nearly every shop. After the sultan's mausoleum, we headed over to the Blue Mosque, and we went inside this time. The Blue Mosque is named so because of the beautiful blue tiles that cover the inside. We just sat inside for a while, people-watching and enjoying the incredible majesty of this huge mosque. We had to come in a tourists' entrance, and some other women coming in from that entrance weren't even wearing headscarves - I saw some plunging necklines too. It's weird because when we were going through the entrance, one of the employees (the Blue Mosque is so big/famous that it requires bouncers) made me fix my scarf to cover my shoulders because my short-sleeved shirt had ridden up my arms a bit.

When we were walking back to the flat over Galata Bridge, one of the restaurant maitre'ds who try to get you to come into the restaurant as you walk by actually managed to suck Clayton in and we promised to go back for dinner after he promised that this restaurant was "where all the locals went." It wasn't, and let's just say we will NOT be regulars there. But I did drink my first Efes, the Turkish beer, there. And David pulled a major(ok, not that major) cultural faux pas by not putting his napkin underneath his plate like the waiters had done for the girls, and then insisting on taking napkins from a nearby table for us, claiming that the waiters hadn't given us napkins. We went back to the flat and got ready for going to a whole new continent tomorrow - Asia!