"Where's William?"

Hello All!

Each day I fall more and more in love with Istanbul and feel more and more comfortable here. Today was another awesome day (are you guys getting tired of my enthusiasm yet?) where we met William at the Beyazit tram stop. We love playing "Where's William?" every day to seek out the spot for our class activities. It's such a game! We arrive at these spots with thousands of people milling about, wondering how we will ever find our professor, and after only about 3-5 minutes, we spot William. We are always so overjoyed to find him, kind of like finding the prize in a cereal box, like, "Oh there you are!" but he never seems surprised to see us. Then he's like, "Come, I will lead you to your meeting space." And then we find Prof. Shields, waiting and ready to enlighten us in some new way about Istanbul.

So today we went into the Kapalicarsi, or Covered Bazaar, to meet with one of Prof. Shields old friends who has been in the rug/carpet business for many years. Mr. Asan told us about the different symbols in Nomadic kilim, or tapestries, and some other things about carpet buying and selling. After a lunch break, we met at our normal classroom space, the Sinan medrese turned cafe.

Except this time, we went to a calligraphy classroom where we met with Efdaluddin Kilic, a renowned calligrapher. He told us about the art of calligraphy, and it is so amazing how intensely they care about their art. To me, it seemed like more of a way of life than an art form. Mr. Kilic's meticulous articulation reflected his careful attention to detail in his calligraphy. He told us about some traditions of calligraphers, like how they keep all their shavings of their calligraphy pens (they are wooden sticks of bamboo), some burying them in a box "as if they were a living organism," and some requesting to be washed with the shavings when they die. Mr. Kilic has been studying calligraphy for about 25 years, and it definitely shows in his work. His characters are perfect; he showed us the way to determine if the character would be "accepted" as a true calligraphy character, and all of his proportions were perfect every time, no matter if he made them big or small. Then he wrote all of our names in Arabic calligraphy (see picture for my name in Arabic calligraphy!). I was amazed by the art of calligraphy. It requires such immense skill, dedication, and passion. I admire works of meticulousness, things that are beautiful in their rigidity. It sort of reminds me of the religion of Islam and the many rules that Muslims must follow in order to be faithful.

Afterwards, William took us our for some dondurma (ice cream). We happened upon one of the many street ice cream vendors. They are more like performers. This one took his extra-long ice cream scoop (or was it an extra-long spatula, Carv?) and did some crazy things with it, like taking our cones away from us, and he even smashed William's ice cream cone into his face! After that delish dondurma, we headed back to the flat for relaxing and cooking dinner.

Amanda and I headed to the grocery store for some cheese and found another reason why, in Amanda's words, "Turkey is a joke." Well, first let me get into the first few reasons. 1) they have a gas truck that sounds like an ice cream truck as it blares its ditty of "Aygaaaaz" throughout the streets. 2) they water the streets with watering cans (this also qualifies as one of Turkey's mysteries.) and 3) nearly all their cheese is goat cheese despite its wrappers with pictures of cows on it. Go figure. There are plenty more, but I've forgotten them and will try to remember and include them in future posts!

After a wonderful dinner on the terrace, we met up with Murat and his friends for our first night out in Istanbul! We went onto Istiklal, sort of the Times Square of Istanbul, to find a bar. Murat led us to this semi-sketchy bar called "The Darkness," and we sat outside to enjoy some Efes and people-watching. Afterwards, we headed to our first Istanbul club, which happened to be a techno club. Joy. There, we proceeded to do the hokey pokey all night with a bunch of Turks. I mean, not really, but seriously Turks do not dance in the same way that Americans, or any Europeans, I think, dance. Someone showed them the "energy ball" dance, and they wanted to do that about every 3 minutes. It was fun though, and I think next time we will try some different clubs with some different styles of dancing...