Sultanahmet Revisited

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I've been busy with school work, friends visiting, and exploring Istanbul more.

This weekend Karen Rogers and Scott Finn, two of our Auburn professors who are presently teaching the group in Rome, flew in for the weekend to see Istanbul.  Tarik was busy yesterday, so Cameron, Amanda (who was also visiting for the week), and I took them to Sultanahmet to see Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, and Basilica Cistern.  Karen Rogers had taught our Architecture History II class in Auburn in which covers mosque architecture.  It was amazing to visit Hagia Sophia with her and listen to all of her knowledge and observations on the building.  For lunch we ate kebabs at a restaurant with wonderful homemade bread.  After we got back Amanda and I did some shopping on Istiklal.  I got four shirts and a sweater for 45 lira (about 27 dollars), two scarves (5 lira each), and a very cool red bag.

We have our first set of reviews on Thursday, so I'm going to get to studio soon to work for the day.  Tonight we're going to one of our Turkish friends' birthday parties.

Mardin

more to come...

Dinner and A Movie

Mardin was abseloutely amazing.  We got back yesterday afternoon.  I have so many pictures and stories, but I'll wait to write them once I have the pictures loaded to go along with it.

Tonight was a perfect night.  Cameron, Casey and I met our friend Zeynep in Levent to see Slumdog Millionaire (it just came out in Turkey on Friday).  What a wonderful movie!  I am in love with the actors, music, cinematography, and of course the story.  Afterwards we went to a great kebap restaurant that Zeynep's father owns.  For mezes (appetizers), we had this salad with this sort of pomegranate dressing and lahmacun (a tortilla with minced lamb and tomatoes and parsley).  For the main course I had very good lamb kebap with yogurt and garlic and eggplant and Cameron had the most delicious lamb and eggplant kebap.

I am so full and happy now and also ready to get some sleep!

Various Vistas and Taxi Troubles

It's been a long time since my last post again; the internet has been spotty both here and at school. I've been keeping busy with classes and exploring in the past week.

On Tuesday we had our Urban Morphology class in the morning. I spent a good chunk of the rest of the day frustrated in the computer lab trying to print autoCAD drawings for studio and pictures of Taskisla for my project due Wednesday. All of the computers seem to have some kind of virus, and for that reason, they are extremely slow and like to randomly restart. After two tries and with Chad's help, I got everything printed that I needed.

Tuesday evening Christine and I took a bus to Ortakoy. We went to a small pedestrian area she'd been to before on the Bosphorus with shops and restaurants. We got coffee and tea at Gloria Jean's Coffee, which has a terrace with wonderful views of the mosque next to it and the Bosphorus.

Once we couldn't feel our fingers anymore from the cold, we went in search of a restaurant to get stuffed baked potatoes that are popular in that area. We found them at the first restaurant we passed. They were so good! I wish I had taken a picture, but I'm sure I will go back. The potato was twice-baked and loaded with cheese, slices of hot dog, sour cream, a spicy red salsa-like sauce, and "American salad": carrots, peas, corn, and cabbage. It was so good and so filling!

Wednesday morning we had our Architecture and Design in Cultural Context class. It lasted from 8:30 am until 12:30! The lectures are interesting, but it's hard to keep focused for that long. After class Mandy and I decided to stay in studio to do some work. After a couple minutes I got up to go to the bathroom, and realized we were locked in! Our studio connects with the other half of our group's studio by a center door, and each studio has a door leading to the hallway. Our door had been locked and the last ones to leave from class must have locked the other hallway door behind them, not realizing we don't have keys yet. We were the only ones left after class cleared out, so we had to wait a couple hours for someone to show up so we could leave.

That afternoon Mandy, Chris, Casey, John, and I walked to the Golden Horn then took a taxi to Pierre Loti where we sat and drank tea at a cafe on a hill overlooking the best panoramic view of the Golden Horn. We stayed through sunset then took a cable car over a cemetery and down to the bottom of the hill where we caught a taxi home. We had dinner at Zencefil, where Walker and I had eaten on his last night here. The lemon pie there was amazing. That night I worked on a small watercolor of an area near the Bosphorus. We have to do one per week for Tarik's class.

Not sure why when ever I use photoshop to edit pictures, they upload with inverted colors... so I've included the pans and later I'll put up the pics they came from under them.

Thursday I spent my afternoon of studio upstairs in the cafe so I could use the internet (because the internet in studio has been broken for the past week and a half). I finally downloaded VectorWorks so that I can now do CAD work using the autoCAD documents we were given.

Friday Cameron and I went to Kanyon mall to go to browse shoes for the salsa dancing lessons we are going to begin this week. A group of us, all foreign exchange students, are going to start them on Wednesday. I found a pair I liked, but didn't buy them until we went back there for dinner yesterday. Cameron also got a very cute pair of shoes; both of ours were from Nine West and on sale, over half-off, just 55 lira!

Last night I went with Cameron, Jamie, Casey, Chris, and John to a house party pretty far north of here. They had met some of the kids who would be there at another party last weekend. It was so much fun! The best thing about it was that it was Star Wars-themed. Almost all of the people there went to Koç University. We headed home around 4 am, and because the buses stop running around 11 pm, we had to take a taxi the whole way back. The door on Chris's side was broken, so he had to hold it shut as the taxi whipped down curvy roads. Then, fairly close to Taksim, we were stopped at a red light and SLAM! We all jerked forward as a girl pulling up behind us slammed into the rear-end of the taxi. We sat there in shock for a minute while our taxi driver got out and called the police. While waiting for the police our cab driver finally got Chris's door to shut. About twenty minutes later, after seeing the police drive by once without stopping, we decided to just pay our fare and take another cab for the rest of the way. Quite a night.

Time to figure out what to cook for dinner. I'm trying to use up all my food in the fridge before we leave for Mardin on Thursday.

A Snowy Night in Istanbul

The party went well Saturday night. Halil, a Turkish I.T.U. student who is head of the Erasmus (international student) program, brought several French students over who are going to school here this semester as well. I put out some of my Tzatziki sauce and it was a big hit! :)

Sunday was spent in hibernation for most people. I didn't do too much. A little school work and a little relaxing.

This morning I went to studio around 9 am to work on my project. First thing, I went to the copy room to get copies of the floor plans I'm working from. At I.T.U. students have to pay each time they want to make a copy or print something off. At Auburn we have a ridiculous Professional Fee that we must pay in addition to tuition, allowing us to make unlimited copies/prints for the year. I arrived in the copy center with a few girls in line ahead of me. One student was working the copy machines. After the other girls left, I told the guy I wanted 5 copies (beş kopi). He replied with a string of Turkish words. All I could discern was "dört" (four), so I thought maybe there was a four copy limit, smiled, and nodded my head as I said "dört". He made a few copies, each time they were extremely zoomed-in and went off the page. I thought maybe he was new and wasn't sure how to do the settings correctly. Then he said another sentence in Turkish. I told him I knew very little Turkish (çok az Turkçe biliyorum). He sort of looked exasperated then kept repeating the same sentence, slightly differently each time. I just shook my head, and he looked annoyed. Eventually a girl came in who spoke English. She said to me "You cannot blow it up 5 times because it will be too big." Finally understanding, I replied, "Oh, no, I just wanted 5 copies of each." She explained it in Turkish to the guy who rolled his eyes as another worker walked up and made my copies for me. I hurriedly paid and left. They kindly did not charge me for the first blown-up versions.

I finally returned to studio and worked for the rest of the morning on diagrammatic floor plans. I ate the lunch I packed just before studio began. My professor seemed to really like my wine and cheese showcase idea. We travel to Mardin next Thursday, and he wants us to do as much work as possible before that so that we have plenty of questions that can be answered on the site visit. So, I have a lot of work to do for Thursday's class. I feel good about this project though.

After class, Christine and I went to the market in the Kanyon mall. I loaded up on these tiny marshmallow puff cookies I tried the other day. It's a cookie with a marshmallow on top, covered in either chocolate sprinkles or coconut. I love them!

Just a little bit ago, Casey came up to the apartment to let us know that it was SNOWING! We all stood outside enjoying the snow and taking pictures. The people inside the shop across from us were laughing at us all outside dancing in the snow and huddled on the sidewalk. I got a few pictures. The flakes were large!