Tour of İstanbul

the view from the back two bedrooms of the apartment, sadly my bedroom looks out the front to a tight street (more like alley)

I now understand 'jet lag'.  I got to bed around 10:30pm last night, hoping to get on a normal night's sleep, only to wake up feeling fully rested at 4:00am.  I lay in bed for a long time, able to hear the first salah/namaz (muslim prayer call) of the day, around 6:00am.  This is played over loudspeakers in one of the mosque's minarets, and can be heard wherever you are in the city.  

Late morning, our group met at Taksim Square to go on a bus tour of İstanbul.  The audio-guided tour was an excellent way to see many of the important and historical sights in the city.  After the tour, we went for lunch near our apartment before heading to meet Tarık at İ.T.Ü.  I realized for the first time the frustrations with not knowing the language when we walked into the restaurant we thought other members of our group had gotten their carry-out food from.  It took a while to explain that we wanted our food "to-go".  Then we were confused by not seeing on the menu the rolled pita our friends had gotten.  Luckily our waiter was patient with us and was able to interpret what we wanted.  We ate our food on the way to meet Tarık at the İstanbul Technical University, or İ.T.Ü (pronounced 'ee-too'), architecture building.  Construction work threw us off of our planned route, and we ended up going the wrong way, making a huge loop.  When we finally arrived we were able to tour some of the building we'll be taking classes in.  

This evening we went with Tarık to the TurkCell store to get cell phones to use in Turkey.  Most people were able to get a new Turkish SIM card for their own cell phones, in order to use it locally (about 20 YTL).  I didn't bring my phone, and few others' phones didn't have SIM cards so we had to buy a new phone (70 YTL).  It's an old-version Nokia phone, very basic, black and white screen.  I actually think I had a similar model for my first cell phone.  Once our phones are activated we will buy kontours (units of minutes) and be able to call each other within Turkey.

When we got back I was so tired I fell right asleep at 8:00pm.  I woke up around 10:00pm still sleepy, but got sidetracked from going to bed and started loading my pictures and writing this blog.  I need to go to bed soon to get into a normal sleep schedule.

I have many pictures from today, but I'm having trouble getting them posted.  The internet signal is low right now.  I'll post them tomorrow, hopefully.