after breakfast with her equally kind roommates zehra and ayşen, dilek and i took the tram to topkapı palace to see the large complex where ottoman sultans once lived. once inside, we paid the (well-spent) extra 10 YTL to see the harem where the sultan's mother, concubines, wives, family, children, and servants (including many "eunuchs" apparently taken from africa) lived. the architecture and ornate decorations were gorgeous and different in each room/passageway/courtyard - below is a photo i took from a room in the harem, but there are much better photos on the wiki page:
afterwards dilek graciously waited in the non-turk line with me to enter the equally beautiful and difficult-to-convey sultanahmet camii (also known as the blue mosque or the Sultan Ahmed Mosque - camii meaning mosque.) a strong emotion overtook me immediately upon entering; it was clearly a spiritual place even though we hung towards the back in the tourist area near the rear "women's section" and watched from afar.
hagia sophia (basilica/mosque/museum and largest cathedral in the world for a thousand-ish years) is the third main tourist attracting in the immediate area but was closed by the time we arrived. (i'll be back, inshallah.) just the outside was impressive:
as we were getting back on the tram i watched helplessly as a tram door separated a fellow foreign girl from her group of friends - - - but when i approached her to see if she could use some help (from dilek) i realized she was my friend hayley from vermont! we actually ended up getting separated ourselves a few stops down the line, but there was enough time before that to exchange phone numbers & meet up later in taxim for a birthday-turned-mini-dance-party with dilek's friends in a chic high-rise bar overlooking the city and, later, hanging out at the apartment of some german exchange students.
the next day about a dozen of dilek's funny, generous friends carpooled out to a protected forest (bahçeköy belediyesi) where we cooked a giant meal of grilled meat and vegetables and played a turkish variant of dodgeball in the woods until it grew dark. the day offered exactly what i had been craving: a real experience of autumn with trees and october air and crunchy leaves and friends. nothing could have been better.
afterwards dilek's friend kanon drove her, her two roommates, and me to a funky outdoor tea (çay) house looking out over the bosporus towards the asian side to sit for hot chocolate and tea. eventually he dropped us back off in beşiktaş where we wandered around a maze of jewellery/cloth/trinket stands and sat by the water to watch the changing patterns of the bosporus bridge and the fireworks celebrating the eve of turkey's republic day.
we also ate waffles - a crepe-like snack stuffed and rolled with flavored nutella-ish spreads, fruit, honey-drenched nuts, candy, and other sweet things - made in colorful stands throughout the area which i found so pretty.
that night dilek, zehra, ayşen, and i had a calming & enlightening conversation about religion and our spirituality. it was so wonderful to relax by the water with them and people-watch. they gave me gifts: a cell-phone holder, a book to write turkish in, and a pillow for the bus ride home (much appreciated.) we went home, made popcorn, and watched the TERRIBLE movie "girl next door" before falling asleep very late into the night.
the next morning was republic day - a holiday - so i made pancakes for everyone before kanon returned with his car to take me on a whirlwind tour of a few neighborhoods before my bus arrived. there were flags everywhere for the holiday - it was a great day to drive around and watch istanbul flash before my eyes.
i left istanbul with a crowd of dilek's friends waving me on in the rain and then faced about 10 hours of exhausted-travel back to bilkent where i proceeded to unpack, lesson plan, write a response paper on gilles deleuze, and make dozens of halloween pumpkin-and-ghost-shaped halloween cards for my students before getting any sleep. although i'm still recovering from sleep deprivation, it was one of the best weekends i've had in a very long time. possibly ever. i'm considering finding work in istanbul for a while after my fulbright grant ends at bilkent next august.
for more photos of the weekend go here (although wikipedia has very extensive pages on the three major sights i listed if you want the real deal.) next is a day trip to beypazarı on saturday organized for fulbrighters. i've been feeling busy and too tired lately to give my full self - just not taking care of my physical self - so hopefully i'll be able to prioritize that over the next few weeks. the weather is still unusually warm but with daylight savings time the days are drastically shorter. winter is definitely on its way.
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