Turkey day one!!

Day 36

Location: starbucks right off the ship in ISTANBUL TURKEY!... and later all over the ship to finish this entry!
Song stuck in head: Istanbul (not Constantinople)-- they might be giants


So I decided to try a new technique.... skip getting everything updated for Italy, Croatia, and Greece. Instead jump to where I am right now and then go back and fill in the blanks!! Hope that’s all right with you! :)

The other day we arrived in Istanbul, Turkey!! The pilot boarded the ship at around 6:30am, and by 8:00am we were alongside! The boat was cleared around 10:00am.  I, however, was still cuddled under the covers until 10:30am because I was up until 4:30am the night before finishing my art history paper :( I had two papers due by the time we got to turkey: global music and art history.  Both of which I did in under 48 hours.  Papers and tests on the ship are actually a lot more stressful than at school.  I think it is because we spend as much time off the ship as possible while in the countries and explore for as long as possible (this leaves little to no time for silly school work. that’s over rated.).  Therefore, by the time we get back on the ship and set sail, we are WORN OUT. Solo the days at sea traveling between countries are our recovery days.  However, when there are papers and midterms to worry about, recover turns to chaos as we all quickly found out on "Turkey Day." pretty much every student had at least one of those two if not both to worry about. 

And so I found myself typing, printing, and finally turning in my second paper at 4:30am. So I quickly decided to skip the "mandatory" diplomatic debriefing (such a rebel, I know) and sleep until I absolutely had to get up. Aka 10:30am. 

Kyle and I wanted to jump on a SAS trip to the Grand Bazaar and learn some bartering skills, and that was not until 12:30, so we decided to just stay on the ship until then and avoid getting lost and missing the trip.  So we got lunch at 11:30 on the ship with Carmen and Daniel, and headed out to meet the Grand Bazaar group. 

We lucked out! They had one free ticket and one more that someone was trying to sell! So we just split the price and got to go on the trip for only 10 us dollars.  The professor in charge is awesome.  He’s actually Kyle’s international trade teacher, and we run into him and his wife accidentally in pretty much every country.  They are such a cute pair.  His wife is actually a middle school special education teacher!

We met our tour guide outside the ship, and she guided us through taking the tram from the ship to the bazaar.  Once we reached the bazaar, she gave us a little bit of a tour.  The bazaar is HUGE. There are 7 main gates, 67 roads, and over 4 THOUSAND shops inside.  And that is only inside the grand bazaar! There is still another whole spice bazaar as well as small shops all up and down the side streets outside. 

The FDP was really cool because we got to see some behind the scenes action.  For example, we got to go talk one shop that makes rugs.  The man in charge directed us up these spiral stairs to the top floor and we sat down on small benches all around the edges of the room. He then began having his workers start throwing rugs all over the rectangle of carpet in front of us! He explained to us the different ways they are made, how to tell a “new” rug from an “antique” rug, and showed us many different sizes and styles they came in.  The whole thing was very interesting, and the rugs were absolutely beautiful! CRAZY expensive though! Just a tiny one for like inside the door runs about 150 US$ if it is new, and ranging from 200-400 US$ if it is an antique.  It can be even MORE expensive based on the fabric used to make the piece. None of us were ready to buy a rug, so we thanked the man for his time, picked up his business card, and headed back out into the mob of people.

After wandering around a few minutes, our tour guide took us outside the bazaar to a jeweler.  According to her, many of the jewelry shops in the bazaar use this particular jeweler.  When we walked in, the room was FULL of smoke despite there being a “no smoking” sign.  There were several men each working on separate pieces of jewelry.  Most that I noticed were working with gold.  Some were linking chains together while others were forming rings.  Finally, one man at the front was putting gems into the rings.  It was very cool to watch each of them working!! The man that appeared to be the big kahuna walked around telling us about what each man was doing.  Of course we could not afford a single piece in the place, but they were all beautiful.

We said goodbye to the out of reach jewelry and continued on our way. Our group split up more, and Kyle and I stayed with the professor to see his bartering skills in action.  That is the main purpose of going to the bazaar: to have fun seeing how low you can get a sale.  They warned us in advance that you will always see someone get a better deal than you in the end, but as long as you thought you were getting a good deal and you had fun getting the deal, you should be happy with your purchases.  Some places the professor tried really hard, but was unsuccessful at getting it down to a good price, but others he was actually able to strike some pretty good deals for students.  One of my friends, Hammed, was able to get a genie lamp and a hanging lamp for 65 lyra.  The original price for the genie lamp was 35 lyra and the hanging lamp was 65 lyra, so he got a pretty decent deal I think! The storeowners really like when you are able to combine products, and will usually give you better discounts.  For example, later in the week I was able to get two smaller stained glass tea-candle holders that were originally 9 lyra each down to 2 for 10 lyra! Go me :)

We searched all over the leather district for a leather portfolio for Kyle, but had no success. We found a few really nice ones, but they were all really expensive even after the professor haggled as much as he could.  Eventually, it was almost time to leave the bazaar.  A group of us at the end were able to barter for Istanbul t-shirts.  By combining all of our purchases: 2 jerseys and 5 t-shirts, we were able to get 140 lyra down to 110 lyra. Thus I got a cute shirt for 16 lyra.  By the way, one Turkish lyra is currently worth 1.54 US dollars, so the 16 lyra shirt (originally 20 lyra) was actually only about 10 bucks.

Happy with our purchases, we headed back to the ship and got dinner at 5:30pm.  Afterwards, Kyle and I went our separate ways.  I went out with ten other SASers to meet a guy that lives in Turkey.  His name was Daniel, and he was originally from Islam, but his family moved to Turkey before he turned 18 and he has been here since.  He met one of the girls on the ship through a study abroad program in their schools, and has kept in touch with her.  So she introduced all of us to him.  We met him outside the port and took taxis to his apartment to drop off her stuff and then another taxi to a part of Istanbul he wanted us to see.  We went right down near the big bridge connecting Europe and Asia. 

While walking around, we ran into a whole BUNCH of street carts selling these huge stuffed baked potatoes!! They literally looked like huge carts of gelato, but when you got up to them you noticed that what looked like gelato was really all sorts of stuffings for these baked potatoes.  For about 8 lyra, they fixed this huge potato full of each and every one of the stuffings you wanted.  This was one of the reasons Daniel had brought us here: to try the stuffed baked potatoes.  According to him, it is a common cheap meal for Turkish people.  It was funny to walk up to these stands when there would literally be 8 of them side by side selling the same exact thing.  They were all hollering at us trying to get us to come over to their particular stand!  A large portion of the group got baked potatoes, and we continued walking.  Some of the group wanted to get actual sit down food, so we went to a restaurant beside the water.

There I experienced my first rip-off this entire voyage.  The people eating placed their orders, and a few minutes later the waiter came back with a tray of Turkish tea.  He started placing them in front of everyone.  We had been advised that in the Grand Bazaar it was very common for shopowners to offer their guests Turkish tea, apple tea, or even water and that we should accept it as a sign of respect and not to mention it was a tasty treat for free.  So, we thought little of the tea being placed on the table and thought it must just be like the grand bazaar.  NOPE! They came back later trying to give us each a second glass of tea and spoke Turkish (knowing full well that we were Americans).  Thankfully, Daniel caught something the waiter said, and next thing we knew, he and Daniel were having a pretty intense conversation.  After the waiter left, Daniel told us that he had tried to up the price of the tea from 3 lyra each to 5 lyra!! Sneaky waiters! So while Daniel got it back down to 3 lyra, we still got charged for each tea on the table… thankfully not many had accepted the second glass of tea, but even then we each had to pay for a tea even though most (including me) had not even touched it.  Oh well. The lesson was learned!! I am glad that Daniel was there to catch it though, because we never would have known how to handle that situation and probably would have just ended up paying 5 lyra for each tea. 

After paying for our teas and meals, we headed down the street.  We saw a Mosque lit up in the dark and that was pretty, though I did not catch the name of it.  We ran into more stands similar to the baked potato stands only they were selling WAFFLES.  And let me tell you. I have found heaven in Turkey: these waffles.  Much like the baked potato stands, they were each trying to get us to come to their stands.  The first stand wanted 8 lyra for a waffle, but another stand down the way offered them to us for 6 lyra because he saw we were at the other stand! Of course we went to them.  Not to mention in general the guys behind the counter were being funny and making us laugh.  Now, these waffles are LEGIT.  They have a Belgian waffle maker and make them fresh in front of you.  Then they  take the waffle and you can pick from all sorts of spreads including: nutella (!!), dark chocolate, white chocolate, peanut butter, banana, pistachio, and a lot lot more.  I had nutella and white chocolate on mine! Then they add fresh fruit: bananas, strawberries, kiwi, and other types of berries. I had banana!! They just piled it on!! I probably had a banana and a half on one waffle! Finally, there are other toppings including: sprinkles, coconut, nuts, dark chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and all sorts of other things I did not even know what they were! My final touches were dark chocolate chips and white chocolate chips.  Basically it was a RIDICULOUS amount of chocolate and banana on a fresh waffle.  They then took your waffle, folded it into a taco shape and placed it in a holder to make it easier to eat on the run.  Was soooooooo good!! We were all absolutely stuffed by the end, and I could not eat the whole thing! The guys behind the stand we bought them from were still entertaining us.  They even turned on their little FLAT SCREEN TV that was in the stand to music videos and tried to get us to dance! Haha oh Turkish boys…

Feeling like Violet from Willy Wanka minus the blue tint, we wanted to be rolled home by the end of our waffles.  So we walked through a few of the street shops for a few minutes. I bought a necklace that I saw earlier and fell in love with as well as a scarf so that I could visit the mosques in the morning, and afterwards we took a taxi back to the ship.  Our taxi driver kept trying to talk to me, but I was having trouble understanding him.  He spoke a little English and seemed nice.  He was definitely nicer than the other group of girls taxi driver! He saw our ship and promptly made a u-turn to drop us off costing us 11 lyra total.  The other girls, however, got ripped off by their taxi driver.  They saw the ship and told the driver to turn around, but instead he kept continuing down the road saying he was trying to turn around but passing all the turn offs.  They were not too pleased when their same drive cost 18 lyra…. We all ended up splitting the cost and it was fine, but within one night in Turkey we realized that we were going to have to keep up a constant guard. 

Back on the ship around 11 pm, Jenna, Carmen, Brittany and I all hung out in Jenna and Carmen’s room (literally right across the hall from me) and had fun heart to hearts and general conversation until after 2:30 am.  I have started hanging out with them a lot more since Italy.  They are a really cool group of girls. 

In general I have been hanging with lots of different groups these days.  I still hang out with the original group of Heather, Lacey, Daniel, Clark, and Kyle, but not nearly as much.  Heather and Lacey got really close during Italy when they had SAS trips together and since then have become really inseparable.  I started hanging with Sarah and Jenna in Croatia and have since then begun hanging out with the rest of the people that are with them including Carmen and Brittany as well as Justin, my shipboard brother, Mindy, a fellow APO member from Ohio State!, Denny, another APOer though I cant remember what school he goes to, Julie, Valarie, and a bunch of other people.  It’s been fun getting to know even more people.  Most recently, I started hanging out with a group of girls Kyle and I ran into in Santorini, Greece.  Their names are Briana, Hannah, and Megan.  Briana is actually in my Art History class! We studied all yesterday together for our test that we took today.

Well, I think that is about it for Turkey day one!! Finally! This is about 5 pages single-spaced on Microsoft word… I apologize in advance! Hope that makes up for the fact that I have not been updating??  Now it is 12:30am and we will be arriving in Alexandria, Egypt in only a few hours!!! So its bed time!!

For those interested, the plan for Egypt as of now is:
day 1: staying near the ship and exploring Alexandria!!

day 2/3: kyle and i both picked up a SAS trip in egypt we are going on a camel and jeep safari in cairo!! it will be nice because for 100$ we will take the 3 hour air conditioned, sas only, safe bus to cairo EARLY on the second day.  when we get there we will get to take 4x4 jeeps and ride camels through cairo!! we get to see the pyramids and a lot of other cool stuff in cairo all with a tour guide.  then they are also taking us to a little city called saqqara which is a little outside cairo and there are some more historical things to see there.  finally, kyle and i along with our friends Heather, Molly, and David are going to sign off the SAS trip back in cairo and spend a night and extra day in cairo!! I just booked a hostel that only cost us 12 US$ each! hopefully we will get to do something cool like take a hot air balloon over the pyramids or take a boat down the Nile!!!!! (jealous yet??) we are going to take a train back to alexandria that night and sleep on the ship.

day 4: i have a service visit to an orphanage in alexandria, and kyle also bought a ticket off of someone to come with me.  I’m really excited because the service visit in Croatia was absolutely amazing.

day 5: we will probably just see more of alexandria!!!! before on ship time at 1800

(yes mom and dad I did steal most of that from the email I just sent you  :) hahaha!)


ta-ta for now! :)