With the week behind me a complete blur of hotels, airports, airplanes and thunderstorms, Friday lead me in a new direction. We went everywhere... Stopping at the Blue Mosque where we saw the Turkish prime minister giving a speech, the incredible underground cistern that's impressive beauty couldn't quite be captured via iPhone pics, the Egyptian Acropolis (est. to be 3,500+ years old), the grand bazaar (the world's oldest mall ever, with 1000+ shops inside), a tea garden near an ottoman palace, the waterfront covered with restaurants and fishermen and street vendors selling nasty grilled corn and awesome muscles filled with rice and lemon juice, and ending at the bustling neighborhood of Taksim (always covered with people, shopping, bars, and street vendors... We sat there for a while and watched the world cup while taking in a few drinks).
Then on saturday our group went to the Bosphorus again to explore another little neighborhood near the posh hotels and exclusive high schools around the Four Seasons (I can't really remember the name of the exact neighborhood). There were all kinds of cool shops and vendors selling huge baked potatoes and fried muscles... And this interesting yogurt drink called aryan (kinda salty, yet oddly satisfying... Apparently yogurt is originally Turkish, so it's one of the most popular food/drink items here).
A few friends and I stopped by a vendor to pick up some Efes to drink by the water at the square... It sounded like a promising way to spend the afternoon and alleviate our body aches from the constant walking up and down hills for miles to get anywhere, until we noticed we were like right in front of a mosque and were being stared at by a few religious people off in the distance (or we could have just been paranoid). Our Turkish friends later told us that everybody does that, and they were surprised to hear that anyone stared at us, so i felt better about having potentially offended anyone. After watching yet another world cup game with these random Korean guys at a waterfront cafe (which turned ugly when Uruguay won), we headed back to Taksim to meet up the Turkish ITÜ students to watch America lose to Ghana...
They took us out afterwards to a little blues bar that had an amazing band playing all kinds of American and Turkish music... Everybody (even the quiet engineering students) let loose and danced. The Turks seem to know how to have a good time :) We hit up another club (where I tried this shot called the "brain tumor"... which was seriously delicious) and made our way back to campus around 3 or 4... Which, oddly enough, is fairly early to these people... Their bars stay open until 5 or sometimes even 6...
I spent most of the day Sunday laying in bed reading and catching up on sleep... Tomorrow we start classes. So I should really be in bed, considering it's like 1am.
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