Day 3

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• Entry from Istanbul

  Istanbul, Turkey
Sunday, August 31, 2008

Hello!

I have now been in the city of Istanbul for three days. The flights were long but the excitement kept us awake, although we were a little cranky when we reached our destination. The university sent a driver to pick us up and Hannah and I were sure we were about to die at least 3 separate occasions. Apparently, I have learned that in Turkey, the rule of thumb is that if any part of your car is ahead of the car next to you, you have the right of way. Aside from the main highways, most roads can be one or two ways, there are very few traffic lights, people use their horns constantly, and pedestrians have no right of way. Our first day in sariyer we were sprinting across the roads to avoid traffic while the locals seems to stroll across with a sense of confidence I do not yet posses.

Today we went to the farmers market, which, according to my count, had over 200 stands of product ranging from produce to bed sheets. Knowing very little Turkish we did manage to purchase rice, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, onions, and peppers- mostly by holding out coins, pointing, and holding up objects. It was fun to listen to the vendors shout out in an attempt to get you to their stands. The atmosphere was very friendly and even though we only knew how to say hello in Turkish (merhaba), the farmers were very helpful. They smiled knowingly at us as soon as we said hello. I'm sure we were mangling the accent and pronunciation. We had only one altercation and that was with the mushroom vendor. He would not sell us less than a kilo of mushrooms. We did not need a kilo - about 2.2 pounds I recently learned- but I did want half a kilo. Not knowing how to argue, I simply gave the gentleman enough for a kilo and now we are eating mushroom for dinner every night. Hannah and I later learned from another teacher at Koc that this person is notorious for refusing to sell less than a kilo at a time. My new goal: get the mushroom vendor to sell me a half kilo within a month. Tonight we are going on a historic cruise of the Bosphorus canal. I can not wait.