hello, i am embarrassing american

So...where did we leave off?

Saturday was Make Everyone In Minnesota Jealous day. Otherwise known as Beach Day. The crew all went to Askari Beach, located in Asia. That's right, Asia. The continent on which 95% of Turkey lies. Shocker: it doesn't look any different than the European side of Turkey.

The beach was gorgeous. The there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The wind, even though it was a bit annoying, provided just the right amount of releif from the heat. The water was perfectly clear and a lovely shade of blue out to sea (the Black Sea, to be exact). There were tons of people on the beach, almost all locals. Of course we found one American to talk to (which happens everywhere we go - you'd be surprised how recognizable our St. Olaf Abroad tags are), and she told us all about her experience in Turkey. I wasn't there for the majority of the conversation. I was in the water. It was much more interesting.

Fun fact: most of the girls on the trip brough one-piece swimsuits on the trip because we were told modesty was going to be a big deal in all of the countries we went to. However, we looked like grandmas at Askari Beach. Every girl there had a bikini on. Even women who probably shouldn't have had bikinis on had bikinis on. I'm glad we brought our one-pieces for Morocco and Egypt, but we definitely stood out in Turkey. As if we didn't look embarrassingly like tourists already.

Sunday was a really full day. Bright and early in the morning we went to a Greek Orthodox Church service. The Greek Orthodox Church is really interesting - they're pretty much Catholic except for a few fundamental differences. If you asked me what those differences were I couldn't tell you. The Greek Orthodox Church is also really into icon worship. Basically that means that Orthodox Christians worship relics of the church, pictures, symbols, etc. They kissed the pictures of Jesus, Mary, the Prophets, the Apostles and other important religious figures in the church. They kissed the coffins of saints that were also there. They kissed boxes and bibles and candles. They kissed pretty much everything, and crossed themselves after each kiss. Extremely different from my Baptist upbringing. We don't kiss. We shake hands.

The service was conducted in Greek (it was three hours of very beautiful but nonsensical chanting) and there was a lot of kissing and bowing and crossing and displaying of icons. A really important guy was there, but I don't remember why he is important. I think it's because he's like the pope of the Greek Orthodox Church in Istanbul. Either way, there was a lot of bowing to him and kissing his hand and crossing towards his general direction. The Church itself is really beautiful, and completely covered in gold. The altar is behind a wall which the layman is not allowed to go behind. I don't really know what goes on near the altar - it's all very mysterious. And there are very few seats for the people to watch the service. Probably because there are so many annoying tourists in the Church at all points in time. Ahem.


After the church service, a group of us attempted to navigate the streets of Istanbul to find an ancient church named the Chora (the code name for Mary. I don't know why it's in code. They could have just called it 'Mary'). We got a bit lost and had to ask for directions. A local with a stool and shoe shining tools said he would show us where the church was. We trekked up this ridiculous hill (I pretty much died half-way up) to find the church, which was located in a very suburban area very removed from the typical tourist track. This was one of the definitive points about the church - at one time, it would have been entirely outside of the city limits. In fact, you could walk to the old city wall from the church.

The Chora is absolutely gorgeous. It was covered with priceless mosaics, in such intricate shades and textures that they looked like fine paintings from afar. We didn't have a tour guide so we used Annika's 'Rick Steves' guidebook to figure out some of the more interesting mosaics. I would say that the Chora is probably the prettiest church we've been too, and the most off of the beaten path. The ancient idea of biblical stories is so interesting to see expressed in art, considering our modern idea of the same stories is tainted by modern artistic movements. The concept of representation through mosaic is something so wonderful, it's a shame it's not en mode now. My favorite painting (because there were frescos too) was of an angel holding "the cosmos" on its back. The cosmos looks like a sea shell, and has a sun and a moon. It's gorgeous.



After the church, we went to a Roman cistern that was built in the 3rd century or so. Acutally...I'm probably making that date up. Anyway, the cistern was a huge cavern with a bunch of pillars where they used to store the water that would go to the city. It was lit up very artistically with red lights, and there was fish in the small amount of water left for atmospheric effect in the cistern. The colums were stolen from parts of the conquered Roman Empire, so they were a hodge-podge of architectural designs. There were two Medusa columns in the very back, which basically means that there were two stolen blocks with a depiction of Medusa's face underneath two seperate columns. One face was upside down, the other face was on it's side. Good stuff. All in all a fun experience, if only because I felt like I was in the Mines of Moria from the Lord of the Rings. Embarrassing.

After the cistern, a few of us went to the Turkish and Islamic Art Museum, which was really just a collection of ancient artifacts from around Turkey. It was really cool, but I think I might have had a bit too much of history these past few weeks. Things start to look really similar, and the interest quickly faded on my part. There was, however, a really interesting ethnographic display at the museum detailing the life of Turkish women in the past, from nomadic tent dwellers to upper class women living in luxury. It was really fun to see the kind of living and working conditions of Muslim Turkish women from the 14th century on. Rick Steves, who is pretty much the guidebook god, led us through the entire exhibit. We were baffled by his omnipotence.

After the Turkish and Islamic Art Museum, Annika made our group (which consisted of Annika, Colin, me, Katie, Kat, Elaine and Jill) take the most ridiculous picture at a gaudy costume shop in Sultanahmet. While we were putting our costumes on, a huge crowd gathered around the stand to watch us. We looked completely silly and were laughing so hard, I'm not surprised people stared. They most likely thought we were stupid Americans. That particular adventure would fall under the non-successful cultural expreience category. Alas.

I hope you've all been having a beautiful fall in the states. I miss the colors of autumn. And sugary cereal.

Allahaismarladik!