Mosques with Blue Tiles that are NOT the Blue Mosque

So Friday the international students committee organized a Bosphorus boat cruise that was really just a party boat. It was a little cray, but also really fun--just floating on the Bosphorus on a Friday night? It doesn't get much better than that. Saturday I finally got to hang out with the other Yale students for the first time, which was great. We went to Sultanahmet (the old city) on the ferry--which was actually a little tricky, but we took the bus to Besiktas and then a ferry to Uskudar (on the Asian side) and THEN another ferry to Eminome.  Then we got very confused. We thought we were at the Blue Mosque (there were blue tiles inside) but, alas, we were absolutely not at the Blue Mosque. We were trying to meet a guy at the Blue Mosque though, and so that got very confusing. There were a lot of phone calls and "I'm at the obelisk!" and "What obelisk? There's no obelisk?" sorts of things going on (hint: the Blue Mosque has an obelisk. The New Mosque does not.) Then we went to Galata, which is sort of in the same area, and drank some beer and met this nice Kurdish man who offered us Dorito's. OH and the best part of the night--eating mussels from a stand! It looked pretty sketchy to me, but there are these stands everywhere with just giant tubs of mussels and lemons. They scoop them for you and put spices on them and you just eat it and then, when you have eaten all the mussels you can fit in your stomach (37, in our case) they count the shells and charge you (it's like 15 cents a mussel, which is crazy.) So we had an amazing dinner, although it was a standing-up-in-the-street dinner, for like zero dollars.
Today I stayed in and did some physics and drank some tea. Apparently the physics labs are crazy long--they meet twice a week and I have to do 2 of them because I'm taking 2 classes. I'm not sure how that's going to fly. I might go crazy from dropping so many golf balls and discovering their uniform acceleration (hint: it's 9.81 m/s2). I would really rather not take the lab. I can drop things by myself and have a lunch break, and I would much rather do it that way. But we'll see.

Water and Supermoons

Being in Turkey has made me realize how much water I drink. I bought a 10-L thing of bottled water and it is GONE after 2 days. ten liters. that is insane. human biology is insane.
Last night we got beers (although where beer-drinking in public becomes a protest is unclear to me...sorry erdogan if i was accidentally protesting) and sat on the beautiful hill overlooking the bosphorus. it is a supermoon night, which means nothing to me except that the moon was huge and yellow and round and reflecting light off the bosphorus. the strait is surprisingly busy at night, with cargo ships and stuff.

Oh and I had my first classes yesterday! They were weird. I'm the only one who isn't a native speaker of Turkish (nor am I any kind of speaker of Turkish) and while the classes are in English, the teachers--especially this one physics professor--keep making jokes in Turkish and apparently they are hilarious because everyone else around me was cracking up but I have no idea what they mean so I'm just laughing along. I got my textbooks--they are so much cheaper here than in the US. A giant physics textbook was 75 TL when I bought it yesterday (which is less than 40 dollars). Remind me to start bluebooking now so i can buy my books in Turkey.

Backgammon and Raki

I learned how to play backgammon! Everyone plays it here while they're eating and drinking their coffee and smoking or whatever you can do while sitting in a cafe. And I learned something else, too--raki (this horrible horrible beverage) is just not a happy thing to put in your body. It's anise-flavored liquor that you dilute with water until it turns this gross milky color, and all of the Turkish people I have met love it. It's like the gooey butter cake of Istanbul. So I decided to try raki at this cocktail party we had for the international students, and it wasn't terrible. It wasn't good (at all) but it wasn't the worst thing I've ever had. (Then again, I've accidentally drunk sour milk before). I only had ONE drink and I drank maybe half of it. And somehow, in some terrible magic, I woke up with my head pounding and just feeling incredibly dehydrated. It's like a liquid hangover. Really. But don't tell anyone Turkish that, because they will get mad.
Lesson of the day or, really, lesson of the week: NO RAKI. It is just a sad, sad drink.

Jellyfish and Taxis

Aah. Today was wonderful. I am skipping France and making this all about Istanbul, but needless to say, France was amazing. SO many cathedrals, so much cheese, so much champagne. AAH.  I had breakfast (at noon, so...lunch?) and then wandered around Bebek--a really fancy part of the city where everyone drives Mercedes and eats brunch. i had to stop by a pharmacy because one of my wisdom teeth is infected (according to my brilliant medical knowledge, which is that my mouth hurts) and weirdly enough, you can buy antibiotics without a prescription here!

THEN comes the fun. We got on a ferry and just sailed (ferried) across the Bosphorus and wandered around in the Asian side of Istanbul for a while. Slash hung out in a Turkcell for an hour trying to get people phones. The view on the way over was incredible--and it was TWO LIRA (about a dollar, thanks to the Turkish economy dive). The Bosphorus has this incredible turquoise water--not like the clear white-sand beach water, but deep, dark turquoise. and we could see the Aya Sofia and the blue mosque and everything on the European side once we got on the water. Oh, and the jellyfish. but whatever.

The beautiful, beautiful Bosphorus

I literally just ate a plate of chickpeas in sauce for dinner. and it was incredible. and magical. like better than most of the food in paris. (well, maybe not better than creme brulee).

Then we took the boat back and tried to get in a taxi. somehow (not really super clear on how this worked, but the taxi driver was into it) we managed to squeeze SEVEN people into a taxi, and then as we were driving the driver says, "oh, so you know, there are 400-500 traffic accidents every day in Istanbul" just conversationally. Not the kind of thing you want to hear.

First Days!

I'm writing this after having been awake for 30 hours..yikes. We are in Barkikoy, at Yesilkoy Marina. 

I should probably consider learning more Turkish now that I'm here, since the only things I know how to say are "fish" and "nice to meet you". 

There are, for some reason, stray dogs and cats everywhere on the marina. Just like lounging in the sun on the rocks and fighting with each other. A lot of them have vaccine tags, which is cool (yay no rabies!) but still very weird. They're very friendly, though. 

A stray dog on the beautiful Yesilkoy marina.

People keep laughing at my sad attempts to initiate conversations in Turkish, but they're very nice. Problem: I somehow accidentally ordered two lumps of what looked like beef jerky--which is called adana kebab (sorry mom). And then for dinner ordered something that turned out to be a pancake with cheese on top (according to the restaurant, a crepe). But the cafes on the marina are awesome; there are a million bean bag chairs and futons and other odd furniture items (and a lot of hookahs) right up next to the water and you can just hang out there all day. I'm really excited to get to Bogazici and move in, though. But first, France!!