Photos! (Finally hehe)

Well my blog is finally cooperating and has let me upload photos of the Istanbul trip. Believe it or not this is only a small sampling of the photos I got to take. Istanbul is much to beautiful to be captured in a few photographs, but I tried. :P Enjoy!

Monica

Dried fruits in a corner market

The Blue Mosque and its six minarets. The only Mosque in the world to have six minarets.

 This one felt like being on the left side of the page. This is the fountain in front of the Hagia Sophia.

The gardens between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

A closer look at the Blue Mosque

Shoes off people. We got to carry them around inside the Blue Mosque.

Inside the Blue Mosque

The wire are for the light fixtures which used to be candle holders before electricity was invented. The worshipers of Islam needed candle light to read the Koran so they hung these and then just left them in.

They have beautiful stained glass windows.

This used to be a fountain, but it's not anymore. It stands right in front of the gate to Topkapı Palace.

Yes people that is real gold... and yes there's a lot of it.

Another old fountain.

This is inside the harem where the women of the Sultan lived.

Mother-of-Pearl cabinet doors

This is the first thing you see when you enter the Hagia Sophia. Breathtaking

This one is upstairs. 

And the view from the balcony. It is the MOST beautiful building I have ever been in. 

The light fixture is the same age as the building. 

This was added later for the Sultans.

Our group in front of the Palace

The underground cisterns

An old palace building from the sea.

The Euro-Asia bridge :D

An old fort from the sea.

The Maiden's Tower. One of the famous landmarks in Istanbul.

Once more: the bridge

Istanbul!!

Hey all! So my blog is not letting me upload the photos from my Istanbul trip which stinks. I'll see if I can fix it but I guess for now I can give you a brief overview of what we did.

The weekend of December 15^th and 16^th, Rotary took us to the city of Istanbul. I have to say it’s the best place I’ve been to so far. I LOVED the city. I was excited to go because Istanbul is so full of history and its history stretches back for centuries. We started our trip by visiting the Blue Mosque.  It was much bigger than I had expected. It was beautiful, but because it is still in use, we didn’t get to see as much as we could have.

The next place we went to was Topkapi Palace.  The palace grounds were huge! I tried to imagine myself living there but I couldn’t. In the palace we got to see a room with the different types of weapons used by the Ottomans from the 14^th century to the 20^th century. I found it really interesting because all these weapons had been used and they were so different from the weapons you’d see the French or English use at that time. We also went through a room with the precious jewels, headdresses, flasks and thrones used by the many Sultans. This was my favorite place because everything was really beautiful and the gold and jewels were crafted so well. We also got to go through a part of the Harem at the palace. We saw only 10% of it and I hadn’t expected it to be so big. We probably spent 30 minutes in the 10% we saw.

The next place we saw was the Hagia Sophia. Of all the sights we saw on this trip, the Hagia Sophia was the place I loved the most and could have spent hours in. We didn’t have much time there because it was getting dark so that kind of stunk. It is big and beautiful and what I liked the most were the mosaics that have been preserved for ages. You could also see the 6 important symbols of Islam from when the building was a mosque.

The next stop was the underground cisterns. This is where the city drinking water used to be kept. They don’t use it now but they still have water there and fish for the tourists. I didn’t personally like it because there wasn’t much to see and it was dark.

Our last stop the first day was the Grand Bazaar. Unfortunately, we had very little time to spend in the bazaar, so we didn’t get to really look around. I was able to buy a pair of good boots there though. We then spent the night in a hotel that was really close to all the places we went to.

The next morning, we started by going to the Egyptian Spice Bazaar. I never imagined that there were so many spices in the world. We saw not only spices, but also saw and got to try Turkish Delight...no it is not a myth, it exists. I loved it a lot and bought some to give to my family.

The next thing we got to do was go on the tour of the Bosphorus. Sadly the day was rainy and foggy, so we couldn’t see things as well; but the tour was still nice. It was really exciting to sail between Asia and Europe. We sailed under both Euro-Asia suspension bridges and also the bridge connecting old and new Europe. We were able to see many of the historical sites from the boat as well as the newer business centers.

I could go on and on about it but I think this gives you and idea of our trip. I hope I can load photos soon becuase the places were absolutly breathtaking. I'm so happy I came to Turkey!!

Monica

 



 

Photos From New Year's!

 

 

The staircase in my host family's summer house. We spent the New Year at my family's summer house, so I got to spiff it up for the holidays.

My host sister decided to read

I got to decorate our table for our fancy dinner!

Lights!

From left to right: a friend of the family, me, and my host mom

My host sister and I

I'm next to one of those old oil urns. Look! It's almost as big as me haha

The windmills of Turkey. It's almost like I could go over those hills and be in America; it looked so similer.

So there's my New Year in a nutshell :)
Monica

Happy New Year!

Hello all who still check this blog even though I've been less then faithful about updating it. So here's my New Year's Resolution: Blog More! I really will try to every other day, even if it's just photos of what I've been up to. 

So right now it is 15 minutes until the end of my first day in 2013. It's crazy to think that we're in a new year already. I think that 2012 was such an amazing year that 2013 has a lot to live up to if it's going to be as good as this past year. 

I spent New Year's Eve and New Year's day in Alaçatı at my host family's summer house. We had a really good dinner New Year's Eve, which included cake and sparklers :D, and then hit the streets where there were a ton of DJ's blaring music. When we finally waded though the masses of people on the streets, we ended up at a hotel owned by a friend of the family and spent an hour or so just dancing to the music on the street. It's actually not super cold here, so being out on the street wasn't bad at all. I have to say it's one of the best New Year's I've had..and we stayed out until 3am! This morning we spent an hour walking around the place where the parties had been last night. It is a really beautiful and quaint, resort-like town. The houses are all stone and the streets are cobblestone so you feel like you're in a different place altogether. I'm back at home now and so it's back to the regular routine of life....because I really didn't get a holiday for the holidays. I'll explain that later; right now I wish you all a Happy New Year and may God bless you all!!

Monica 

Explaining

 

I think I owe you an explaination of what went on during my second Thanksgiving Day. Let's start by saying it was the most awesome food day ever! (as Thanksgiving should be)

Well Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday, but it was WAY too complicated to get everyone to Izmir for Thursday, so we decided to have our meal on Saturday.

First of all, I should finish putting faces to names. From left to right: Rotary person, Rotary chairperson (Goksin), Rotary Inbound Coordinator (Zeynep). Then we have: Tove (South Africa), Bess (USA), Torvald (USA), Shannon (Canada), Gabriel (Brazil), Me, Heloisa (Brazil). Then sitting we have: Felipe (Brazil), Lauren (USA), Annie (USA), Riad (Indonesia), and Max (Mexico). These are all the members of my new family. :D It's a really awesome group of people!!
So Thanksgiving!! Well Lauren's family pretty much rented us their house for Thanksgiving dinner. I think that's very brave of them; letting 10 teenagers take over their house. Their house is so lovely though! It's big and had plenty of room for us to cook.
Lauren lives about 1.5 hours away from where I live, if you go by public bus. Lauren's dad, hoewever, rented a private driver to take us all to their house. Really nice.
Saturday, we started out with our 3.5 hours of Turkish class. We have just finished our 4th week, and I can tell my Turkish is benefiting from having those classes. There's nine of us at the classes: Heloisa, Torvald, Max, Gabriel, Bess, Felipe, Shannon, Lauren, and me. Annie and Riad have their own classes in Bursa.
After the classes, we met up with Annie, and went to Lauren's. Then we pretty much went crazy in the kitchen. Some of us had to go to the market to buy supplies. Then we just cooked and cooked. The Brazilians all made really good Brazilian food, and then it took most of us to get the turkey prepped and ready to cook. Thank goodness that the bird had already been cleaned out, we just had to stuff it and slather butter all over it, and pop it into the oven.....and nervously wait until dinner to see if we had ruined it or not. Shannon made a really good stuffing, and once the bird was in the oven, we had to just wait. I will tell you, the smell that started coming from the basesment (the stove the turkey was cooked in was in the basement) was the overwhelming smell of Thanksgiving. I think all of us Americans and Shannon cried. It was perfect. The turkey was a complete success!! Max almost couldn't believe what he was eating and tasting the turkey for the first time made him speechless. Gabriel also thought it was a shame they didn't have this dish in Brazil. Here's to us; 'cause none of us had ever cooked a turkey before!!
I made a really good pie, and we found a container of Ben&Jerry's at the store, so dessert was also pretty American.
Gabriel said something that's stuck with me: 'Am I the only one who thinks we are a family right now?' We really are a family if you think about it. We're not just friends, we know eachothers' weaknesses and strengths, what we all like, how we think, and honestly we treat eachother like a family too. I love it!!! We're a Rotary family. I think the fact that there's only 11 of now, has made our bond even stronger. No one is intentionally left out and we can all get to know eachother really well (possibly too well hahaha).
And on this happy note, I will sign off.

'Til next time :D
Monica



My Second Thanksgiving!!

 

This is Max! Our lone Mexican. He's so funny and here he's chasing chickens.

We got to make Thanksgiving dinner. We had all kinds of dishes. Lauren's family lent us their house and we cooked away.

The blonde here is Shannon, our lone Canadian. She's pretty awesome too, and she lives in Manisa.

Annie is the brunette. She, sadly, lives in Bursa, so we really don't see her much. Bursa's about 5 hours away by bus. However, I'm really glad she got to come for Thanksgiving.

So the guy on the right is Gabriel. He's Brazilian and lives in Manisa now. He's pretty awesome too, and really tall. Like really tall, but it's cool.

Heloisa is the girl in the center (you've already met Shannon). She's also Brazilian, and we're switching houses in January. She's pretty nice, and likes to be in charge.

This is a Brazilian pastel. This one had ground beef and onions in it, and it's fried goodness!

Well we did manage to find a turkey here! After stressing about cooking for days and days, we managed to somehow dress and cook it correctly. It was so amazingly good!! I have to say we did a good job on it, considering NONE of us had cooked a turkey before.

Isn't it beautiful :)

Chef Gabriel!

Some of the food. We were 10 people in all

So there it is. Turkey, mashed potatos, gravy, stuffing, a Brazilian potato dish and a taco!

I'm really so thankful for all these people! We seriously felt like a family while we were eating. I think that having the small nunber of kids that we have helped us to really get to know eachother. I'll intoduce you to everyone else later, but I think that helps you put names to faces.

'Til next time!

Monica