Friday, 16 August, 2013; 10:53 PM; Host Family's House
Okay, that heading is a bit of a lie. Im really at the Host Family's Family's house - that of their uncle, aunt, and cousin, Gizem (not sure I spelled that right). Anyway, they're all really nice. The mom kept giving me extra food during dinner - that's the culture here. Pace yourself. Being told you eat well is a compliment, but's also one of those things that you get asked about by inquiring family members. Gizem's grandma called during dinner and apparently asked whether I ate well.
(later, after hanging laundry)
Anyway, Gizem and her parents are really nice. Gizem, for example, just brought me some tea. The idfficult is, of course, that Gizem's third language is English (her second is French); she and her dad have to translate for her mom. In all, it's worked out all right.
But now t tell about the rest of the day.
We woke up at 6 AM with six hours of sleep. We had to rush to make sure everything was where it should be by 7:00, but the bus was still haf an hour late. Most of the ride to Edirne was spent asleep or trying to imitate it. It's a three-hour ride, so we were able to catch up well enough.
The first place we went was founded in the fifteenth (or maybe sixteenth) century as an affordable hospital and med school. They even offered free meds on certain days of the week. They also had inpatient care for people with mental or physical issues ranging from epilepsy to depression to melancholy to lunacy, and designed the inpatient area to be avery acoustically sound - the hospital used a lot of music therapy as treatment. They even used different styles of music to treat different things. I wasn't familiar with all the styles, so I can't say which belonged to which issue (I also can't remember any of the names of the styles).
After that, we had lunch at a meatball place. Sean had liver, which I don't totally get; it's not necessarily that the liver is bad, it's just that the meatballs are really good.
(Also, just wanted to say again how SUPER AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL the family is. Just had the whole discussion of What Time To Wake Up Tomorrow. We decided on the 9-10 range. I can work with that. Also, Gizem said that she just read the host family letter I had to write in April and she said she really liked it. That makes me very happy :) ).
Right. After our 2:00-ish lunch, we went to two mosques. I don't recall the name of the first one, but it was interesting for two reasons (that I recall):
1. there were a lot of domes in the courtyard and they were ALL PAINTED, and they were each different from the ones on either side (I think they matched from across the courtyard, but it was still really cool).
2. There were a lot of domes inside, too, and THOSE were all unique, too, as well as the corners of the dome (well, the corners in the space below the dome). Some were honeycombed, some were fluted, all were really coo. There are also carvings on the wooden shutters (for lack of a better term) on the windows in all the niches; those were all variations on the same pattern as well.
Backtrack for a second: before we went to this mosque, we went to a small bazaar (we went to one before lunch, too, and I got YARN. It's all acrylic, but still). At the bazaar after lunch, I got two head scarves and some bracelets for some friends. Mom had a mixup with the seller of the bracelets. She wanted to buy a keychain; she thought he was asking 15 Lira for it (about $7.50), when he was really asking 1.5 Lira ($.75). Obviously, $7.50 is a bit pricey for a keychain, so she tried to bargain it to 10 Lira. He seemed really confused, and eventually he had to pull out the exact amount from the change drawer to show her that 10 Lira is not what he'd take for a keychain.
Back to later. The second mosque we visited was called the Old Mosque. It was built in 1414 and was one of the original mosques in Turkey. In style, it actually resembles some of the mosques in Egypt and that area. It's really cool because the names of Allah and the prophets are written right onto the stone, not painted onto tile and hung up.
After the Old Mosque, we went and dropped Alex off at the place where she would meet her family. However, the guide seemed to have thought that both Sean and I were going to the Asia side, so he said both of us would be dropped off with Can at the ferry. We met Can, and he said Cemre told him that he only needed to handle Sean's passage (I thought that too). After making a few calls, he sorted it all out, and we figured out what was going on and whom we had to meet where, and there I met Gizem and her dad, and it all worked out fine. HUZZAH!
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