"The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck." - Ralph Waldo Emerson (Entry 6, Day 2)

Monday, 12 August, 2013; Oriental Hostel; 10:30 PM

Exploring was fun.  We saw what was about and what we can do on the street. There are a lot of restaurants about, with the guys who come up to you in the middle of hte street to get you to go eat there.  One of the guys asked me to dance.  Since he's significantly older than me and I didn't want to randomly dance with a complete stranger in the middle of the street, I said no

Anyway, back to the recap.

At the AFS offices we met Cemre, who does host family coordination and Becet (Why did I call him that?  We all called him Mert), who is also going to be hanging out wiht us this week - he, too, did a year in the US.  He's from Ankara, the capital, which is significantly smaller than Istanbul, from what I understand.

Anyway, at the AFS office, we had dinner - Turkish pizza, or Pide.  It's on flat bread and doesn't normally have sauce between the bread and the toppings.  It's still really good - better than American pizza, anyway.  Pide isn't cheese-based, which is different - like, the veggie ones were just veggies and pide and maybe some oil to hold it together.

Anyway, the hostel is really cool.  The stairs are tightly winding and sort of steep, but not impossibly so.  Since this is a hostel, the room is kind of small, but it works out well enough.  We have four beds: one set of bunks (I'm on the top) and one set of twins.  From the street, we have a really cool view of the Blue Mosque, or the Sultanahmet Cami (the computer doesn't do the 'i' right! Gah! The 'i' isn't supposed to have a dot on top).  According to the guidebook, it was built to rival the Aya Sophia visually (well, it wasn't intended to, but it does anyway).  There are 260 windows, and has the largest courtyard of any Ottoman mosque.  The original stained-glass windows were Venitian.

Anyway, that's all for that.

When we wandered around tonight, I found it interesting how few people were out and about.  Cemre said that it's even a good day for traffic because everyone is out of town to celebrate Ramadan, and are probably staying out a few extra days.  Istanbul is definitely a lot more quiet than Cusco or Lima were.  This is probably in part due to Cemre's hypothesis and also partly due to the fact that Cusco and Lima were in Super Celebration Mode when we were there.  Also, I think Cusco is way more into tourism for he economy, so more people are trying to sell you stuff and yelling and honking and everything else.

Will pause now - need to bed prep.  Write in a few.