September 3, 2010

Hey Guys,

     So Istanbul is really nice so far, I wish you all could be here.  None the less, I hope your relaxing a bit in Boston and having a little break from work.   

So I was a bit surprised about the city, much different then I had imagined.  I had imagined to be very similar to be most European cities that I have been too, however I feel as though it has an Asian influence.  I was surprised to see that it is somewhat of a dirty city, buildings are a bit rundown, streets and sidewalks are uneven, stray dogs and cats are running around, and there are a lot of people trying to make a living to sell small useless items. 

The houses are extremely dense.  They remind me much of San Fransico’s housing if any of you are familiar with them.  However, all the homes the stucco is painted.  Mostly neutral colors, however, occasionally a bright pop of color. 

The city is hilly!  We live on top of a hill, so we start our day with a bit of a hike.  But the view from our room is beautiful.  Well, I should say  the view from Nishat, Christine and my room.  We lucked out, we look out over the river and the bridge, however, everyone else pretty much looks into an alleyway. 

The culture, I cant say that we have fully experiences it just yet, but we have a bit of a taste of it.  There is a lot of live music in the streets, what I’m calling Turkish music (who knows if it is)  And there is just a lot of life to the city as the sun sets.  As we were walking down the streets Saturday night after we landed, they were just filled with so many people moving through, whether going to dinner, going out for the night.  It has a lively vibe to it.  I will try to capture this is videos for you…

Well today we went to the Istanbul History exhibit.  I was hoping to post a video that I had taken about Turkish houses.   They are trying to fix up the houses and make them better but people don’t want to move out of what they call home. So the video had some interesting views down streets of the houses, and gave you a glimpse of the people living in these communities. 

And then I took 2 videos along the route going from the exhibit back to the center of Istanbul (by Bus).  In which I just wanted to give you an idea of the houses, and give you a sense of the city. 

However, the videos are a bit too big, and I’m not sure how to downsize them so I will have to wait to put them on a flash drive for you when I return.  I'm hoping I will have a serious of them to pass around to you, since I think video is easier to capture the life of a place then just photos.  

After talking with the group tomorrow I think we should set up a flickr account that we can start uploading our photos onto so that we can send them along to you, and post the link to the blog. 

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening, we will be in touch soon!

P.S. Sonja I thought of you, the place we went to for dinner had waffles filled with nuttella (which pretty much looked like your pancake ones) I didn’t try them though, but I'm sure yours were better =)

LIZ!