Istanbul

Stoplight in Istanbul
Originally uploaded by Jane Rubio.

Over Eid al-Adha, signifiying the end of the Hajj pilgrimage for Muslims, and the highest religious holiday for the Druze, I went to visit Dilek in Istanbul. She's living with her grandmother on the Asian side. In four days, we did tons of tourist stuff--saw great mosques, the Roman cisterns (totally way cool), and went to a Turkish bath!!! As she was getting scrubbed down, the half-naked Turkish lady told Dilek she was really dirty. I don't know if I was too, because I don't speak Turkish.

As you can see from the pictures www.homepage.mac.com/janerubio/PhotoAlbum24.html, Istanbul is very developed. I chose this picture because it has a street light indicating there are 18 seconds left to cross the street. I realized I hadn't seen one of those in a long time. I don't think there are any traffic signals anywhere in Lebanon. I haven't seen any. And the cars are all new and modern. Not like the 50 year old Mercedes in Lebanon. But there was one shell of a car that I took a picture of.

Before I showed them the pictures, the kids said they thought Turkey would be like Syria--poor and crappy. So they were very surprised to see all the nice, European cars and real bus stops with benches and glass coverings and a map.

I also took pictures of toilets. (You might have noticed this as a running theme in my travel photography.) Considering Turkey is practically Europe in terms of level of development, I was shocked to see an Indian-style toilet on the ferry--grates, water bucket and all. But later on, I saw a very sophisticated toilet with arm rests. . .Wow!

When I showed my students the pictures (we just happened to be studying Turkey in Geography class), they freaked out when they saw me covered in front of the mosque. And then they told me I didn't even do it right because they could see my hair.

Turks eat a lot of simit. It's a sesame pretzel-like bread. They sell it everywhere for the equivalent of about 30 cents. It's way yum. The food in Turkey is cheap and good. We crossed big suspension bridges by foot and dolmosh (a shared van) and took a lot of ferries across the Bosporous.