Thanksgiving

November was trogging along just fine until someone posted on Facebook how much they were looking forward to the Turkey Feast.  Then it hit me.  Of course I knew I wasn't going to be home for Thanksgiving, at least my left brain knew, but it was something else all together to realize I was going to miss the Turkey Feast.  (For those of you who dont know, the Turkey feast is a pre Thankgiving lunch oragnized and put on by the parents at Gunn to benefit the local food closet.  For a few bucks and a few cans of food you can have turkey with all the fixings and pie on the Thursday before Thanksgiving.  It is my second favorite lunch of the year (after the Korean mothers lunch of course.)) 

I started to get pretty homesick at that point.  The foods I miss, I started to miss more, I got nostalgic for things I have complained about in the past and dont get me started on people.  The violins were working over time.  I am not sure if was better or worse that I didn't really have anyone to complain to.  My chemistry colleagues are Brits or Turks and dont care about Thanksgiving, and all the Americans were also missing Thanksgiving.  I was pretty grouchy getting up and going to school on Thursday this week.  I have worked hard on Thanksgivings in the past, but I have never gone to work before. 

November 24th is Teacher's day in Turkey.  A rememberance set up by Ataturk and taken very seriously by the Turkish teachers.  Once every 7 or so years, teacher's day falls on Thanksgiving and this was one of those years.  Many students wished me a happy teacher's day.  Even google.tr had a teacher's day doodle.  I kept responding with Happy Thanksgiving, which having gone to an American school, the kids had all heard about.  We had a short day (meaning 9th and 10th just didn't meet - see the blog post about the schedule) so we could go to the alumni club for lunch put on by the parents association.  It was very tasty and there was champagne and wine, but it wasn't Thanksgiving. 

Last year some teachers had gone to the Hilton for a Thanksgiving buffet which they said was very good.  We looked into it this year, but at 98TL (about $60) it was more than I wanted to spend.  There was going to be a potluck on campus, which I wasn't too sure about, but it became the best option I had and certainly better than sitting at home alone crying into my proverbial soup.  I made some banana bread (not all that traditional, and it ended up not being quite done in the middle) and hoped for the best. 


The chef had roasted two turkeys and folks had brought bread stuffing, brocoli, mashed potatoes, green salad, cranberry sauce and, most importantly

...pecan pie! I thought my chances of having pecan pie were nil, but apparently, there is a visiting student this semester, whose parents had just flown over from NY and thought to bring two pumpkin and two pecan pies from whole foods. 

Everything was very good and by ignoring the Turkish foods on the buffet, I was able to pretend it really was Thanksgiving.  They had even set up a big screen TV with the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade playing using someone's sling box.

Unfortunately this good feeling was forgotten, when I had to get up and go to work at 7:30 on Friday morning.  Now I have had a nice, regular length weekend, a good portion of which I spent making my Christmas collage of travel pictures, writing my letter, and going out into the world to find glossy photo paper and envelopes.  There are some friends of the head master who are leaving for the US tomorrow and have offered to take mail with them.  I printed 33 copies before I ran out of ink (that will be its own adventure).  The other 70 or so letters I will either send with one of the teachers who is going home for Christmas, or I will send from here, but in any case, if you dont get a letter form me in the next week, dont hold your breath, it will likely be January.  Please dont let that stop you from writing to me (-:

To end this, and to get out of my funk, I am going to spend a few minutes remembering what Thanksgiving is about because I really do have a lot to be thankful for.

- For the lady at church who showed me what page we were on

- For the RC grad who showed me where the board game cafe is and helped me buy envelopes

- For the HR assistant who helped me set up internet banking this week

- for the folks in my book club, which is really just a pretense to get together once a month

- for the other first year teachers who hang out

- for the members of my Turkish class who make it fun

- for the folks back home who remember me from time to time with a surprise email

- for my dad who answers endless email tech questions since he can't just come over and fix it

- for the beast who is good enough just by being orange

- for my grandparents who make me smile and haven't given up on technology

- for my health and sanity

- for a refidgerator full of food

- for a radiator that ticks, but keeps me warm

- for the rides up and occasionally down the hill

- for the challenges that keep life interesting and the perspective to see them that way

Fuses

Today was a triumphant day.  I bought fuses!  Apologies to my dad who just put some in the mail for me. 

To back track...I brought with me a region free DVD player, knowing that the US is region 1 and Turkey is not and in order to play any DVD I want, I would either need multiple DVD players or one that looks the other way when it comes to region.  (I am not sure how much this would matter here, since most DVDs are pirated and are not on commercially produced discs anyway, but it is good to be ready.)  The down side of this DVD player was that it has an American plug (easy) and only takes 110V (hard).  At first this didn't matter, because I didn't have a TV, but when one sort of fell into my lap, it was good that my dad had packed me a transformer that will take 240 from the wall and give the DVD player the 110V it wants.  (Of course this wasn't coincidence at all, since my dad got the DVD player for me and he is the kind of guy that would check to see what power it takes, unlike me, who blithely plugged in my alarm clock radio without checking and now has a very dim clock that I have to keep and take home with me since it is on my bill of lading.)

The first issue to resolve was the connection between the DVD player and the TV.  The DVD player has the familliar red, white and yellow VGA co-axial cable connectors, but the TV has a SCAART input.  Once I knew what I was looking for (thanks again to my dad) I printed a picture of it and went out into the world.  (I think I have written about that adventure, looking for a likely store and showing them the picture.)  The adapter in hand I was ready to watch my first movie. 

What was cool about this transformer was that it had two outputs, one 110V and the other a pass through of 240V.  This was particularly handy since I didn't have a power strip and if I plugged the transformer in, I couldn't plug the TV in, which some what defeats the purpose.  It took a couple of tries to get the correct plugs in the correct holes before I realized that I wasn't inept at reading 'video out', but that the VGA-SCAART converter I had so bravely purchased had a faulty connection in it.  I am not totally useless (thanks for the 16th time to my dad), I used a knife to cut the bad connector off the converter and off the cable that came with the DVD player, stripped the wire and then used electrical tape to put it back together.  Feeling very much like MacGiver, I was ready to rumble.

I have a very small table, just about the size of the DVD player, so my first thought was to put the DVD player on the table and the TV on it.  When I tried this and watched a movie, success!  All of these contortions were worth it.  Next time I try to watch a movie, it is a no go.  No power comes from the transormer.  I had seen the fuse screw cap on the back and I check, sure enough the fuse is melted.  No problem, I put the other fuse in, and just in case the TV was putting too much pressure on the DVD player such that it was drawing more power, I put the DVD player on the ground and the TV on the table.  Movie number two!

Some time later, I am ready for movie number three.  Again, no power eminates from the transformer and this time, I am out of fuses.  Movie watching is then on hold until I figure out how to get another fuse.  For awhile I carry the dead fuse around with me every time I go off campus, except of course, the times I actually go some where I might find a fuse, those times, I realize I have forgotten the fuse at home in another pair of pants.  I remember to bring it with me while I am exploring during the bayram, but then the electronics shops are closed. 

Finally, I ask my dad to send me some, since it doesnt look like I am ever going to get it all together to buy them myself.  This week he sends me an email, the fuses are in the mail! Great, but I have been practicing my Turkish question to ask for a fuse, well almost.  "Bu var mi?"  Literally means: "does this exist?"  But it is enough and I want to use it.  Tonight I decided I should go for a walk rather than just sitting around my apartment for the evening.  I headed out and right, past the grocery store (where I got some desparately needed hand lotion.  (How did I bring three tubes of sunscreen but no lotion?)) and to Ortakoy, two bus stops later or maybe a mile away from where I live.  I had explored this area just a little with the other newbies earlier in the year, but I wanted to give it another look.  (It would be a whole blog post just to talk about how different even my local 4-5 neighborhoods are from eachother.)  I was half way up the street when I remembered I had the fuse and it was during working hours on a week day.  I went up to the top before I found a likely looking shop called something eliktrik, which sounded promising. 

I went in to the shop, which was long and narrow as so many shops are here (limited road space I guess), before I even got to the shop keeper, I noticed the music.  It was very dramatic, like in a sappy movie where the actors aren't quite up to getting you to feel the way you should with their performances, so the music gives you the clue.  I walked up to the counter, holding out my fuse and said, "Bu var mi?" He took it and looked at it and indicated to me that he wanted to know what it said.  "How many watts?" (yeah, most people here speak at least a little English) I looked hard at the fuse but all I could find was FAIL 250V, which I told him.  He went to a box full of drawers and pulled out a fuse.  He handed it to me and it also said FAIL 250V.  "Evet!" I said, with a big grin.  "Uc tane lutfen."  (Three pieces please) But he took my fuse plus the broken one back behind his counter and started rummaging through a drawer.  I had several more minutes to think about how out of place this music sounded for an electronics shop, but at least it isn't Christmas music, I suppose.  Finally he found a magnifying glass and carefully inspected each fuse, verifying that they all said FAIL 250, before handing them to me.  I asked, "Ne kedar?"  (How much?) and he reponded, "Two Lira." I gladly handed over the coins (about $1.10) and chose to ignore that he spoke to me in English, when clearly I have at least 10 words of Turkish by now.  I took my prizes back through the long shop and just as I was reaching the door, the music swelled triumphantly and I realized that I am in a sappy movie with bad actors (who dont really know the language, but are trying really hard) and I left the shop quickly before I cracked up. 

Anyway, I got home, still feeling triumphant, I installed the fuse, plugged it in and all works.  Too bad I dont have time for a movie tonight.

The Schedule

I was tempted to name this post "The Schedule that Laurie would Hate" but not quite everyone knows who Laurie is and I didn't want to turn anyone off from even starting to read by finding someone they didn't know alluded to in the title of the blog.  Now, of course, you have started reading, so I can talk about Laurie all I want and you are already hooked, aren't you?

Laurie is a teacher at Gunn who knows how many minutes each class has, and more importantly which class is mising how many minutes.  For those of you who are reading this, but who are not teachers, you might not think this is that important, but it is.  Lets say you have 180 hours worth of material to teach a class over the course of the year, you lose a bunch to testing (for your own assesment and for the government).  Then you lose some to field trips the students are on for other classes and of course when a student is ill you lose some more, but these tend to hit each class roughly equally.  If you teach at a school were each teacher doesnt see each student every day, holidays can start to make things uneven.  For instance, at Gunn, every time you have a Monday holiday, E period gets an extra class.  Some times this can happen several times in a month and then E period is way ahead.  This is particularly bad in a very short week, like the week of Thanksgiving, which only has two school days.  ABCG meet twice, but EDF meet only once.  Unless you are lucky enough to teach diffrent classes along that split, you can really only teach one day and the other becomes a free day, or wasted day. 

What does this have to do with Robert College, or my time in Istanbul?  I am getting to that, and to explain why Laurie would hate this schedule I have to tell you what this schedule looks like.

I have an average schedule, with 20 contact 'hours' per week.  I have four classes, so four sets of students, two advanced chemistry, two intro chemistry.  There are two things I like about this schedule.  First, all of the students in any one class are in the same grade, and second, each class has one double period once a week.  Since a regular period is only 40 minutes, having a lab period of an hour twenty is very helpful and having all the same grade in each class is also helpful for gaging their English level, knowing what other classes they are taking, and for other grade specific issues which come up, and there are quite a few. 

The first period of every day except Monday is homeroom, which is a 10 minute time of announcements and attendance.  New teachers are not given homeroom, instead we have a duty (more on that later).  The homeroom groups often follow each other around all day.  For instance, lise 9 section 9 might have English, Turkish, History, math and PE together.  Some might be taking drama and others art, some French and others German, some chemistry and others biology, so there will be some periods when they are together and others where they are mixed with other homerooms.  I happen to teach no homeroom sections so I can't comment on that, but I hear it has it's ups and downs. 

If you look carefully at the schedule above, and follow one section, for instance AC5, my advanced chemistry 10th graders, you can see that we meet every day, with a double on Tuesdays.  We start at three different times in two different rooms.  The AC2s, my advanced 11th graders, also meet every day, but their double is Thursday, and they meet during 4 diferent periods (5 if you count the double) also in two different rooms. The intros are even more confusing, since I see them only three times a week: IC3 (24 lise 9s) on Tuesday (double), Wednesday and Friday and IC4 (12 lise 10s) on Monday (double), Thursday and Friday.  There are some saving graces to this schedule.  I see both of my IC lab periods before I see any of their single (or theory) periods and the AC labs are symmetric in time, if not in location. 

Two of the rooms are mirror images of each other and are almost large enough for what we do.  (Oddly they are designed to seat 21 students in desks and 24 students in the lab, so for a full class there are always three students sitting at the lab tables instead of in desks.)  The third lab (101) has no desks, only lab spaces and it is awkward for labs and very awkward for lecture.  Unfortunately there are four chemistry teachers and only two good labs, so each of us takes our turn in the bad lab, and some teachers even need to go up stairs to a bio classroom for some lecture periods. 

(A side note on switching rooms:  After having my own room for many of the years I taught at Evergreen and then at Gunn, and even in the years I shared, I didnt travel, switching between three rooms seems like a hard ship.  As far as I know, however, there is only one teacher on campus who teaches in the same room all week and some of the English and math teachers (those without a specialized classroom) teach in up to 10 rooms during the week.  There is no such thing as personalizing your classroom.  Almost no one puts up student work.  Forget about having a seating chart.  And good luck remembering everything you needed to bring to each class.)

A few more notes about the schedule before I launch into why Laurie would hate it so much...

- There are three lunch periods depending on your class.  The lise prep kids (a year between 8th and 9th grade with intensive English and socializing) eat during 6th period.  L9 and L10 eat during 7th, L11 and L12 eat during 8th period.  Every teacher has at least one of these periods off each day in which to eat.  Of course this only works because the periods are the same length as lunch, 40 minutes.  (A side note about lunch: lunch is provided for all staff and teachers as well as the students who elect to have a meal card.  Every day there are at least two meat options, usually there is a vegitarian entree, and as many as two starches.  There is always soup, a salad bar, whole fruit and some kind of dessert.  The food is in general very good and lunch is my main meal of the day.) 

- On Wednesdays during 9th and 10th it is club time.  Every student is required to have a club time club (except the L12) and may have up to three after school clubs in addition.  Clubs are so important at this school they are called co-curricular instead of extra curricular.  I could write a whole blog about that some day, but it is best if I dont get started.

- On Monday instead of homeroom and on Friday's after school there is flag ceremony, which I have already written about.

- Most non-residential students take service busses home after school.  School is out at 3:15 and the bus leaves at 3:30 if you are on bus #1, or 3:35 if you are on bus #50.  You can sign up for the late bus, if you have a club or something and this leaves at 5:40.  Some students have a long trip home and in afternoon Istanbul traffic this means that some of them aren't home until 8pm if they take the late bus.  This system discourages students from getting help after school, and since you may not have the same lunch as your students there is not much time there either. 

Now that you have the basic picture of how it is supposed to work, let me tell you a little about a few things that have cropped up in the last few weeks or are coming up.

Thursday October 6th was a holiday - Istanbul Liberation so no lab for AC2

Friday October 21st, all the L11s need to go to a Turkish literature assembly 9th and 10th, so they will miss class

Friday October 28th we celebrate Republic day (10.29) with a half day, so no 9th and 10th again, my AC2 misses two Fridays in a row.

November 7-9 is a holiday, so we are left with a two day week.  IC 4 meets twice, but dont need it, IC 3 meets only once but could use the extra time.  AC2 has a lab we cant use since AC5 doesnt.

Thursday November 10th - Attaturk day - 3rd period is 55 minutes long, but all the rest are 30 minutes for an assembly.

Monday November 14th - Elective Assembly for L9/10 during 3rd period, L11 during 8th period, who cares what you had scheduled for that day, bring your students to the theater for an assmbly

Thrusday November 24th - Teachers day, all classes are 35 minutes, except 9 and 10 which are canceled outright. 

And yet every student in each section of each class takes the same test and there are already not enough days to cover the material, so we can be giving free days to keep things even.  All of the veteran teachers here grumble about it, but they are very passive about it, resigned I guess to pushing one class faster to catch up, or giving the other class more time for book work that would otherwise be assigned as homework.  No one high up seems to care, or even really sympathize when they take our classes away.  We need a Laurie to do the math and speak loudly about it.  

Besiktas JK

Football - not American Football, but what the rest of the world calls football, is taken very seriously here in Turkey. There are several leagues and different rival teams, none of which I know very much about. The head master sent us newbies an article from the New Yorker last March by Elif Batuman about Beskitas JK (stands for Gynmasium Club in Turkish) in which football fans were compared to the mafia and gangs and that violence broke out and there were turf wars etc. When Joe, the activities director suggested that the new teachers go out to a match on a Thursday night I was skeptical. There were several things going for this idea: it is a cultural experience I knew I wanted to have; it is a Thursday before a looong weekend and all I am doing the day after is giving tests; Lizzy would be there to protect me. (When I expressed concern, Joe said that he would make Lizzy (another new teacher) protect me, so I shouldn't worry about anything.) Ok, I was talked into it.

On Thursday Joe, Lizzy, Marshall, Orhan, two of Orhan's kids and one residential student come walking down the hill to pick me up at about 6:30.  We could have gotten on a bus and taken it all the way there (I have passed the stadium many times on the bus) but Joe is anti bus and protaxi.  We got in two cabs and headed down stream.  Traffic was bad, but not that bad and we made it to the stadium at about 7.  We waited for the other cab and then headed in.  Getting in took 20 minutes and it wasn't because we were standing in line (remember Turks don't stand in lines) it was the security. 

Entry Gates

First we had our bags checked and a preliminary pat down.  They have women officers for the women, which I thought was particularly culturally sensitive of them, and then you have to get rid of your coins.  They don't let anyone with coins in any sports venue.  Fans have a history of throwing coins at the players.  I learned this the hard way when I went to see tennis last weekend.  I usually dont carry coins, since I dont usually buy anything, but when I go out, I like to bring some coins for easy purchasing.  The smallest note they have is a 5TL note, but water costs 1/2 TL, a simit costs 1TL, so it is better to carry coins.  I ended up giving all of my coins to help the victims of the Van earthquake last week and therefore new not to bring them with me this week.  Of course once you buy something inside you have coins again, but lets not think about that.

The pat down

Once you don't have your coins any more, you have your ticket scanned and you enter a cattle chutte through a one way turn style. The lanes are very narrow such that only one person can go at a time and there is about 10 feet where you are separated from the outside crowd and the inside crowd, like a no mans land. At the other side there are more police officers who pat you down again, but then we were in.

There are assigned seats, but no one pays them attention and we hiked up to the third tier and found 8 seats in two rows at the end of the field. We still had 30 minutes before the game started and the stadium was only about half full. We watched the players warm up and do some drills and then the lawn zamboni came out and flattened out the grass in front of the goal.

The grass zamboni

When the players came back out onto the field for the game, the extend this tunnel for them and surrounded on both sides of the opening are police in riot gear. The retract the tunnel for the game, but I think it is very telling all the precautions they have to protect the players from the fans.

These riot gear police protected both the Besiktas players and their opponents as they entered the field.

There was a small section on the opposite side of the field where the opposing team's fan sat. There were 3x the security guards, such that there were almost as many security guards as fans. They had a net on both sides and over their heads to keep large projectiles from going in or out, but it didn't stop them from lighting a bunch of green fireworks in the middle of the game. There was this bright green light coming from their section and when we looked up, there was a converging sea of orange decending on it. I wish I had noted the time we saw them, because several minutes later we could distinctly smell the fireworks and it would have been an interesting experiment in diffusion.

You can see the net covering the sparcely populated and heavily guarded opposing team's fans across the field.

Even before the game started, the cheers were going. Everyone seemed to know the words, although some were clearly nonsence. I was really impressed that there didn't seem to be anyone leading the cheers, yet there was no delay while a cheer got started and then srpread. These cheers seemed to rise spontaneously from the entire crowd all at once.


The most moving perhaps, was the Besiktas theme song. Everyone took off their scarves and held them out so that BESIKTAS could be seen in a sea of black and white through the whole stadium. There were others where the scarves were folded in half and swung around your head. Another involved bouncing on your feet such that the stadium looked like rippling water. Some sections would send a cheer to another section and there would be call and response for a few minutes.

The view behind me with the proud fans sporting the black and white.

Lizzy, getting into the spirit

The whole crowd holding up their scarves in support of Besiktas.

 When the other team had possesion of the ball, the noise the crowd made was like the sound of demons being released from hell. I really thought my ears would bleed from the sound. It was made by whistling, the kind of whistle where you put two fingers in your mouth to get the attention of the kid all the way across the play ground, or the cute girl who is walking down the street and one at a time, it is loud enough, but if you get thousands of people doing it at the same time, your head may very well explode. I am sure I lost some high frequency hearing that night. 

Fortunately, Besiktas was triumphant and the crowd left happy. We flowed down the street (taking it over) and started walking back to the town of Besiktas, where we parted ways and I took a bus home. I knew I was dehydrated and smelled like smoke, but I was surprised when I couldn't read my ipod on the bus. When I got home and in the light I realized I was having an aural migrane with the funny eyesight, but no headache. The headache came later, the next morning just in time to teach.

It was a good cultural experience. I am glad I went, but  I dont think I have to do it again any time soon.

Long walls and Short walls

There is a group in Turkey called FARIT, Friends of the American Research Institute in Turkey: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ARIT/IstanbulCenter.html.  They support some graduate students, maintain a library of scholarly works, host lectures and lead tours.  I have been on two tours with them in the last two weeks, and both were about walls. 

Last week, the first time I joined a tour, it was to the Anastasian wall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasian_Wall) which was ~56km long and cut off Thrace from the rest of Europe, from the Marmara to Black Seas.  It was a gloriously clear and sunny day in Istanbul, but after quite a bus trip out of town it was a grey day with even a few sprinkles.  I couldn't find a good map that had the city of Istanbul and the wall in it, but we came from about as far off the right edge of this map as the wall is to the left, or using the scale on the map, about 30km farther east.  This wall was built in the 5th century to keep the barbarians out, but it didn't necessarily do a good job since it was hard to man and supply so far out and so long. 

Taken from the bus, part of the Anastasian wall.

 There wasnt much of it left for us to see and when we did go along side of it on the bus, we didnt' stop to get out and look at it. I am not sure what I would have done if we had stopped, but it might have been nice to get a good picture or two.

If you look really hard you can see trees that are just a little bit higher than the others, they are growing on the wall.

We got out to walk a little bit at a place we should have had a good view of the wall, but since it was so over grown, we were left imagining the slightly higher ridge where trees had grown on the wall instead of next to it.

The Black Sea. 

The ruin of a church at the Black sea end of the long wall. 

 Next, we drove all the way up to the Black sea to find the end of the wall, but it was gone. We did see the sea (which isn't black) and the ruin of a chruch from about the same era. The mud was incredible on this bit of the hike. It was very sticky and heavy. I felt like I was carrying 10 extra pounds on my feet. We did the best we could to get it off before getting back on the bus, but there was really no hope. The driver had put down newspaper to protect the carpet in the aisles, but again, it was a losing battle.

It felt like 10 punds of mud stuck to my shoes.

We stopped for lunch somewhere that seemed like the middle of nowhere, but I think it was the best food I have eaten in Turkey.  There were mezzes, salads and fresh bread on the table when we got there and then the main course which was roast lamb with rice.  I am not a big lamb fan at home, but I had been warned to give it another try here where people know how to make lamb and I am so glad I did.  It was delicious.  We had fresh fruit for dessert and then cay (tea) before getting back on the bus for our final stop, the aquaduct.

Middle of nowhere but very tasty.

Mezzes and salad.

Lamb and rice.

Along the way we saw some people making charcoal and we stopped the bus for a bit of a cultural lesson.  These forests are responsibly managed such that one area can be forested this year, and another next year, etc so there is a cycle to it, keeping the people happy and the forest healthy.  When they cut down a tree, maybe 5 inches in diameter, the cut it into 4foot lengths and pile them in a circle around a clearing.  It looked like they then took a chainsaw and cut all of the lengths in half before starting their pile. 

The wood is placed around the clearing and then carefully added to the pile by hand.

The pole in the middle will be removed to start the fire and provide ventilation to the pile while it cooks.

Covered in straw and then earth, the pile is left to smolder for two weeks.

The pile contains 7 tons of wood in a hemispherical shape.  The pole in the middle is used for support at first but will be removed when the pile is finished to allow some air to get into it.  They cover the mound with rice hay (which doesnt burn as easily as other hay, although where they grow the wheat is unclear) and then with a layer of mud.  They light the mound but putting a lit piece of charcoal down the center and the moderate the flame by opening up vents on the sides from time to time.  It takes 15 days for the wood to be converted to 1 ton of charcoal, which then feeds barbeques, wood stoves and rural fireplaces.  It was cool to stop and find out about this. 

Stuck in the mud.

 We hadn't gone too much farther before the bus got stuck in the mud and we all had to get out. We tried pushing, we tried putting rocks under the wheels, but the bus just kept sliding, so we ventured out from there, and left the driver and the tour coordinator to find a tractor to get them out. 

Fellow FARITs crossing the stream to the aquaduct.  Libby is the four legged friend.

 Our last hike of the day took us up and down hills, over a stream and through a field to find four towers remaining from a Roman aquaduct that brought water to Istanbul back in the day (~5th century). The top had fallen off, but it was still quite striking to see the structure that remained. 

Ruins of the Roman aquaduct that brought water to Istanbul 1600 years ago.

After the hike back to the bus (which was back with the charcoal guys) we were back on the road for home.

Sunday October 30th.

I went again with a FARIT tour, but this time to more local walls.  The bus let us off right at the Sea of Marmara at the end of the Justinian wall, which at the time it was built (~5th century) was beyond the outskirts of Istanbul.  It was the fourth wall built to protect Istanbul in only a few hundred years, indicating that the population was booming.

My bad highlighting job shows roughly where the wall is.

  We walked the entire length with our guide who was not only very knowledgeable about the wall, but had thuroughly prepared for the day.  We each had a booklet with some background information and google earth pictures of the wall.

The best part of the ARIT tours are the people you meet on them.  There were a few overlaps from the week before, and it was good to strengthen those connections, and there were plenty of new people as well.  They are mostly foreigners, some long time residents, others fairly new.  Lots of teachers and dipolmats, some scholars or trailing spouses.  On this trip we had the American Consular General Scott Kilner and his wife.  I didn't know who they were, nor that the two Turkish heavies were their secret service until well into the tour.  I wish I had talk to them more, as he is from the bay area and went to Stanford, we might have known some of the same people. 

Anyway, these walls were built about the same time as the long wall in the late 5th century.  These were clearly more immediately important since the city was just on the other side.  In many places there were two walls, with a courtyard between them and even a moat on the outside.

If you look at the map above, you can see at least one and a half other places where previous walls had been.  The city had a time of fast growth and they kept having to rebuild the city walls farther and farther out over the course of just a few hundred years.  At its height the population of ancient Constantinople was about a million within the city walls.  Now Istanbul is enormous, with estimates of 15 million people living in greater Istanbul, which goes on and on forever.  The population density is intense, and kalabalik (crowded) was one of my first Turkish words. 

Back to the walls...The walls were pretty effective for almost 1000 years.  They were breached only twice while they were maintained, once by the 4th crusade in the early 1200s, and then again when they fell to the Ottomans in 1453.  This is pretty good since they were completed in a hurry.  There were a couple of big earthquakes that kept knocking the towers down but Attilla the Hun was lurking in the forest beyond, ready to invade, so the wall was finished in just two months.  Wikipedia says that the Ottomans' maintained the wall until the 19th century, at which time it was allowed to fall into disrepair and parts were even dismantled so the stone could be reused.  Much of it was restored in teh 1980s and it was in pretty good shape. 

Here are just a few of the millions of pictures I took.  Sometimes I feel compelled to take pictures and when I look back at them later, they just look like more of the same and I can't quite understand why I needed so many picures of old rocks.

This is the fortress at the Marmara Sea side (which you can see to the right) of the wall.

The road is newer than the wall, but you can see the very end of the wall on the other side of the road. 

There were several gates in the original wall, which are still used to get in and out of the city.  Since it is only wide enough for one car, this guard directs traffic to avoid head on collisions.

This is the space between the inner and outer walls, now used for gardens.

Some towers were square (easier to build) and others were octagons (stronger vs invaders.)

The back side of a tower no longer intact. 

Another gate through the wall.

The innner wall in the background, the outer wall in the middle and the moat (filled in) in the foreground.  All of Istabul is about 2 meters higher than it was back in the day.

Walking along the inside of the inner wall.

A brick stamp (in Greek) that indicated the maker? of the brick.  Not all bricks have a stamp but perhaps the top brick of any shipment would so the right brick maker could get paid.

Moat vegitables?  The view into the city from the top of the wall. 

Across the moat to one of the gates.

There used to be a plaque here that gave information about the gate. 

Actuall cannonballs that the Ottoman Army launched at the wall to breach it. 

 There were two highlights of the tour besides the people, one was lunch. We ate at a kufte (meatball) place just outside the wall. The other was the Panorama Museum. This museum's center piece was doomed room with a 3D mural depicting the seige of Istanbul by the Ottoman army in May 1453. I paid the 5TL for the audio tour and my headset knew where in the room I was and what I was looking at. The big deciding point in this battle was the cannons. Cannons were relatively new and the Ottomans (Ottomen?) kept making them bigger and bigger. 

Inside the Panorama museum, which has a dome that depicts in 360 degree mural the invasion of the Ottomans.

The Ottomans had cannons, but the Byzantines had Greek Fire.

It isn't exactly known were the breach was made.   There are at least two plaques on the wall which claim they mark the spot. 

A model of the Panorama mural.

This was the site that the wall was breached, not that other spot with the exact same plaque.

This was our leader, who did a great job

Proof I was there.

The tour ended after dark and I was tired.  It was a good day and a much better tour than the week before.  These tours are expensive, but if this second one was more indicative of the quality of the tour, I can see that they are worth while.