Thursday, November 27, 2008

Saturday, November 15

I finished reading "Last Train to Istanbul" by Ayse Kulin, my first Turkish novel. It described Turkey's involvement in helping Turkish and non-Turkish Jews escape Hitler and was fascinating. I had no idea about much of the history, and the characters helped to pin some of the history of Turkey to something I could follow more easily than the dry texts that I've tried to read to grasp a bit more of the thousands of years of history that have occurred here. At least now the 1930's-40's are a little more clear in my head, only a few thousand more years to cover!


We all took a cab to Kizilay to explore, and ended up walking to Tunali. It was a Saturday early afternoon, so not the best of timing to be able to explore on our own timing; Kizilay had mobs of people and traffic that made you move to their pace. I guess it was natural for us to move to the edge, and then wander to Tunali since we're not the biggest fans of crowds. We ended up passing the old TED Ankara High School building (they moved to their new facilities in 2002) and we agreed that it was a much welcomed move--they building was small and not big and shiny like the new building.

We also walked around the edge of the biggest mosque in Ankara...I'll have to upload the photos while Brian's not playing online though :-)






Nancy brought over cheesecake to share. Y U M ! !

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