I cant believe that I have one week left in Istanbul. Before I leave here I will do a blog more about leaving but right now Ill give a little recap of Friday and Saturday and so far for today.

Friday (which feels like an eternity ago) was a productive day. We had class from 9-12 as usual and all ate lunch on campus together. Later that afternoon Robyn Kelsey and Miles were meeting up with Said to go to the turkish bath. Those of us not wanting to do that were going to meet at 630 in front of the Blue Mosque to walk to meet the other group at 700 so we could go to the sema at 730. Got that? Colleen and myself decided to go into the city to maybe get some shopping doen since our last week here is super full and really this weekend is our only time to get that done. We met up at 2:00 to catch the bus. The bus ride to the Kadikoy ferry station was fun. Our seat that we were sitting on was broke so everytime the breaks were hit or the gas hit hard (which both are constant) we rocked back or forward. We were cracking up the whole time and pretending to put our arms in the air like a rollercoaster. Very entertaining. We went and caught the ferry and decided to reward ourselves with an icecream bar on the ferry. I got a coconut icecream coated in chocolate bar soooo yummy. Once we got to the other side we were roasting. We walked up towards the blue mosque to the shops along the street near there. We kept popping in and out of shops trying to cool off we were so hot and sweaty even though no where has air its cooler in the shops still. We ended up not finding the shop we wanted so decided to turn around and walk the other way. We ran into the calvary bazaar which we are schedualed to go to this coming week. We decided to just walk through anyway. This bazaar is mostly carpets, ceramics, and scarves. We found the most beautiful scarves here types weve never seen before so of course we each left with a few! The first scarf shop we went to was ceiling to floor full of scarves. He kept pulling them out to show us, made us some apple tea for while we looked. We both found scarves we liked there but decided to look around first to find a better price at another shop. After searching and searching we entered what would be our last scarf shop. This guy looked at me and told me to model the scarves so he started putting this one scarf on me all these different ways. "you could be muslim woman" and he put it around my head. Colleen quickly grabbed my bags and we ran out. We ended up going back the first shop and buying from him go figure! After the bazaar we were hungry and it was 5:00 already and we had to meet at 6:30. we were pretty close to Lucians favorite place to eat so figured why not! Right after we ordered here come Lucian Pete and Brittney so they joined us. We sat and had a great dinner and conversation and then walked to meet up with the others after their turkish bath. Robyn and Kelsey loved it Miles and Said said they got a beating haha. That night we went to a sema and then the ones who had the turkish bath were hungry after that and they had found a mexican restaurant so we all went there. I was upset that I was still full because Ive been wanting mexican for a long time...oh well it will be even better once i get home.

Yesterday was another nice relaxing day. Everyone spent most of the morning and early afternoon reading for class tomorrow (monday). Myself, Brittney, Robyn, Colleen, and Pete oh and Petes guitar all crammed into a taksi (thats how its spelled here) and drove over to bagdat street to meet up with Said to hang out at the park near the water. Its such a cool place to go to. Its very relaxing and everyone is sitting in theır groups eating drinking playing music and chatting. We found a nice spot to sit and Collee and Said played soccer for a while, the rest of us just sat and hung out Pete played his guitar. While we were sitting there this turkish guy about our age came over and asked Pete if he would want to come over to his group and play. So we decided to go over and hang out with them. They were so nice. Only 2 of them really spoke english the others knew some but very little. I had a nice time talking to two of the girls (they were ones that knew very little english) they kept having to say something to one of the guys for him to translate to me. We are all facebook friends now haha. Pete is meeting up with them wednesday for a jam session and maybe monday night we all might go out together. That part is up in the air still. They were all really nice and it was fun to just sit with people even if you couldnt really communicate with them. The girls were trying to teach me turkish, one of the guys was playing Petes guitar and they all were singing Turkish songs to us. It was a great way to end the night and start our last week here.

Today so far basically has just been reading, talking, and playing with dogs!!! Yep thats it pretty much. Tomorrow is class and trying to go to a mosque we couldnt get into the first time we went. Its the mosque that is the first one designed my a woman. So I really hope we can get in. Then I think some of us are going last minute shopping before our crazy last week starts.