I dropped my heart in Istanbul

Hej again! I'm back and ready to light up your newsfeed. I just returned from a week-long adventure to ISTANBUL with my core class, CDD- Childhood in a Multicultural Context. It was a wee filled with utter ridiculousness, photo-bombing, and baklava.

Here's a shoutout to Mary Sypek for compiling tons of pictures and video clips of our class saying thank you to our teacher, Maja, and the DIS intern who travelled with us, Jen.

somewhere in between Copenhagen and Istanbul!

#awkwardsoloshot

what Istanbul looks like from pretttty far up.

markets at the grand bazaar. They are INCREDIBLE!

note: I definitely did not take all these pictures. Basically, if it looks super artsy and beautiful, it was taken by Corinne, who should probably be deemed the official photographer for our class. 

Turkish coffee! I can honestly say that I have never before had coffee like this... basically, really finely powdered coffee beans are boiled in a pot, then you add sugar before throwing it into a cup and letting the grounds settle. Once you finish, you can flip your cup and then grounds will spell out your fortune! true story. If you're interested in more fun facts about coffee in Turkey (though not necessarily Turkish coffee), then you should click here!

Hagia Sophia- a 1500 year old mosque.

We took a ferry across the Bosphorus for a day trip to Asia! 

my first baklava experience... I don't know if you can tell, but I was pretty excited about it.

The Spice Market! 

It's a magic lamp! At the Grand Bazaar, flirtation is a common method of attracting customers. Shortly before this picture was taken, a nearby man who saw me holding up his lamp offered to be my genie in a bottle (hence why I'm laughing in this picture).
This flirtation is also the inspiration for the title of this post: while meandering through the different shops, men would yell: "Excuse me! You dropped something..." We all turned to look back as the man concluded, "My heart!" I fell for this on FOUR different occasions.. you can't afford not to look back, in case you actually did drop something! We were also called Spice Girls and Charlie's Angels. One person even offered up his brother to be my Turkish boyfriend. Needless to say, it was pretty hysterical.

We also had the crazy awesome opportunity to see a traditional Turkish dance! 

This is in front of the Sultanahmet, also known as the Blue Mosque.

As if all this weren't enough, we also had the opportunity to visit some universities, NGOs, and schools! 

This is Atuturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. He was a huge deal, to say the least; he was responsible for the westernization of Turkey. He secularized the new republic, separating Islamic law from the state. He changed the language of the country from an Arabic script to a Latin script basically overnight. He also was instrumental in increasing women's rights in Turkey. 

From an American perspective, it was fascinating to see how Ataturk is taught in a school setting. It is required by law in Turkey that every classroom, in both public and private settings, have a picture of Ataturk mounted on the wall. He is so integrated into Turkish culture that it's forbidden to criticize Ataturk because you would essentially be criticizing Turkishness itself.

This is what most of my meals consisted of.. even though I'm not totally sure what most of it actually was. This plate was a little unusual though, because generally we would eat all the things shown above, but over 4 courses instead of just piling it all onto one plate. 

I know this post is kind of all over the place, but I hope I've given y'all some sort of idea about just how amazing this last week was. I learned a ton, had an absolute blast, and ate more turkish delight and baklava than I'd care to relate. 

vi ses, y'all :)