Phillip and Rebecca Mefford

Okula Gidiyoruz We are Going to School Günaydın. Benim adım Duygu. Senin adın ne? our teacher enthused, methodically holding out her hand to each one of us. Only one guy in our class had been in Turkey less than us (a grand total of two weeks), yet every one of our classmates seemed just as bewildered as we did by the whirlwind of a teacher-by-day, aspiring-actress-by-night, known as Duygu. Although in little time we were able to decipher the fact that she was making an introduction, “Good morning. My name is Duygu. What is your name?”, it would take us weeks to understand the structure of those first few sentences. We have become intimately aware of the fact that Turkish is the language of suffixes, a linguistic phenomenon known as agglutination , which Teach Yourself Turkish simplifies as “sticking bits together.” Another main feature of Turkish is a concept called vowel harmony , which obligates suffixes to take a certain form depending on the last vowel in the root word. One of

Yukarıya Up Looking up is a common theme while walking through İstanbul’s historical district. To name a few structures that raise the eyes: the massive building of Aya Sofia and the towering minarets which also grace every other mosque, the ancient Egyptian Obelisk brought from Luxor, Egypt now in the middle of what used to be the Hippodrome stands at 65 feet tall (although it was originally three times that size), and Çemberlitaş, also known as Constantine’s Column, a 115 foot high column built to inaugurate the new Byzantine capital in AD 330. We are fascinated with all the fortresses, towers, and memorials that speak of the strategic prowess, creativity, and unabashed power this city has hosted for centuries past. Such monuments are reminiscent of the story of the beginning of civilization, before humanity was split into languages and ethnicities; the story of the Tower of Babel. As the people of a solitary culture schemed to build a tower that “reaches Heaven” as a moment to them

Aya Sofia Holy Wisdom After taking a few days to unpack our bags and learn the public transportation basics, our first objective was to see the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. We had read about these two momentous sights for so long that finally being able to tour them was like opening well-wrapped presents from under the Christmas tree. Built in the 530’s A.D. by Emperor Justinian, Hagia Sophia (written in Turkish: Aya Sofia), was the largest church b uilding in the world for roughly 1,000 years. The Byzantine Empire’s greatest architectural achievement was so impressive even to Constantinople’s Ottoman conquerors that since then nearly every mosque has been modeled after its domed structure. This includes Aya Sofia’s next door neighbor, the Blue Mosque (deemed “blue” because of its interior richly inlaid with blue İznik tile, but known in Turkish as: Sultanahmet Camii). Designed by architect, Sedefhar Mehmet Ağa, Sultanahmet Camii was completed for Sultan Ahmet I in 1616. This mo