Third day in Istanbul

I know several of the students have blog posts prepared and photos they want to share with all of you. Internet access in their apartments is somewhat finicky, so sometimes they are able to access email and sometimes not. I think most of them have been caught up in trying to answer email from family and friends and to upload photos so with limited email access that has been their priority. We went to ice cream tonight for Xander's birthday (which was yesterday, but we were out so late yesterday evening that we decided to postpone the large group ice-cream party). The students were all excited and impressed by the lovely ice cream desserts, and there was a table of ladies nearby who were getting a kick out of watching all of them oooh and aaahh over every dish that arrived.

This morning a small group of us went to a phone store to get cell phone SIM cards. We have had some difficulty getting our phones and getting them working, and we kept hearing a different story about why they didn't work. We finally figured it out today. It became clear that there are a number of laws about cell phone use, including a limit on how many SIM cards can be registered to foreign phones. We have a number of Turkish phones and several world phones from the US. The bottom line is that my passport was caught in an unworkable situation. I had a Turkish phone-SIM card combination registered to my US phone and linked to my passport. The law only allows one phone-SIM card combination to be registered to a foreign phone every 2 years. But the SIM card only lasts 6 months without use before it expires. Reloading the card with more money resets the expiration date and can be done on the internet, but you have to get a message from the Turkish phone company on the phone with a code to type into the website. Unfortunately the phones can't get messages from the Turkish cell phone company in the US, because the cell phone company doesn't serve the US and the messages are only within their system. This means the frequent foreign visitor needs to come more often than every six months (to keep the SIM active) or the SIM won't work and no other SIM can be registered to the phone for 2 years. The bottom line is that to keep your phone working in Turkey you have to do something that's impossible to do when you are outside Turkey, and if you can't, your phone will be unusable when it arrives back in Turkey. It took a long time for us to finally get the whole story straight in a combination of English and Turkish, and eventually it came out that if you are using a Turkish phone you are fine because Turkish phones don't NEED to be registered (of course no one volunteered this solution, probably because it didn't occur to them that this would give us the solution to the problem). Once we finally "got it ," I ran down the street and bought two more Turkish phones for the group to replace the world phones we have been using, and we think things should be OK (unless there are more laws we don't know about).

After we worked out the phone issue, we realized that we were very close to Istanbul's original Turkish delight store, so we stopped in and got Turkish delight, baklava, and much to Matt's delight, marzipan. When Matt asked whether an item in the cabinet was marzipan, the clerk said it was and immediately took out a piece and gave it to Matt to try. Matt's comment was that he had just re-experienced his entire childhood in one bite, and he was thrilled. He ended up buying a bag, with assurances to all of us that he would be going back, and that even if it was a little expensive it was completely worth it. I think Matt has been having an interesting time here, because people are delighted when the find out that his mom is Turkish. Suddenly he is a star or a wandering child come home to the family, and they are ready to welcome him here. Matt has also been somewhat surprised as he has been hearing and learning Turkish words, to realize that some of the family words that he thought were just nicknames are actually Turkish names for things.

Many in our party are wholeheartedly embracing Turkish cuisine. Jon is renewing his love for Ayran (Turkish yogurt drink), and several people have discovered that they like Turkish lentil soup or gozleme (sort of like a quesadilla but with a thinner dough covering - Rebecca, Ruthie, and several others made a detour for the gozleme restaurant today). Sour cherry juice is popular, and everyone loved watching a stew cook in a clay pot over a flaming brazier. I've been very pleased that this is a group who are adventurous and willing to try new things.

I'm looking forward to reading their blog posts and sharing more of our adventure with you.