chora, and bogazici univ

i gave up on trying to tie in these two visits. so this post is just going to be divvied up into (1) our trip to chora monastery, and (2) my visit to bogazici university, my school for the fall. as always, thanks for tuning in!

first up, CHORA! this monastery has been beautifully restored. it is "cok" (hahaha pardon the pun!) full of amazing mosaics and frescoes, some examples of which i've included here:

above: mary's ascension.
below: the classic parable of jesus turning water into wine, and then a large mosaic of christ. the walls were covered in all these parables -- so cool to see them in mosaic form!

part two: bogazici!!!!!! this has been a long-awaited venture! i begin school here in the fall (september), and after a year of looking at pictures from catalogues, i finally made it out to the campus in person.

the morning was full of little glitches, but thank goodness for yasemin smoothing them all out! what would i do without our wonderful, hilarious coordinator and our new friend!!? anyways yasemin made everything okay, and before i knew it, we were on the 43R on the way to bogazici. yasemin's nephew's friend gukhan was amazingly kind to meet us for the day. he lives very close to bogazici, and despite the fact that he doesn't speak much english, he had no idea who i was, and definitely has better things to do with his life, gave up his whole day to show us around!
so, we made it to the university, and past these gates:



there is a beautiful but sort of long descent from the entrance to the main campus (south campus). along the way, some great views of the bogazici and the cove of bebek. note the green-roofed houses -- it belongs to the owner of turkcell (THHHEEE cell phone company in turkey).
yasemin and her two energetic daughters!

after the descent, you enter into the main campus -- this is the view:

and now, some sort-of-corny pics with me and buildings i like.

"my" building -- the faculty of arts and sciences. i was so sad that it was closed, but obviously it was a saturday and no one was there. i'm really looking forward to seeing this all again this week, hopefully with professor kayali!

view from the kennedy lounge. hello, beautiful bosphorus :). last week, i was on the other side of this picture, in the water. this side's pretty, too.

walking the campus was exactly what i needed to picture the next few months here. i've been incredibly nervous about making friends (especially since i don't want to live on campus), but after seeing all the places that people congregate over music, cay, films, art, conversation, i feel soooo much more confident that this six months is going to be full of all the things i want: new friends and intellectual challenges!

i wish i could write more, since there are some things i really want to talk about, but i have a quiz tomorrow and need to get to the reading. so thanks again, hope you like the stories and pictures, and until next time, goodnight from istanbul.