Istanbul, Turkey 06/23/06

Another day in the land of the 7 churches! Just a little fact about Turkey, 99% of the population is Muslim. The Christians that used to live here were killed many years ago and the rest fled for their lives. The only thing that remains are the ruins and very few Orthodos churches. There are only about 300,000 new born believers.

Anyway, Friday was another productive day at work. Except for the fact that I over slept! Although, in a way, it was good that I did oversleep because now I feel more rested. I was only late for half an hour. When I got there, I was happy to see everybody working on their assignment. I went over yesterday's lesson again and looked at some new stuff. Then they continued on their assignment. Of course, I was going back and forth to make sure that they were doing everything correctly. God is great! I am seeing results. Everybody is very motivated!

After work, Yani and I went to the ice cream place to watch another game. This is so cool to be watching the soccer world cup in Turkey. I never thought I would do so! The owner gave us a great welcome and everybody that was around him did too. Oh by the way, the ice cream is very good. Cherry, vanilla and chocolate! The game wasn't that great, but the ice cream sure was!

About 7pm, Yani and I made our way to Kadikoy where the hotel is located. We took the Ferry boat to the other side of Istanbul (the European side). We were suppose to meet some of the trainees at 8pm in Istiklal to watch a movie. Istiklal is a long road where people walk. It is not opened to the traffic. I got carried away taking pictures that we took a long time getting there. This city is exciting! (Crossing to the other side, you can see Hagia Sofia, which is the mosque that used to be a church. Well, now it is neither. It's a museum. I will visit it next week sometime. There were other mosques and awesome architectural sites!) We got there on time - Turkish time! (we were 40 minutes late!) We had to go through thousands of people in the streets. It seemed like everybody in Istanbul was walking this street. So it wasn't all my fault!! We had to wait for someone as well, when we got there! We watched Bandidas! Anybody seen the movie? It's not going to win any Oscars any time soon. Watch it when it comes out on video or DVD.
It was great hanging out at the movies in a Turkish Theater!

After the movies, we headed out to a very cool looking place where they had a huge menu on just desserts. So we hung out there for a while. Yes! we missed the football matches tonight! We crossed the sea back to Asia and back to the hotel.