Istanbul, Turkey 06/27/06

Tuesday. Wow! I finally got 7 hours of sleep! Last night I did watch the game, which was pretty exciting. However, Australia was sent home early by Italy. I couldn't believe what happened! It was a tie game after the 2 periods were played. 3 minutes of extended time were added. Then, There were only 30 seconds left to go into over time, but Italy scored. I was so disappointed. I guess I will be supporting my other favorite Spain, who plays tomorrow night.

Today was stirring. In the morning, it was about a lot of the effects that the Avid can do. I think all the information was quite overwhelming. However, thank G-d for patience and I was able to redirect them again and there was great understanding of the system. As usual, in order to get them to get a better hold of the subject, they sat down to practice one by one. What a relief! I was pretty happy with the outcome!

After work, Yani had a boy's night out planned out. We crossed the sea by Ferry to the European side. There we made our way to a local cafe to hang out and watch the Brazil vs. Ghana game and to smoke a Turkish water pipe. It was Kari (Finland), Kimmo (Finland), Yani (Finland), Kirk (Colorado) and myself. The only single guys were Yani and myself, so it was quite a night for the married guys.

There are different flavors for the Turkish water pipes such as Capuccino, Banana milk, watermelon, cinnamon, apple, mango, chocolate, etc. So, you inhale and when you actually get smoke in your mouth, you actually get the taste of any of these. We had capuccino and on the base of the pipe instead of water we had milk. They are like Egyptian or Indian hookahs, but in Turkey they're called Margeeleh. Cappuccino, from what they told me later on, is one of the strongest flavors. At the beginning, everytime I inhaled some smoke, I would end up coughing like crazy. I don't know if it wore out a little, but later on I was doing a real good job and was blowing out a lot of smoke. We actually took pictures of all of us blowing out smoke. The challenge was to get a good smoke stream to make it look good for the camera. So it was an interesting experience, but if I don't do it again, I won't be disappointed.

You would never believe what was the coolest thing of this whole experience. Next to where we sat, there was a guy and his girlfriend. To my surprise, the girl, Yeshim, spoke spanish and her boyfriend spoke broken English. They were pretty friendly, so we ended up chatting with them. We talked about Turkey, Istanbul, Ankara, university, work, why we were here, the United States, the war, and of course, Israel. The best part was that I was able to share with her G-d's plan of salvation. I don't know if she understood it because it is hard to witness to somebody who is Muslim. I talked to her about Isa, who is Christ in Turkish. I just hope I at least planted a seed for her to ponder upon. The rest is up to God.

Brazil won and we were able to move on to the next spot which Yani had for us. We headed for Istiklal again. After zig zagging through the endless rush of people in the long pedestrian street for a few minutes, we made our way to the fourth floor on a typical old building to a restaurant called Otantik. It is a place where they serve Authentic Turkish food, hence the name. We prayed for our food, as we always do, trying to keep a good witness in these far away countries, always being thankful to G-d for his provision. I had "Pilic Sharma", which is Chicken Rolls. It was finger-licking good, but I didn't have to lick my fingers. The walls were decorated with carpets and other things that looked like carpet. It was quite appealing. We had a great time just eating and breaking bread together around the table.

The night wasn't over yet. Yani took us back to the Latin Restaurant called Rio Bravo to watch Spain against France. Spain scored first. France tied later on, but at the end it was a disappointed. France beat Spain. However, I didn't let that bring me down. I had had such a great night, I was ecstatic.

Istanbul, Turkey 06/26/06

Monday! Second day of the week already and first day back at work. It was basically just work today. I got to the TV station and we all got back into training. The group was eager to learn and they picked up a lot of things real quick. There are some things that take a while to pick up, specially if the person has never edited before. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the results considering that it is only one week of training. It has been a crash course.

I went home early because my body was finally giving up with the lack of sleep. Istanbul would have to wait a day for me to keep discovering it.