By sturtle7
By sturtle7
By sturtle7
Hola friends! I am now into my third week abroad in Istanbul which is both an amazing yet disorienting feeling. In a sense I feel like I have been here for much longer but when I Skype my friends back home I realize that my arrival was only moments ago. Leaving my community back home is obviously a difficult transition but I am so grateful for the community I am beginning to build here. I can already say it has brought much comfort to living everyday life in which most encounters often involve people being shocked I am American, asking "no really where are you from," and leaving me frustrated that I sometimes live in a dual world of being American and Egyptian but in the eyes of some never fully being either. Below are some of my favorite things about my community:
The Bosphorus: Much like the Lincoln Memorial or the Washington Monument, the Bosphorus has easily become one of my favorite places to spend my time when I am stressed or need something to leave me in awe of where I am at the moment.
The Mosques: As a muslim, my religion is extremely important to me. It is so beautiful to me to be able to hear the call to prayer five times a day and know that a mosque is only steps from where I am from.
By sturtle7
Hello! Welcome to my first blog! My name is Sherin Nassar, a junior majoring in International Affairs and Economics! This semester I am studying abroad in Istanbul, Turkey! I am so excited for this journey because I firmly believe it will lead me to a greater understand on myself.
This blog post revolves around identity-how we each view ourselves and how in return people see us. This past year, I've learned my identity changes with each challenge I take on. I see myself as ambitious, always wanting to take on more to see how I can further develop. These ambitions are firmly rooted in my parents' immigrant background. They come over twenty five years ago from Egypt in search of the American dream. Their pursuits and passions as well as their hard work are ingrained into who I am today: someone not only looking to make them proud but to make people believe that the future is truly yours for the taking. ...continue reading "Lost in translation"
One of the amazing things about my abroad program is that twice during the semester all 19 of us pick up and travel to another country for a week. This past week I spent my time in Istanbul, Turkey and it was incredible. Our time consisted of lectures from impressive university faculty, tours of the historic areas and free time to explore on our own.
Istanbul is one of the most different places I have ever been. In the moments when the entire city was engulfed by the call to prayer being played from each of the more than three thousand mosques I felt the need to stop, listen and absorb the environment around me. The uniqueness of Istanbul's complex history was especially apparent when I was standing in a Greek church and the call to prayer began, echoing off the walls and highlighting one of the things that makes Istanbul so intriguing and beautiful.
It's a cosmopolitan center where religion, culture and history have overlapped for centuries. The depth of Istanbul's past is almost unfathomable. Walking through the Basilica Cistern, Hagia Sofia and old, but operating, bazaars puts you directly in contact with Istanbul's history, but it's still hard to comprehend that this is a place that has functioned as a city since the 600s BC and served as the capital for three empires - Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman. Clearly with so much history and so many sites to see I was happy to have an entire week to explore, but my time here could have easily been extended.
Now it's time to return to normal class schedules after a week of midterms and a week of adventuring. While this would normally be the moment to interject an objection to returning to school, homework and extensive reading requirements, I'm surprisingly excited to continue my schedule. All the classes offered aim to relate, compare and discuss common ideas and principles between metropolitan centers. After this week I definitely have a lot I'd like to discuss.
Just a three hour flight and we touched down in Istanbul, Turkey for a well-deserved Spring Break.
Not only was this a break from the daily routine in Jordan, but it was also a break from the intense language pledge and homework we have been receiving.
We [my program friends and I] chose Turkey because it was a quick escape for a little money. Istanbul is also a ‘must-see’ city with the best of European and Arab cultures. It has the best of both worlds half of Istanbul on the Asian continent and half on the European continent. Everything about this week has been so different from my time in Jordan.
There are more colors, the water and air are clearer, there is a running body of water nearby, and Istanbul—as a tourist city—is used to foreigners. In a way, I began to compare Amman to Istanbul, not wanting to leave beautiful, historic, clean Istanbul or dusty, dirty, old Amman, but then I realized there is something Amman has that Istanbul doesn’t.
I have been told by many Jordanians and fellow classmates that in order to like Amman and live here you have to experience Amman by night and make friends with locals. After one week in Istanbul I missed all my new Jordanian friends. Sometimes it’s not the place you go to, but the people you meet that makes your time worthwhile.
So as I got back on the plane today with a bittersweet feeling of sadly leaving my relaxing Spring Break destination and only ready and prepared to take on the rest of my semester abroad, I realized my time is half way through and I feel I still have so much to learn.
After walking through a small garden of insignificant ruins, we stood in a group of about 20 others, who had just made their way from the nearby mosque to the entrance ot the cave that stood before us. The guard opened the door, and we crowded in to a small, hot room filled with small pieces of ancient pottery, and also body odor. A man started reciting a memorized script and gesturing to the 7 sarcophagus-shaped holes in the stone floors around the room. I think he was saying something like this:
The Seven Sleepers, commonly called the "Seven Sleepers of Ephesus", refers to a group of Christian youths who hid inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus* around 250 AD, to escape a persecution of Christians being conducted during the reign of the Romanemperor Decius. Another version is that Decius ordered them imprisoned in 
a closed cave to die there as punishment for being Christians. Having fallen asleep inside the cave, they purportedly awoke approximately 180 years later during the reign of Theodosius II, following which they were reportedly seen by the people of the now-Christian city before dying.
Muslims firmly believe in the story as it is mentioned in the Qur'an; however, some aspects of the story are not covered in its account, including the exact location of the cave. Some allege that it is in Ephesus, Turkey; others cite a place near Amman, Jordan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sleepers)
So I went to the place near Amman on Saturday with a couple friends from my program and a new friend—the manager of a restaurant we frequent called Talielet Baladna (between 2nd and 3rd circles if you ever go). Yeah, we frequent a cafe. I've been wanted to find a bar to frequent for over a year now, but I never found one in DC cheap or cool enough to turn into my own personal set of Cheers. But I digress. The cave was pretty neat, but I really enjoyed touring the accompanying mosque more. I've actually never witnessed an Islamic worship service. It wasn't so different from other services I've been to. There was kneeling, listening to a dude up front, standing up, praying, kneeling, dude says more stuff. It was kind of meditative to chill in the green (a rare color here) of the garden and the singing of Koran verses.
Admittedly, this week was not packed with cultural insights, but I'm going to attribute that to the fact the I mostly stayed indoors to study for a final (one of our classes is super intense for like a week and then there's a final), and two quizzes. This weekend is our program-wide trip to Petra/Wadi Rum. Hopefully I'll have something a little more exciting than a Wikipedia article upon my return. You can at least count on some camel pics, for sure.
