It's Friday, Friday Gotta Get Down On Friday

Sorry I know the last post was really long. Something that I have forgotten to mention in earlier posts is that we have all decided that Linh is a Turkish Pop Star. Because in a lot of place that we went little kids will want to come up and shake her hand and in some places, like the Hagia Sofia, we have had to rescue her from creepy people who want to take pictures with and of her (its been strange).  This doesn't have any relevance to what happens on this day but I thought it was interesting and I had forgotten to mention it earlier. 
We had our first class meetings in the morning. Those were interesting and it was nice to remind ourselves of why we actually came here in the first place. 
After class we took the train (an electric one not a choo choo one) to Taksim Square. (This is the place to be for the locals) We have no idea what we are doing and everything is in Turkish. We only know that we have to take a train and to just get off at the end of the line.  So we find a train, buy a token to get on, and climb aboard.  On the train we are taking about what to do when we get to Taksim.  If I haven't mentioned it before the Turkish people are amazing. Some random guy hears what we are talking about and tells us that the train we are currently on is going to turn around (and go the wrong was at the next stop). So when the train stops he gets off with us and gets us on the right train. That is pretty much what everyone is like in Turkey.  So we are on the train and we get to where the train stops.  We then either have to buy a token to get on the subway to Taksim or walk there. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: if you ever run into the question of walking or metro the answer is always metro! We learned this the hard way. Yep we decided to save the two lira (I don't know if I have put the TL-$ conversions in the blog yet so here it is according to our guide 5 TL=$3.50 and 10 TL=$7) Anyway we should have known our decision was bad when every one we asked for directions to Taksim told us to take the subway. We finally get directions. (Let me mention that Istanbul, like Rome, is built on 7 hills - also random fact Istanbul's animal is the wolf because a wolf, according to legend, took in the founder of the city when he was abandoned as a baby and fed him her milk, making him big and strong. Sound familiar?) Taksim is at the top of one of these hills.  Our entire walk is up hill. At one point we come to a group of stairs, these stairs must be a punishment from Dante's inferno (like how I applied what I'm reading to everyday life). Once you near the top of one group of these stairs another group of stairs looms above you. (I'm gonna say that each group is about 100 steps and there were about 5 groups). When we finally reached the top of the stairs we still had about another 15 minutes of walking up hill before we got to Taksim (the whole walk took about 45 minutes). Needless to say we wanted to sit down and eat before we did anything else. (Also, I don't know if I mentioned it but no one drinks tap water in Turkey. The water won't make you sick or anything like that it just tastes horrible so if you order water at a restaurant they bring you a bottle). In the literal square of Taksim Square (its an area with a square in the center) there was a protest going on. I don't speak Turkish and nobody that I'm with does so I can't tell you what they were protesting but I would assume that it has something to do with the election that was going on then but finished last night (June 12). The authorities were not taking this lightly we saw oodles of police cars, people in uniforms with giant guns, water cannons, and riot vans. Everything was beyond peaceful when we were there I guess they were just being cautious. The longer we were there the more news vans arrived.  We just walked around the shops (clothing stores not souvenir). Taksim is known for its night life but we were there in the afternoon so that's pretty much all we could do.  We also walked by a beautiful church (not a mosque, a church). We took the Metro back to our area of town and did some shopping there.  Ben wanted to go back to the Grand Bazaar to get a scarf for his girlfriend so I went with him. Not much else happened. We packed up that night because we were leaving Istanbul in the morning.