Saturday, June 7, 2008

NGO, Sirkeci Train Station, Sufis

Tuesday was a busy day. First we went to meet with a lovely lady who works at an NGO who works with educational and women's issues. She was delighful and did a great job of answering our questions about Sufism. Then she surprised us by saying that they had prepared lunch for us! Yay! She must have heard my stomach growling or she's a mind reader one. They had made lamacun (Turkish pizza) and it was sooo tasty!

Next stop was Sirkeci Train Station for Emily and Kristina's site presentation. Although we had briefly been in the station on Monday (bc we took the train to get to Yedikule to walk the walls the day before) it was still interesting to see the rooms. We started outside with learning some of the history then we went into the museum to look at some railway items. Kristina and Emily treated us to cay at the cafe in the station. There we discussed our favorite parts of the article they had assigned from the Washington Post which had alot of cool anecdotal stories about the Orient Express in it's hayday.

From here we had some free time, during which Edward and I asked Yekta to go with us to Gedikpasa hamami to help us make some arrangements for Friday's visit, aka try to get a discount, which we did get thanks to Yekta : ). Then we went to a TarTar music session. We were led us to a room on the third floor and took a seat in a room full of awesome instruments, many of which I had never seen the likes of. The musicians came, played, and hande dout music. I was sitting next to one of the cutest little girls and kept having her help me play the drum they had passed to me. Her mom eventually switched places with her daughter and began speaking to me in english. She helped me keep my place in the music and gave me some advice about how to get more "involved" with the music by closing my eyes and swaying. She was so nice and helpful and made me feel very comfortable. After quite a few songs, a dirvish came out and began his worship ceremony. It was amazing to see a legitimate performance, and we all knew that it was a once in a lifetime experience. Then to top it all of it was the main guys birthday and the group invited us to stay for dinner. So we did and it was tasty. After dinner they began dancing and pulled us up to start dancing. I was hestiant at first but then I thought "what the heck, I'm only gonna be here dancing with Sufis once" so I got up and danced. Edward was given a fez by the dervish to wear while dancing, David put it on too. Classic. Then the dervished started shimming and I was cracking up. It was a great time, I'm sure Prof. Shields got a kick out of seeing us all dancing like crazy people when she came back up from helping wash the dishes. What a great experience!

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