Saturday, October 27, 2007

Pergamon theater

Well, yesterday was my birthday, and I had a really good day. We went to an international craft fair, ate waffles and cookies and pastries, and turns out that some student group was hosting a Tim Burton movie marathon last night, so we did that too. Tonight we've got a Halloween party hosted by our friend (a Grinnell grad) who works at the Embassy. So things are going well.

As to other stuff... Well, classes vary from hard (Greek) to easy (History and Linguistics). Eastern Roman Provinces is the most interesting, and I had trouble with the first test, but I feel like I really had the second one under control. I've started having papers due, but it's no big deal so far. Turkish class is plodding along, and the core course is tedious (because of the stuff we have to read), but only once a week.

I don't have any related pictures to show, so here's my favorite spot from our week-long field trip. This is at Pergamon, on the Acropolis. This first picture is just a nice example of the view. Straight ahead, the ground just drops off, and to the right it almost does, because that's where the theater is.This is a shot of the whole theater. This is just what all the postcards look like. The theater would hold at least 20,000 people. And the view from the seats was great. Since the town center was on top of this huge hill, they didn't have the space for a normal theater, and had to build a steep, narrower theater. It's huge. And absolutely incredible.

This is what I mean by steep. In this picture, I'm standing at the top of the theater, looking down.
Being down at the bottom, looking up at the whole theater, felt really amazing. I got such a great feeling being here, and it was definitely my favorite of all the things we saw.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

My dad cleaned his apartment.

Just wanted to announce it to the world.

Anyway, I got my pictures off my camera, so here's some interesting highlights of September:

Here I am as Hector, while Britt, as Achilles, drags me three times around the walls of the city. Good thing I'm already dead, because otherwise it would be pretty inconvenient to lie down on the dusty, dusty ground.


Similarly, here I am as Aeneas fleeing the destruction of Troy. My father, Anchises, is on my back, and though you can't tell, I'm leading my son Ascanius by the hand. My wife, Creusa, is right behind... Wait! Where did she go!? Oh no! Creusa!

(to all non-nerds, sorry)

Well, just to complete the set, here's a picture from the Asclepion at Pergamon:

In Athenazde, our Greek book, the son, Philip, gets involved in a fight, is hit, and falls over and somehow results in becoming blind. So Dicaeopolis has no choice but to take him to the priests of Asclepius to hopefully be healed. So here we're re-enacting this process, to commemorate our time in Pergamon.

Less esoteric pictures will follow.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Some interesting pictures

My camera's pictures currently won't upload onto my computer, so I don't have any recent pictures to show. So here's a picture of a large Medusa head used as a column base in the old Byzantine (Justinian, I think) cistern. No one's quite sure why there's these two Medusa heads, or where they came from, or why this one is sideways (and the other one is upside down). We went to the cistern the first full day, same day as the Hippodrome.

Zooming forward in time, here is a picture from the Chora Church, which is famous for its many mosaics and frescoes. This mosaic shows the death of Mary. I thought this was particularly interesting because Jesus is holding a baby in his arms--that baby is actually Mary's soul. Weird, huh? I'm not sure when we went to this museum (church), because apparently I neglected to write about it in my journal. But it was a little later.For contrast, here's a lovely mosaic that was once part of the floor of the Great (Byzantine) Palace. It depicts two leopards eating a gazelle (I think). There were a lot of fighting scenes in the mosaics: a lion and an elephant, a deer and a snake, and eagle and a snake, a gryphon and... a horse? I think that's what it looks like.

Anyway, I hope I figure out the pictures soon, and then I can put up pictures from Troy and Pergama, etc. Until then I'll try to post some more random pictures.

Sunday, September 9, 2007

update

Well, here are some pretty pictures that have nothing to do with right now. This picture, for example, is from one of the Prince's Isles, in the Sea of Marmara.
Right now I'm in my dorm room at Bilkent Universitesi in Ankara. Students are free to arrive anytime now, so I don't know when my roommate will show up. This week we joined in the orientation Turkish class (basically the same stuff as our last Turkish class) and went on a field trip to Ataturk's Mausoleum and the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.


This is me eating lunch back at Istanbul Teknik. Looks like this meal today is yoghurt soup (gross), schnitzel (with fries), pilav, and kavun (melon).

This next week orientation continues at Bilkent, and our group also starts our own Turkish class and our core class on Turkey.

Here's me and Kelly, who also goes to Grinnell, eating ice cream. Turkish ice cream is very thick, so that they don't do round scoops, they just use a thing more like a shovel to get a flat chunk of ice cream. It's very good, anyway. I'm eating chocolate and banana in this picture.

Of course, they have lots of other ice creams too. They sell cartons in the grocery store, and lots of ice cream bars and stuff sold everywhere.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Aya Sofia

These pictures are from the Haghia Sophia, which was originally built as a church but later (after the Byzantine Empire was defeated) became a mosque. It was burned down twice, during riots and such, during the Byzantine. At some point, then, it was restored and the mosaics were uncovered. Most of them are Jesus with emperors and empresses. The whole place is very huge. On the wall above the balcony are hung large religious writings, which you can see in the third picture.



Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Hippodrome

The Hippodrome was a long arena/racetrack, with three big columns in the center. This is the brazen column. It is believed to have been cased in bronze, which was then stripped off and stolen during the 4th crusade. It's not in the best shape because of that and because, apparently, the Janissaries used to climb it as a feat of bravery. I believe Constantine erected this tower.
This is the serpentine column, which originally had three serpent heads coming out at the top.





The next one is the Egyptian tower, which Theodosius put in. He took it from Egypt to erect here, but it broke on the way, so is only about a third of its original size. The base has carvings of him and his family at the races.

I would have liked to take a picture to show the length of the Hippodrome, but that's not really possible.

This dome is a fountain put in by Kaiser Wilhelm.

The Hippodrome was connected to the emperor's palace, and at one point there was a big riot, in which lots of people gathered in the Hippodrome and decided to crown their own king. The emperor Justinian wanted to flee, but his wife Theodora convinced him not to, so instead he sent his general out, and 30,000 people trapped in the Hippodrome were killed.

Galata Tower

Our section of the city is Galata, the northeast peninsula, between the Bosphorous and the Marmara Sea. The first night, we hiked up the hill to Galata Tower, from which you can see all over the city.

The dorms where we live are down near the waterfront, so basically wherever we are we just need to go down to find our way back.



Sunday, August 12, 2007

my room


This is my room in the dorms in Istanbul, including the view from my window. Even though there's a mosque right next door, we didn't hear the call to prayer this morning. The first one of the day happens at sunrise, which these days is about 5:30.

I'm rooming right now with Morgan Smith, of Centre College in Kentucky. Profs Kamp and Whittaker are in the room next to us, and everyone else is scattered around either on our floor (4) or the one below it.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Sunday, August 5, 2007

New Blog

This is the new blog--so that I can keep up with Brian and Ashley in the travels-abroad-journals. Today is Sunday, party with the family. Friday I fly off to Istanbul. Hoorah!