Protest time

Today, I met up with Andrea, who I try to meet up with once a week.  She's a Czech woman who is out of college, but she's thinking about going back to school since she hates her job.  Today, we met a little earlier than planned because she had to go to a demonstration for work.  She works for the government or something, I don't really completely understand her job.  After she helped me a little bit with Czech, she asked me if I wanted to go with her to the protest thing.  It was about something to do with the forests and cutting down trees in the Czech Republic, so I said sure.  It's not an issue that I really care about either way, sure I like forests and all, but I follow politics less here than I do at home and I barely watch news at home.  So, for me, this was just a chance to see what protests are like in Prague.  Since it was mostly people who work in the forests and it's not at all an international issue, they whole thing was in Czech, so I didn't know what was going on at all.  There were maybe one hundred people there at the most, so it was a really small demonstration.  Everyone there was so calm.  It was so cool.  When I think of protests, most of the time I think about thousands of obnoxious people gathering a yelling about issues in DC.  Sure, at this one there was some yelling, but it wasn't bad.  There was only one side of the debate present, so there weren't any fights at all.  But for some reason, there were probably thirty cops there.  When we first got there, there were more cops than protesters, which I thought was kind of funny.  Three different news crews showed up, which is funny considering they were only representing two different stations that show channels.  After the demonstration in front of whatever building we were in front of, they started marching somewhere.  I walked with them for a while, but then we all passed the metro station, so Andrea and I left to catch the train.  Even though I have no idea what the protest was really about, I'm hoping that I can find some news article about it sometime soon, so I can figure out what was going on at the time.  I'm really upset that I didn't bring my camera with me today.  I didn't think that I would need it for my Czech lesson, guess I should have known.  Maybe there will be some cool pictures online from the news groups there soon.  We'll see what happens.

Dresden

Well, I did not make it on the trip to Petrin Hill.  I got mixed up about the meeting place, so I missed the meeting time, but that meant that I was able to get my paperwork done from my passport stuff.  After that, since it was a beautiful day, I went back up to the giant metronome over the city.  I sat up there reading for class and writing postcards to people until sunset.  The sunset was beautiful to see from there, it created a beautiful red glow over the city.  On my way back to the metro, I was able to take some pretty cool shots using a really long exposure over the river, which I really like.  

Yesterday was my trip to Dresden.  The whole time we were there, it was cold and rainy, which made the walking tours not as fun as they could have been.  But, despite that, it was a beautiful city.  Back in WWII, it was horribly bombed, almost completely destroying the city.  There were a few buildings that remained from then, but over all most everything was destroyed.  After the war, they decided to rebuild most of the stuff so that to looked like the originals, which was really cool to see.  Some of the buildings which were brand new, looked just as old as the few that had been standing for long periods of time.  Some of the buildings only got partly destroyed, so they fixed them.  These have obvious patches made into the building, which are also really interesting to see.  Also, one of the buildings that was there, is the Semper Opera house.  It was one of the ones that was destroyed during WWII, but it was so important historically that they rebuilt it to the same floor plan.  According to Z, our guide, this is the most important opera house in the world.  He said that all the other opera houses in this part of Europe are based off of this opera house and that if you ever get a chance to perform there, you would be able to easily perform at any other opera house in the world.  Since I don't really know much about opera, I had never seen one until I got here, I had never heard of it before the trip yesterday.  I am just going to have to talk to someone who knows something about opera and see what they say about it sometime.  Overall, it was a pretty cool trip to a city that seemed really nice from my first impression.  I wish that we had more time to spend there, so I would be able to explore the city a little more and actually get to see the sites when the weather was nice.

Opera

I figure, after that last super long entry, I'll write a shorter one to make up for it.  Here goes...

As part of the AIFS Programs, there are cultural programs that I can sign up for each week.  This week, one of them was going to the opera to see Don Giovanni at the Estates Theater.  The cool part about that, other than getting to go to the opera for free, is the history of that opera.  After writing it, Mozart first showed this opera at the Estates Theater.  According to Wikipedia, it is the only theater left standing where Mozart ever performed.  The show was kind of ridiculous and not at all as serious as I was thinking it would be.  When I think of opera, I think of something that's kind of boring and dry because that's what I've been told about it my whole life.  Don Giovanni is actually kind of funny, but there are some pretty serious elements to the story as well.

Today and tomorrow, I'm going to be doing some other cultural events with AIFS.  Today, there's a trip to Petrin Hill and tomorrow I'm going to Dresden.  Both of which I'm really looking forward to.

A Whole New World

This past weekend was one of the most interesting experiences of my whole life.  It was the craziest, most fantastic time I have had in a long time.

To start my story off, I'll begin with about midnight on Wednesday night.  I was packing for my flight to Istanbul at 11:15am on Thursday.  I had my suitcase all packed (only halfway full, of course, so I'd have room for all the stuff I was planning on buying in Turkey), when I went to grab my passport.  All of a sudden, I noticed that it was not where it should be.  I then remembered that I had left it in a package, which had been leaning on my desk, which is also right next to where the trash can is located.  What I believe happened was that the cleaning woman saw the empty looking package next to the trashcan and thought it was trash and threw it out at some point.  When I started looking for it, I literally looked in every drawer of my room, in every pocket of my suitcases, and and in between the walls and the unmovable furniture.  It was gone.  So, I thought that it might just be in the trash can down the hall, so I dug through it, found our trash and it wasn't there.  Which means that it had been missing for more than a week, but it's not like you really think about your passport unless you need it, so I hadn't thought about it in a while.  Then I realized that, realistically, I was not going to make it to Istanbul the next day.  My only chance was to go to the US Embassy in Prague as soon as it opened the next day and pray that they could help me, so that's what I did.  I went there, happened to run into one of the people who work on US passports on my way there, she gave me directions to the place and helped me with everything, and I got everything worked out.  From the embassy, I had to take a tram and then a bus to get to the airport, which was very scary.  Public transportation is never something you want to have to rely on in a hurry, and it was just going to take it's sweet time that morning.  When I finally got to the airport at 10:40, I had to find the check in at an airport that I had never been to before.  When I found it, they told me that, if I had been 3 minutes later, I wouldn't have been able to check in, so I was very lucky.  Getting onto the plane was the most wonderful experience I could have imagined.  I had been preparing myself basically for the past half a day for the fact that I wouldn't make it, but I did.  

Once we landed, we found our bus to the hotel and there was culture shock immediately.  In the airport, they were people doing construction and there were sparks flying from the tools onto the people at the ATMs below and no one seemed to mind it too much.  Of course the people at the ATM weren't happy, but no one seemed to think it was a big deal to have that uncovered.  When we were driving to the hotel, I realized how terrifying the streets of Istanbul are.  We were on a three lane highway and there were at least five lanes of traffic, and it's not like they had big traffic lanes to begin with.  Every few minutes, I thought that we were going to get hit or hit someone.  To add to that shock, the bus driver was on his cell phone for the majority of the time.  Once we got off the highway, the bus was navigating down these tiny roads with stone walls on either side.  That bus driver could take the bus places that I would be concerned about taking my car, and I drive a Honda Civic.  

After checking into the hotel, we met in the lobby to go to our first adventure in Istanbul, the Blue Mosque.  After that day, whenever we would go home at the end of the night, the Blue Mosque was our guiding landmark.  From there, it is only a few minutes walk back to our hotel, which was so nice.  In order to enter the Blue Mosque, girls have to be wearing a scarf over their heads and be wearing modest clothing.  By modest clothing, I mean that you have to have your knees and elbows covered, as well as everything in between, and loose pants.  If you did not fulfill these requirements, then they would give you these pieces of cloth to wrap around your body to make you more modest.  Everyone was also required to take their shoes off to enter the Mosque.  Once we were in the mosque, we were all astonished.  It was so beautiful inside.  Every inch was covered in hand made ceramics that were mostly blue and white, with some red accents.  In mosques, they have very low hanging lights, which seemed weird to me at first. We were told that it was because when people pray, sometimes they like to be able to read the Qur'an, so they make the lights so that it is easier for them.  Also, an interesting fact about the Blue Mosque, it is the only mosque, other than in Mecca, that has six minarets.  When it was being built, that's the number that the one in Mecca had so, in order to keep things peaceful, the sultan at the time paid for another one to be built in Mecca.  Overall, I think that it was a great first example of a mosque for me to see.  After the mosque, we went to find a good restaurant and then a bar to hang out at for the night.  We found a cute little hookah bar in the city and chilled there for a few hours.  There was a group of guys there playing traditional Turkish music and dancing.  It was a really nice way to get to know the Turkish culture.

The next day started with a tour of Hagia Sofia, which is a really interesting place.  It is about twice as old as the Blue Mosque, which means that it was first built in 360 AD.  It was so weird to stand in a building that was so full of history.  For the first part of it's history, it was an early church.  During this time, there were beautiful and amazingly intricate mosaics on the walls.  The individual pieces were only an inch or so long, so it looked like a painting, but the building was from before they had the tools to do paintings that would stand the test of time.  When the area was taken over by Muslims, they turned this church into a mosque.  To remove the church like aspects, they covered the mosaics with plaster and covered the walls with beautiful script quoting parts of the Qur'an.  After a long time as a mosque, some sultan decided that the building had too much historical significance to be used anymore as a house of worship, so he turned it into the museum that it is today.  They removed the plaster from the art and opened it up for anyone to see, as long as the pay the entrance fee.  The coolest parts were the area where the alters were located.  There is a huge mosaic of the Virgin Mary near the ceiling of the building and then, on the floor directly below it, there is the Muslim alter facing Mecca.  I thought that it was very interesting that these two things just happened to be located in the exact same place in the building.  Also, there were a lot of quatrefoil shapes used in the various decorations in the building, which is something that I always find interesting, since it's Phi Mu's symbol.  The other amazing thing to see there was the old graffiti that they had in the stone.  Back in the day, the vikings came to visit church and one guy carved his name into the stone, along with some other stuff that is now impossible to read.  The carvings have been traced back to the 9th century, which is just hard for me to imagine.  It makes me wonder if there's any way that that guy could have know that centuries would pass and someday his graffiti would someday be part of an exhibit in a museum.  

From there, we walked a few minutes and got to the Topkapi Palace.  This palace was the home of the Ottoman sultans for about 400 years.  For the majority of the trip, we didn't have to pay any entrance fees or anything like that, but here there was an optional tour we could take, but we had to pay for it.  At first, I had a little bit of a debate with myself about it, but then I realized that there probably wouldn't be many chances for me to see an Ottoman Sultan's harem in my life, so I decided to go for it.  It was fascinating.  In this area, there were hundred of women, once there were around one thousand two hundred, living without ever being able to leave.  Every day or so, the sultan would come and pick out who he wanted for the day and the rest would just have to stay there with the other women and sultan's kids.  The other really cool area of this palace was the area with the stuff from the Prophet [Mohammed].  There was a whole building devoted to religious artifacts, not only from the Muslim faith.  They had things like the staff of Moses, as well as a piece of the Prophet's beard.  It seems weird to me that people collect these things, and I don't know if I actually have any reason to believe that any of them are legitimate, but whatever.  As long as it's making some people somewhere happy and they don't get too crazy about it, who cares?  After that, we had the rest of the day to explore the area.  I wandered with some people and found food and then went back to the hotel for a little relaxation.  That evening, my friend and I wandered around the city and it was an interesting experience to say the least.  We were planning to go see the Grand Bazaar right before it closed for the day, but we missed it by about half an hour, so we were just wandering around.  One of the guys working at a local restaurant decided that he was interested in my friend, so he invited us to sit down and have some free tea.  Being college kids, we said sure, free anything is always good.  We figured that they would probably want us to buy some food, but it was close enough to dinner time that we didn't mind.  Turns out that we were wrong, they guy wasn't trying to get us to buy stuff, he just wanted to ask her out.  He kept giving us free tea and then chocolate until we agreed to think about coming back that night to go out and get a drink with him and his friend, but once we told him we'd think about it, he got really creepy really fast.  We decided that we would hide out in a kind of underground store when the restaurant closed, so he couldn't find us.  It was a nice little store, but this time it was my turn to get hit on.  The store owner, who was probably close to forty years old, decided that I was his "special sweetheart" and told us to make ourselves at home in his store.  He brought us more free tea [free tea's always a good thing, right?] and told us to sit down and relax, he wouldn't pressure us to buy anything.  We probably chilled out in that store for an hour or longer, but finally the guy was just too much for me to handle much longer.  He told us that he'd be closing up the store at eleven that night and that we should come by, so we could get drinks together.  Needless to say, we didn't come back.  We found a cute little restaurant and finally got dinner.  While we were there, every time he came over to talk to us, the old man who seemed to own the place would put his arm around me.  Never before in my life had been around so many touchy-feely strangers.  It was kind of weird to me, which is really saying something considering that I don't have a need for personal space most of the time.  I could not imagine how people who have issues with people touching would handle coming to visit Istanbul.  After dinner, we started wandering back to our hotel.  On the way, some super drunk guy came over to hit on my friend and tried to get us to go drink with him too.  After that, it was just too much for us.  We didn't think we could handle any more random guys hitting on us, so we gave up for the night and just went back to the room.  

The next morning, we started off a little earlier because we wanted to be one of the first tour groups to the Basilica Cistern.  This was a huge underground building that was created to store fresh water.  Although Istanbul is surrounded by water, none of it is freshwater, so they have to ship in water to drink.  In the area, there are a lot of them, I'm not sure the exact number, but most of them aren't open to the public and the Basilica Cistern is the most interesting one.  Not only is it cool to be in a place like that, but in the back corner, there are two Medusa heads made of stone, of course.  No one really knows when or how they got there, which makes them so much more interesting.  There was also one pillar which is covered in Nazar, or Evil Eyes, for protection or good luck.  From there, it was off to every girl's dream, the Grand Bazaar.  This is a huge indoor shopping market with hundreds of vendors.  This is going to sound silly, but it reminded me of Aladdin.  You know the opening scene where the merchant guy is trying to sell the most ridiculous things?  That's what each stand was like.  It was fabulous.  They would get girls' attention by calling out cheesy pick up lines at them and then start selling them things.  As a selling strategy, it was really interesting to watch.  For most girls, it worked the first few times that they heard it.  After hours of that, we moved onto the Spice Bazaar, a miniture version of the Grand Bazaar filled with all kinds of spices, as the name suggests.  Since none of us really cook much here, we didn't stay there too long.  Anyway, we had an important mission to complete that day.  We were going to Asia.  In case you didn't know, Istanbul is the city built on two continents.  All it takes to get to the Asia side is getting a token for the ferry, which costs less than $2, so there's no way that I would miss out on that.  When we got there, we realized that the Asia side was the completely boring.  There's a reason that we weren't going over there with any of the planned stuff.  There was nothing over there that we really wanted to see, so we didn't spend much time in Asia, just enough to say we've been there.  After that, we went back to the hotel to meet up for our walk to Taksim.  We walked through basically the ghetto of Istanbul to get there.  What I would have never known about this huge city is that there is a huge problem with poverty there.  Eva, our guide, told us to watch out in this area we were walking in.  In the city, there are something like 40% [if I remember correctly] of the population of Istanbul who live without running water or electricity in their homes.  This was so sad for me to see.  In the US, we complain about people having to live without having a new cell phone and put them on welfare, yet there are people living in cities of developed countries where they can't even afford to have running water or electricity.  Things like that really put things into perspective.  I, like all Americans, am truly blessed to be able to have the lifestyle that I lead.  People should really think about that kind of stuff before they start complaining about stupid stuff that don't really matter.  There are people in much worse situations, think about that before you cry over something stupid like minor money issues.  And I know that I shouldn't be saying something like that as an economics major, but it's true.  After walking through that area, we got back to a tourist area.  We went up to the top the the Galata Tower.  From the top of this tower, we could see the whole city.  I didn't get any pictures from up there for two main reasons.  First, it was raining and night, so the pictures wouldn't have come out well if I had tried.  Secondly and more importantly, I was kind of freaked out by the height.  Well, not the height so much as the small wet marble walkway with the very short, not stable looking guardrail and people trying to pass me.  As much as I have gotten over my fear of heights, I'm not over it completely yet as I realized from up there.  Without a doubt, I know that dad would have not been able to stand out there for more than a few minutes.  After that, we went and found a cute local bar and just chilled out there for a little while and then went back to the hotel for the night.

The next day was our final day in Istanbul.  We didn't have anything planned, so I wandered the city one last time.  I got some fresh doner for lunch and then found a cute little store to spend my last few Turkish Lira before heading back to Prague.  Since it's not exactly a common currency, it's almost impossible to exchange it here, and I needed one last souvenir and some postcards.  The one thing that I wasn't expecting, was that I had actually started missing Prague while I was gone.  It's really become like home to me, which is good for now, but is going to be hard when I get home.

Classes over for the week

At this point, I know that I'm going to have some serious trouble readjusting to a normal school week.  Right now, it's about 3:00 in the afternoon on Wednesday, and I have finished all my classes for the week.  Sure, my classes are all three hours long when I have them, but we always have a break halfway through, so it's not too painful.  But having a four day weekend every week makes the longest classes completely worth while.  Since my last update, I have had my Language, Culture, and Social Cognition class and Recent Economic Developments yesterday and then I had Utopia East and West: the Sixties to the Present class.  On Wednesdays, I have started having a meeting with a Czech guy who is teaching me more about the Czech culture and the language.

For the rest of the day, I have to start getting ready for my big weekend plans.  Tomorrow, I'm flying out of Prague for the weekend and going to Istanbul!  This is the trip that I have been the most excited for this whole time.  Ever since I got a job at a Turkish restaurant back at home, I have had people telling me how much I need to go to Turkey someday, but I had figured that wasn't very likely to happen.  Right before I left for Prague, I got an email from ECES saying that they were planning a trip to Istanbul.  Ever since I got that email, I've been looking forward to that trip.  I'm not planning on bringing my computer with me on the trip, so don't be surprised when there's not an update for a few days.  I just don't want to have to deal with worrying about leaving my laptop in my room or something while I'm out seeing all there is to see in Istanbul.  Depending on how much I'm worn out from the trip, I'll probably update this on Sunday night, when I get back to Prague.

Just a normal day in Prague

Updating every other day is going to end up being a lot of updates.  Yesterday, I had my normal Sunday, which consists of sleeping in and then going to a nice little cafe to read and do homework.  I went to this cute cafe right by the main building of the school and just sat there for a while reading.  It was nice.

Today, I had my standard Monday.  Before class, I go to a local high school to help out with an English class.  Since I'm a native speaker, talking to me helps improve their English and understand what people with an American accent sound like.  This is one of my favorite things to do while I'm here.  I love it because I feel like I've actually helping out and I love volunteering, which I know sounds really cheesy.  After that, I have less than an hour before my only class on Monday, which is Alternative Culture: Literature, Music, and Lifestyles.  This class is pretty cool most of the time.  Today, we talked about underground poetry and spent most of the class reading different poems and talking about them.  One of my favorites from the class was:

i should be able to discern
i could have learnt a lot by now
masses of people with the same question
"why"?
i have never been able to answer
this question
and why not?
echoes the answer
~Pavel Z

For some reason, this poem really speaks to me.  Since I've been here, a lot of people have asked me why I chose to come to the Czech Republic to study, and this poem seems to perfectly answer that.  I'm not quite sure why I decided so intently to come here, I know that the program sounded amazing, but since I've been here, I haven't doubted that I made the right choice.

Second Entry This Week

In addition to updating this more frequently, I am also putting my pictures up more.  For those of you who don't know where to find them or didn't know I do that or whatever, you can find my photos at http://davidritch.smugmug.com/Becki-1

In my last entry, I forgot to mention going to see the astronomical clock on it's anniversary.  Last year, the clock was 600 years old, so they did this whole huge video projection on the clock which told the history of it and all that fun stuff.  Since it was so popular, they decided to redo the video projection again this year.  It was mostly the same video as last year, but it was amazing to be able to see it in person.  This is the official video from the show last year, what I saw was pretty similar to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4LVEAiZJyg&feature=related

Since my last entry, two days ago, I haven't done too much.  Yesterday, I was planning on visiting Josefov.  When I got there, it cost money to get to see most of the stuff that I was interested in, so I ended up just wandering around the city.  The interesting thing that I found was an interesting Catholic church.  In the church, they had a statue of the baby Jesus and people had made him clothes and different people would send in their outfit for him.  It seemed really weird to me, the whole idea of playing dress up with a baby Jesus.  But I guess to each their own.

Today, I went to the huge Metronome that's above the above the city.  Back in the days of the Communist era, there was a statue of Stalin there, seemingly watching the city.  When the statue was torn down, they replaced it with a huge metronome.  I don't know the meaning behind the metronome, but it's pretty awesome looking.  From there, you can see the whole city of Prague and there's a nice little park area.  When I was up there, I was able to relax and spend some time doing readings for my classes and just enjoy the beautiful weather.

Laundry Day

I know that's it been forever since I actually did an update on this thing, but I'm going to work on getting better about that.  Right now, I'm sitting in the laundry mat and I'm going to be here for a few hours, so I might as well write something here.  For the past month, I have really been getting used to everyday life in Prague.  It no longer seems weird to me that I see a castle whenever I leave my building for classes.  Cobblestone everywhere seems like the way everything's always been.

Since my last update, so much has happened.  I had two full weeks of Czech intensive.  One day, after class, we went to the Cubism Museum, which was pretty cool.  During those weeks, most of the time, I would wake up at some late morning time and then go wander the city for a while.  It was so cool to see the different parts of the city and get to know the areas near the school.  After classes, some of the days, we went to see interesting things around the city.  One day after class, we went on a walk to a cafe and on the way, we stopped by the Kafka Museum.  We didn't go inside, but we looked at the statues outside, which are done by this very offensive artist who has controversial statues all over Prague.  They are so interesting to see his different statues.

One morning, a couple of my friends and I woke up super early to see the sunrise on Charles Bridge.  We were so excited to see how amazing it was going to be, but we forgot that Prague doesn't have pretty sunrises yet.  It was still too cold and gross out for the sun to be pretty.  We waited and all we saw was the sky going from dark to somewhat lighter grays.  When we gave up on it being pretty, we went to take the metro to some place to explore, but the metro was not working.  Apparently, two of the cars had disconnected while they were driving.  I don't know if anyone got hurt or anything, but the whole metro closed, all three lines.  It was so weird to see.  The nice thing about that was that it forced us to actually figure out how to use the trams in order to get back home to the dorm.

The other big thing that I have done recently is going to the Prague Zoo.  According to Forbes Magazine when they ranked the zoos in the world, Prague Zoo was in the top 10 best zoos.  It was an amazing zoo with animals that I had never seen before, but I couldn't read what they were because all the signs were just in Czech.  There was a part where they had bats that could fly out at people, which freaked some people out a lot.  There weren't any signs or anything, so no one knew that the bats could fly out until they were just a few inches away from your face in the dark room.

After Czech class ended, it was time for the normal semester classes to start up.  This semester, I'm taking four classes.  On Mondays, I have Alternative Culture: Literature, Music, and Lifestyles.  This class is pretty awesome, we're learning about the history of the Underground movement in the Czech Republic and how it's political influence helped bring down the communist regime.  Most Monday mornings, I have also been going up to this local high school to volunteer.  They have us going to the English classes so that the students can get better at their English by talking to a native speaker.  On Tuesdays, I have to wake up super early for my class starting at 9:00 am.  My days start off with Language, Culture, and Social Cognition.  The class is a mixture of anthropology, linguistics, and psychology and there are Czech students and other international students from the United States, Canada, and from all over Europe.  From that class, I have a nice long break, so I wander around for a while and get lunch somewhere.  In the afternoon, I have Recent Economic Developments, which is a class about the economic developments of the Czech Republic and the transition from communism to the current system.  On Wednesdays, I have Utopia East and West: the Sixties to the present, which is kind of an interesting class.  Personally, I don't think I really like most of the stuff that we have been reading, but hopefully I'll start liking more of the stuff as the semester goes on.  And there's the whole issue that most of the earlier Utopian readings we're doing from the East are basically Soviet propaganda, which I just find annoying.  I don't agree with communism, I don't believe it's ever a good idea, and no amount of literature is going to change that.  After that class ends, which is around noon, my weekend starts.  Every week, I have a four day weekend, so I can spend lots of time exploring the city and traveling.

The one thing that I have started getting involved with is this program called Tandem.  It's a language exchange program.  I put my name and email address up on this board and have been getting emails from a bunch of local Czech people who want to talk to a native English speaker to improve their English and in return, they help me learn a little more Czech.  Most of the time, the people I meet with have been in Prague longer than I have, so they show me interesting places that I wouldn't have probably found on my own during my time here.

I'm sure that there are other things that I should be writing about, but at the moment, this is all I can think about to write.  Since it's lent, I'm going to make myself update this at least every other day, at least for the times that I can.  When I go away on weekend trips, I'm probably not going to be bringing my computer, so I can't update then.  Next weekend, I'm going to be on a trip to Istanbul, which I am super excited about and then I have trips every other week for the next few weeks.