Day 13...finally relaxing!

It was great to get a day off from start to finish. A group of us decided that we would go to the Prince Islands off the coast of Istanbul. The boat ride took about an hour and then another ten minute ride on a smaller boat to get a more private side of the big Island. It cost us only about 20 Lira, which is about $12, for the whole day. We had a beautiful beach. The sand was only in the water, clean and white sand. The water was a deep blue and clear as ever! I could see straight through it, which is great because I hate going into water when I can't see the bottom. Gross and super creepy. There had also been reports of brown jelly fish in the area. Tons of them, so they put nets around the far edges of the beach to prevent people from swimming too far off as well as prevent the jelly fish from entering. It was great. We laid out and got dark. That only took me about 15 minutes. From there we proceeded to play the beach game. The beach game is all about sun bathing, going into the water for about 20 minutes, play splashy, splashy, then get out and sun bath long enough to dry completely, then repeat and get back into the water! Wow! Love it!

It was a great way to spend out 4th of July. You truly appreciate it more when you're not in the country. It carries such a profound meaning at home, no doubt, but when you represent your nation abroad and on its independence day, there's nothing else like it. As we were preparing to leave, a couple of Turkish women sitting next to us started a conversation with us in English. This was both good and bad. Good because it made for easy conversation, but bad because we had just spent 8 hours on this beach next to them, talking about everything from the weather, water, things we liked and didn't like about Turkey, and about the people around us. "Eww...he's ugly. What is she wearing? They are too weird." It is possible that we severely embarrassed ourselves and possible insulted them. They were very sweet and asked us a lot of questions about where we were from and how we liked it. They reminded us that it was the 4th of July...also a good feeling when other people from other countries know your independence day (no one in USA would know Turkey's!).

As we got back on the boat and headed to the university for our last night, we stood by the railing over looking the water and our little island of refuge for the day, watching the sun lower into the sky. Here we were, four Americans, with a great view. It wasn't home, but as we watched the sun sink we knew that it was still floating high in the sky in our homeland.

When we got back to the university Adrienne made a startling discovery. When we first got to the university four days ago, the food and cleaning staff had been dressed in traditional uniforms, but by day five more and more of them were wearing face masks. These were the kind you often saw people in China wearing to protect from the pollution. Why were they wearing them all of a sudden? Was the plague in town? Turns out the masks are meant to protect the Turks from something bigger than the plague...18 teachers traveling from the US of A. Yep, they're worried that we're carrying swine flu so they aren't taking any chances. Its true that tourists have been largely responsible for the spread of this illness, and hopefully none of us have it, but we felt very...isolated by this. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, after all they don't want the flu, but it made us socially aware. Its the same social awareness people get when they start smelling their armpits after someone else has shouted, "Do you smell that?"

Anyways, we take off for the capital, Ankara, tomorrow morning. Relaxation short lived. I'm one step closer to Ataturk's grave. Big stuff.

Happy 4th of July everyone, I miss you.

Quote of the Day:

"Hey are we going to start moving of what?!?!? Yellah, Yellah, people!" - EROCK, as we wait for our ferry to move to the island. We sat on the boat for 20 minutes before anything happened.