Imagine my surprise at showing up for my 5th-6th grade Thursday afternoon prepared to teach adverbs of frequency and time prepositions… And learning that actually, I am accompanying the students on a field trip to the Adana Cinema Museum. Surprise! Welcome to my job.

The museum was small. It’s fairly new (i.e. none of the other teachers had ever been to it or even heard of it) and was a pristine three story building attached to an old, dilapidated building that looked like it was very much on its last legs. I was a bit hesitant going in for that reason, but I ended up following the thirty or so 11 year olds (who were not frightened at all) into the building.

We saw three or four different rooms, all of which were filled with photos of famous actors from Adana and movie posters. After a few lectures in Turkish (Gul thankfully translated for me!!), the kids did slits in which they asked each other questions like “what is your favorite kind of film?” and “who is your favorite actor or actress?” They were cute 🙂 Then it was back to the school so the students could go home.

And then… It was off to Istanbul! One of my best friends from middle school/high school, Kelly, was in town for five days and we had planned on me joining her and her friends for a night. I raced home to pack and lesson plan and then it was off to the airport. I got SUPER lucky and my Ahmet’s brother, Mehmet, was on my flight, so Ahmet drove us to the airport and then Mehmet helped me get from the airport to my hostel. Such luck!

I got to the hostel around 1:30 am to say a quick hello to Kelly and her friend Joann (their third friend Yerin was already long asleep) and then I headed to my room to pass out. A short five hours later, we got up, showered, and headed out to breakfast. Our awesome hostel (€11 per night) offered free breakfast, so we filled up and then were on out way! We headed straight to the Bosphorus, in search of a Bosphorus cruise tour. We found one for a mere 20 tl, and decided that was good. Not going to lie — the “cruise ship” left a bit to be desired and I wish we’d had a tour guide to point out the sights to us, but I can’t complain about it too much. Istanbul is absolutely gorgeous, whether viewed from the land, air, or sea. The cruise was relaxing, gave Kelly and I ample time to catch up on each others’ lives, and see some beautiful buildings. There are so many large mosques in Turkey, and they stand out dramatically against the other buildings and bridges to create a very unique skyline (unique, at least, compared to other skylines I have seen and am used to).

Unfortunately, Joann was not a big fan as she got majorly motion sick, so we were happy when the trip was over. We were hungry, so we headed down to the water to grab fresh fish sandwiches. It was awesome! Such fresh fish, so delicious. We then set back towards the hotel, taking a quick detour through the Spice market, and immediately (somehow) got lost in the Grand Bazaar.

After getting lost in the Grand bazaar for an hour, we finally got directions on how to get out and realized we were 15 minutes away from our hostel. We stopped and got baklava (their first time having fresh baklava!) and the apple tea that the Western coast of Turkey is famous for.

Then we headed back to the hostel to rest for about a half hour before I had to leave (after, of course, a quick photo shoot in front of the Aya Sofia). Exhausted but so happy I came, I left around 3:30 pm, making my total time in Istanbul about… 15 hours. Worth it though!!!