ANNA KING
Florence Columnist
It’s hard to complain about life in a Florence Villa. We’ve got the biggest family, the best food and the best location (just ask the students from other programs who we can’t stop from coming back to our house). We’re the only program with a soccer team and the only program to help adopt our director’s first dog. We have a lot for which to be thankful and proud. In all honesty, we live a pretty fabulous life.
Take for example our recent excursion into the antiquities of ancient Anatolia (that’s Turkey to the common folk). Some might say it was a kebab and Starbucks coffee week. Many would attest to a lucrative shopping trip.
We indulged both our Turkish and American taste buds, spent Valentine’s Day with our closest friends and came home with piles of shopping bags. We got to experience a part of the world that few Americans will ever be fortunate enough to enjoy.
We spent Valentine’s Day in Ephesus, the ruins of the Ephesians. We were able to experience the ancient town from its towering library, to its impressive amphitheater and streets made of pure white marble. We also learned how to make Turkish carpets, a specialty of the country, and even helped to extract the silk from the cocoon of a silk worm before touring a Turkish ceramic factory.
Of course, Valentines Day wouldn’t be complete without some romance, and the men in our group serenaded the women received at dinner that night from a group of our boys testified to the love as a family we all feel for each other.
The next few days were a blur of Istanbul, the only city in the world on two continents. Somewhere between the grand bazaar, the Blue Mosque, the Ayasofya, the harem of the Topkapi Palace and the Hippodrome we lost ourselves in the world of the Turkish.
We were stopped in our tracks by the call to prayer and were literally halted at the door to remove our shoes in the Blue Mosque to walk across its beautiful carpeting of prayer rugs. We walked out of the Grand Bazaar with bags of Turkish delights, tea, jewelry and souvenirs, convinced that while we were accustomed to the antics of the Italian men, the Turkish were pulling a close second.
We spent an evening in a traditional ancient Turkish bath getting a little spa treatment without clothing or inhibitions. We witnessed the ritual of the whirling dervishes and contemplated how they were able to spin in circles for 30 minutes without getting dizzy. Traveling down the Bosphorus River on a private boat we were able to see not only the parts of Istanbul every tourist sees, but also the places where one really gets to see the nature of the people and the country.
The Asian side of Istanbul was an unique experience, it being a place relatively untouched by tourists but still an intriguing balance between modern and ancient. We learned so much about a culture so completely unlike our own.
The fact that we spent each evening in a restaurant at the top of a hotel with a 360-degree view of the Blue Mosque, the Ayasofya and the center of town was enough for us as a group to realize how amazing our experiences here in Italy and everywhere else we have ventured. This week, just days after returning from an exhausting and exhilarating trip to the east, students are already looking forward toward the biggest week of the year: spring break 2007. In the past two days, hours have been spent not studying for midterms or working out schedules for next year, but feverishly looking up plane tickets and hostel reservations.
Many see spring break as a last effort to not only see a few more sights before heading home, but also to continue to bond as a group while our small but tight overseas family is still intact.
Some students are heading north to Poland, Romania and Eastern Europe to experience the culture there that is hard to find anywhere else. Others are jetting off to England, Scotland and Ireland where the language is oh-so-familiar and the landscape gorgeous in the springtime. Lots of students are making their way to the shores of Barcelona and southern Spain to soak up a little sun and see the amazing Spanish architecture. I’ll be flying down to the Red Sea in Egypt to spend my first spring break relaxing in the sun, snorkeling, riding camels and seeing some pyramids.
02-22-2007