Commuting to class, across the Bosporous






Our commute to our partner university, Dogus University (on the Asian side of Istanbul), takes a while. And it takes various forms of transportation - feet, tram, boat, and taxi. But it's worth the haul, especially as we only have 3 such commutes and our last one is next Wednesday.

Today, Itir gave us 2 lectures/presentations. The morning one was on her specialty, Civil-Military relations in Turkey (also her NU dissertation project). Above is a picture of her in class today, under the "ever-watchful eye" of the Founding Father and the 'Spirit' of modern, secular, nationalist Turkey: Kemal Ataturk (literally, father of the Turks). The afternoon presentation was an introduction to the use of cinema to deliver political messages; we viewed a film called "Propaganda", set in 1948 in a small village on the Turkey-Syria border.

The final picture is a panorama of the Blue Mosque/Sultan Ahmed mosque (on left) and Haya Sophia.

Friday, we're "off to the islands", roughly similar to heading to the Vineyard or Nantucket. We'll see ... more on that Friday evening.

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