Here's the team at Topkopi Palace. These beautiful tiles are found in many of the mosques, also. 

I have a slow connection, so won't write much.

Greg - we are on for a friendship exchange.  I think they would like us to come next April.  I gave the chairman (Haluk) a cd with a film on KS and some of my brochures.  I will pass on his contact info when I return.  Also have several interests in doing joint projects.  Would be great to do a/some project(s) in conjuction with or before the friendship exchange.  By the way, next year's district conference for 2420 is at the Kremlin Palace hotel in/near Antalya. 

We are a little behind on our web updates.  We have very little free time, unless we stay up til the wee hours (it is 2 am now), especially since coming to Istanbul.  I tried to upload pictures earlier this week, but couldn't get it to work.  The connections are slow and most host families, but not all have internet.  Thanks for all your positive comments about the site.  I've asked the team to make their updates as soon as possible, even if it is from the states, so continue to check it even after we get home. 

Tonight DG Kaya hosted a dinner for us near his summer home at a superb restaurant on the Marmara sea.  My wishes were fulfilled for calamari.  It and the spanish paella were delicato!  Oh, but that was not the main course.  The main dish was blue fish.  Dessert was fruit, chocolate pudding/cake and the Turkish bread pudding served with cream from ox milk.  The GSE team who came to KS was there also.  It was fun to see them again and spend a merry evening with DG Kaya and other Rotarians.  Tomorrow we have a boat ride on the Bosphorous. 

That's it for now!

Michelle

Hello to everyone,

Today we started off the day with a trip to the Koc museum, after which we went to the Suleymaniye Mosque, which was impressive.  After that we visited a Turkish carpet factory which was very interesting as we were able to learn the process they go about for harvesting the silk from cocoon's.  Below is a picture of this process.

We were each given a small piece of silk thread that contained 600 individual silk fibers (each string you see above is one silk fiber).

The last stop on our tour was the Fener Orthodox Patriarch.

Norbert

Thursday, June 3, 2003

Merhaba,

After saying good bye to our host families on Friday we transferred to Istanbul by minibus.  Once there we took a very nice boat to the Princess Islands.  The islands are called the Princess Islands because many years ago when a new family overthrew the throne, the prince and princess would be taken there to live out the rest of their lives (probably as monks).  Thus ensuring that they would never be able to rule again.  On the island we also were able to see the largest wooden building in the world, which many years ago was an orpanage.

When we got back to mainland Istanbul we met up with our new host families and were able to spend a little free time with them.

Saturday we met the Istinye Roteract Club in the morning and they were kind enough to spend the day hosting us.  First off in the morning we went to the Misır Carsisi spice bazaar.  After that we toured the Miniaturk museum which was an outside museum of miniature famous historical sites.  In the afternoon we visited the Sadberk Hanim museum.

Sunday was a free day with families and I, for one, spent the morning and part of the afternoon at Bosphoros University at a reunion celebration.  One of the team members for Istanbul that went to Kansas on the other part of this exchange had graduated from there so I visited it with her.  In the afternoon I visited Akmerkez Mall (recently voted the best mall in Europe).  Surprisingly I didn't find it that different than a mall in America.

That is all for now, talk to you later.

Norbert