Other fun

Here's a photo of our trip to Turkuazoo, the aquarium where the students watched kids and families.

The classic set up group photo common to a lot of amusement parks in the US is here too.

I think this trip was also interesting to the students because the aquarium is adjacent to a suburban mall.  Going to a mall in the suburbs is not an unusual activity for our students, but doing so in Istanbul provided a bit of a cultural jolt for them.  They had gotten used to seeing ancient monuments and historic sites, and it was good for them to also see that this is a modern active city with brand-name goods and malls and IKEA stores.  Sometimes when you are living in the midst of history it's easy to forget the modern people live here with contemporary needs and desires.  This issue of living in an ancient city with the parallel problems of preserving the past and meeting modern needs is one of the themes we've discussed while we've been here.  Transportation is a huge issue here, because there are 16-20 million people living here (depending on how you count the city's population), and they are surrounded by irreplaceable historical sites.  You can't just put a freeway through the Aya Sofya, but you also can't ignore the very real traffic congestion here.  This problem has been brought sharply into focus by the attempt to build a tunnel under the Bosphorus.  The tunnel would alleviate a lot of the congestion on the two bridges between Asia and Europe in the city, but it also requires excavation and reuse of a patch of land on each side of the Bosphorus.  On both sides, the excavation has uncovered significant archaeological finds, and the city has allowed extra time for archaeologists to document and remove as much of this as is possible.  Nevertheless, the city is in desperate need of the tunnel, and the construction will need to continue at some point.

IKEA - The writing underneath says "Everything for your home"