Change

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Sudden and dramatic change of plans: the people who I was going to go to Syria with--ie. Dan and Kendra chiefly--are no longer going. Still, Dan and I are leaving to go travel to Edirne and Plovdiv (so excited for that!) together for a week tomorrow. Then I am going to London, and then possibly Greece or Berlin. Then I come back and Kendra and I will go to southern Turkey now. I'll be gone for a month still anyway. I've just packed up all my things into the balcony for the month (FTW!) and I'll get up to leave around 8AM. More updates to come, yeah?

I hope to make this next week, after which I probably won't be able to see Dan here again, a chance to meditate on my friendship with him and be around him without worry of some of the things that might have distracted us from it lately. I really love him and I am going to miss him so very much.

Oh yes, I took Kendra on a sort of date yesterday that was pretty fantastic. We went to Chora Church, which is one of the most well-preserved examples of what a Byzantine Orthodox church would have looked like back in the day--ie. pretty beautiful. Then we explored Fatih, a really conservative, old, and religious neighborhood, played with some children we met on the street (speaking to them in Turkish was fun), pawed through buildings that looked like they'd been destroyed by bombs and never rebuilt, climbed on top of the old exterior wall of Constantinople, and then went to dinner at Asitane Restaurant, which serves recipes recovered from the archives of the Ottoman sultans' kitchen staff at Topkapı Palace. It was a pretty beautiful day that I think I'll remember for a long while. If you'd like to see pictures, see the following link:

ttp://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2369416&l=11e1f&id=10738138

Anyway, off I go for the month...

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