first day exploring

I finally got to explore a little bit of the city today. We started off with a turkish meal in the cafe of the Superdorm for breakfast. Afterwards, we met up with a girl from Belgium and walked up to the rich part of town (according to some turkish kids, our school is in the "Beverly Hills of Istanbul") to find a money exchange office. We passed a porsche dealer, bmw, vw, and some other realy expensive looking automotive dealers. I saw a starbucks and a McDonalds Delivery motorbike. It was exciting! The 5 of us (rick, bj, rana, and sandra) walked into this really expensive mall. I took a picture of the KFC! I was really surprised at all the american stores they had there, like dockers, finish line, calvin klein, and others.
At 1 p.m we met up with a couple German students and we took a bus to Taksim Square, where we met a group of about 15 students...We traveled through the neighboring tourist / shopping area. We spent a lot of time walking through all the people and past so many shops. A lot of it was similar: jewelry, clothing, etc. A lot of stores sold the same things. After walking for about 20 minutes one of the group leaders decided to take the tunnel train (i was just following people). The train took us further downtown to the Golden Horn, which is a big river thing that connects to the Bosphorus in Istanbul (the thing that seperates Asia and Europe, duh). There were many people fishing off of the bridge, and on the bottom of the bridge there was a walkway with many restaurants. It's hard to describe...i'll just show pictures. We stopped under the bridge at a restaurant and smoked a hookah and watched the boats on the Golden Horn. Here is a picture of Saunders smoking.
After lunch, the big group split up. Bj, Saunders, Lizzy, Rana, and I walked to the Grand Bazaar...stopping for pictures at this beautiful Mosque. It took a long time to walk through the markets and streets to get the the Grand Bazaar, but it was worth it. I have never seen so many shops and vendors in one place in my entire life. If you make eye contact with any of them, they will walk up to you and invite you in the shop, using broken english. These guys would make great used car salesmen in America. They have a real good way of telling you that you would look great with a new leather jacket or some crazy stuff. You are expected to bargain with them. A lot. Their prices are inflated a lot. I talked a man down to 35 YTL from 45 TYL about ($23 dollars from $30) for a nice leather wallet. Yes, I probably still got ripped off. However, I keep telling myself that getting ripped off once or twice is part of the experience. I also bought an Evil Eye, which is supposed to ward away bad spirits. It is for good luck. To save people much frustration we took a cab home. On this trip home, there were 5 people crammed into the cab (not including the driver), and you already know how crazy their driving is...it was great. The 5 of us went to an Italian restaurant for dinner, where I had a penne meal. Afterwards, we decided to go to a bar, which turned out to be the most expensive bar in the area. The prices were ridiculous: 22-30 YTL for a mixed drink (15-18 Dollars) and 9 YTL (Lira) for the cheapest local beer, which is still about 6 dollars. Well we made a mistake and made it home after an extremely exhausting day. I plan on looking for some sheets and a blanket tomorrow. Sorry if this update is jumbled and incoherent. It's 2 am and I had an extremely LONG day (forget spell checker). peace, willis out.