Sunday, August 14, 2011

Starting Work Tomorrow!

Tomorrow I start my new job.  Granted the school year itself doesn't start until September 12th (an extremely inconvenient date, I know), we do start a few weeks to get prep work and orientation stuff done.  I'm really excited, but definitely very nervous.  For the past three years I've been on the constructive end of Sunny Canadian.  I watched it grow from a tiny school in a converted apartment building to a still-growing legitimate school, complete with computer lab, library and all.  It's been great, but the school I'll be working at, the Terakki Foundation School is serious business.  It's huge, and it's been around since the early 1900's.  I hope I didn't get in over my head over here, but we'll see come tomorrow.

Yesterday, I went down to Sultanahmet, the more historic section of town... home to the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya, the Hippodrome, and so on.  It's a nice part of town, but seeing as I'll be here for a while, I'll wait until I have somebody to brave the seriously long lines with before I take a deep look.  Here are some pictures...

 This Egyptian Obelisk is one of the few remnants of the Hippodrome, a huge arena once used for chariot racing.  It was built in about 1500 BC and brought to Istanbul by Constantine.

 This relief, at the base of the Obelisk, was built in the 4th century AD, and depicts Theodosius I with his family watching the chariot races.  To recap, the Obelisk is from ANCIENT EGYPT (!!!!) and the "new" base for it is almost 1700 years old. 
This shot is of the back side of Aya Sofya, which is, in it's oldest parts, more than 1,400 years old.  I know I thought Prague was old, but this is incredible.  


Sunny Canadian Students
I hope you guys had a great summer break.  Istanbul is a very cool place, but it was not always called "Istanbul."  It used to have other names.  Do you know what they were?  I think you can put your answers at the bottom of the page. 
Mr. Tenerowicz 

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