Mmmm... Turkey!

Sometimes I feel like my sister.

If you know my sister, you might know that this is a good thing. But you might also know that she has a tendency to be starstruck whenever she has the chance to meet somebody famous. Well last Monday, I had the opportunity to have a private audience and meet the Patriarch of Constantinople, His All Holiness Bartholomew, and I’m still nearly giddy about it.

At this point, we were still in Istanbul. We went to the building called the Patriarchate, the place that the Patriarch lives and works, and got a tour of the church that was on site. Then we were ushered into a beautifully decorated room that the Patriarch has meetings in and stuff. Dr. Roy Hammerling brought students here to meet him two years ago and he warned us that His All Holiness is a very busy man and might not have much time to talk to us and that we should be prepared to be ushered in, take a picture, and then him having to leave. Well we sat there for about 5 minutes until His All Holiness came in. He walked up to the front of the room and sat in a chair and started speaking to us. He started out by saying how he was pleased to meet us and then continued talking for 20 minutes! He talked about the efforts of the Orthodox Church to partner with the Islamic faith in Istanbul to create a more peaceful atmosphere for everyone. He talked about the Interfaith Dialogs that they have been setting up, one of which was in Athens in early February and our group actually went to listen to it.

This whole time, I was in awe of how professional and soothing this man was. His All Holiness Bartholomew is 68 years old and the 270^th patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church and he is fluent in five languages. His voice was soothing and very easy to understand. It felt like he was talking to us for a lot longer than 20 minutes just because of his elegance. He is a world leader, having worked closely with people like Pope Benedict and met important international leaders. When he was done, he gave us all cross pendants. The back of the pendant says “Patriarch Bartholomew” in Greek. We then gave him a few gifts as well. We gave him two CDs with music written and/or performed by Concordia professors and ensembles. We gave him a book on the history of our college and also a book on the college with an article written in it about the last time a Concordia group met him. He saw that and joked saying, “Who will be the one to write a story about this meeting?” and Roy Hammerling said, “Where’s Emily? There she is; she is our resident journalist. She’ll write about it.” He looked at me and smiled.

One of my favorite parts was when he was giving us these pendants, we walked by and shook his hand. Even though we are in Turkey, he is patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church so they all spoke Greek within the walls of the Patriarchate. We took Greek language lessons when we were in Greece, so although I don’t consider myself anywhere near fluent, we all know simple phrases like yes, no, please, thank you, etc. When I shook his hand, I said “Hiero Poli” which means “Nice to meet you” and he looked at me and smiled and said “Hiero Poli” back to me. That made my day!

After we all got our necklaces and a piece of chocolate, he ended his speech by talking directly about our college. He said, “Concordia. What a beautiful name. It means One in Mind, One in Heart.” This was a beautiful way to end his speech because he had been talking about the unity of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Islamic faith.

So that was my exciting news of that day. We ended up forgetting to take a group picture with him (dumb!) but I got a few as he was speaking so that will have to be good enough. I feel very honored and excited about it.

One little bit of fun news after that. We spent the last three nights in Ephesus. I was excited to see Ephesus because of the history with St. Paul and other Christian things, but I had no idea how many things there were to see here and how big the site is! It was really cool to see these sites and learn how much history is in this place besides the short period of time written about in the Bible. But the fun news doesn’t come from an ancient site.

After seeing ruinous ancient cities, we were told we were going to a leather shop. We were told that we shouldn’t feel obligated to buy anything but that they would give us really good prices on leather jackets. I was expecting a factory or something, but we got there and they brought us into a room with a runway in the middle! We’re all shifting our eyes at each other, telepathically sending the message of “what’s going on??” Pretty soon, the heavy bass music starts and we’re all wondering what is going to happen next. Almost immediately, five models come out and begin modeling the leather jackets. Now this wouldn’t be a big deal except it was so different from what any of us were expecting. Then about halfway through, there was one guy who winked at Ingrid and I an we both began laughing, and then the next time he came out he came over, grabbed my hand, and pulled me up on the runway! Another model pulled Brock out of our group and we both went into the back and put on a leather jacket and sunglasses and strutted our stuff down the runway! I couldn’t stop laughing the entire time because of the overall ridiculousness of the situation, but I had so much fun!

Then we went into their shop and tried on some jackets. A few people bought one, but the cheapest ones were marked at Î595 which is like $800+. Nobody paid full price because they did give us good deals, but they were still not any cheaper than $200. I tried on a chinchilla jacket that cost Î20,000… approximately $35,000 or so. Ridiculous. Needless to say, I didn’t buy anything.

So there are two fun stories from my last week in Turkey.

Plus, I have more pictures! There are 60 in each album so there are quite a few to look at (I’m sorry!!) but the first one is of the last part of Santorini and the first part Istanbul, the second is the last half of Istanbul, Troy, Pergamon, and the first day in Ephesus (including the Temple of Artemis… one of the seven wonders of the ancient world!), and the third is Ephesus, Priene, Didyma, and Miletus (they are all ancient cities that are ruins now, so don’t feel bad if you don’t recognize any of the names except Ephesus J)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000662&l=acfc0&id=1273320032

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000674&l=5c489&id=1273320032

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000675&l=40d24&id=1273320032

Enjoy!