I was awakened quite suddenly by the 5:00 am call to prayer. Five times a day all the Mosques across Istanbul broadcast the
mu'adhdhin's adhan, the call to prayer chant over loudspeakers. I stood in the window in the darkness of the the early dawn and listened to the haunting sounds as a dozen chants rang out in a murmuring discordant chorus echoing through the streets. The lead directly across from my window was sharp as it pierced the quiet and the chorus. Once the quiet returned I was soon returned to my fitful sleep.
Breakfast was the traditional Turkish meal of soft white cheeses, olives, tomatoes and bread with jam and tea, sometimes there was melons or even hard boiled eggs. We would soon discover this is what all the places we stayed at served for breakfast. And later in the trip we would be fantasizing about having pancakes :)
Gün was determined to teach us some Turkish and one of the ways she did this happened to be a tracking system for us to use. We were each assigned a number in Turkish, 0-12, on this first day slowly we stumbled our way through the count, "
sifir, bir, iki,