{FECA Vision Choir} Report 15

Saturday, April 6

We slept late and all of us started the day energized.  After breakfast, we met in a side lobby and debriefed.  One key observation is that as hard a day as we had yesterday, it gave us a little perspective into what the refugees and IDP's experienced when they fled from ISIS, except their situation lasted for days and weeks while ours was only 20 some hours.  They had to run not knowing where, had no food (or water) for days, and when they sought refuge, many times they were rejected and had to keep going.  What we faced compared to their experience must be like a walk in the park.

We then met our guide, Bahar, a charming young lady getting her Master's degree in history concentrating in Mesopotamia and wants to get a PhD and do archeology, while continuing to guide groups.  She met us at 10 and immediately led us to the old Sultan's Palace, technically Topkapi Palace Museum.  This took about two hours and we must have walked 2 to 3 miles going through different gates until we got to the Dultanks secure inner personal palace.  This photo of our team is taken from the Sultan's favorite breakfast shelter (to the right of where we are standing).  Then around 12:15, we went to Hagia Sophia, a pagan worship hall to the god of wisdom from a couple of centuries before Christ, which became St. Sophia Church, the center for the Eastern Orthodox Church in the fourth century, which then became an Islamic mosque before being turned into a museum, but each time keeping the name Sophia.  We walked across the street to eat lunch at 2 PM at Lale Restaurant (a.k.a., The Pudding Shop).  After lunch, we visited Sultanahmet (Blue Mosque), afte4 which Marshall left the group because his stomach was a little upset while the rest of the team went to the Hippodrome, and ended up at the Grand Bazaar (see photo), where our guide Bahar departed from us.  We completed our debriefing from 6 to 8 PM, praying for each member of the team and went to eat dinner.  Tomorrow, we plan to depart our hotel at 9 AM, since the newly opened (at 2 PM today!) Istanbul airport is quite a distance from where we are and almost twice as far as the old airport which shut down at 2 AM this morning.  So we should be back in LA Sunday evening around 5 PM, PDT, Lord willing.