Today was an exciting day because we got to go on a ferry to Prince's Island (Heybeliada).
It has that name because this is the island where the princes were exiled to.
Now, its where the Jewish population is and various other minorities, non muslims.
There are no cars on this island, only horse carriages and bicycles.
Now, this is also where many Turkish folk have summer wooden homes along the Sea of Marmar.
Before this travel, I honestly did not know that Istanbul was half on the European continent, and half on the Asian continent... Today we crossed that border.
Once on the island, we went to a Greek Orthodox school, which is no longer active today.
It was opened in 1844 to give students training on becoming a priest, but it closed down in 1971 due to the fact that the Turkish government changed some rules on education. All schools had to teach the muslim religion, and well... they are a Greek Orthodox school, so they had to close refusing to "follow the law."
Many of the students that studied here are no bishops around the world; it was a very international school.
Back to the secularist topic in the previous post, elementary schools now need to teach religion... which is not exactly practicing a secularist idea. But any who, they don't really have an idea what will happen to the school now.
Fun fact from Borcu:
All around Istanbul, you will see men trying to polish your shoes.
They carry around a little step bench and cleaning supplies.
They will drop their shoe brush and keep walking pretending like they did not notice.
The tourist would normally pick it up, and to repay this kind random person for picking up the brush, they will essentially force to clean your shoes... then charge you a whole bunch.
~Alexa
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