Date Night

Selah and her favorite things

We went to Europe for a few hours of fun last night. (That is just fun to say!) Some friends that know language better than us took us with them so that we could enjoy the festivities that officially start when the sun sets. This is the time of day when the people who are fasting can eat. They can eat all they want until the sun rises around 5 AM the next morning. People like to gather around a huge house of worship (which happens to be across the park from the Hagia Sofya) and wait for the "call" to come over the loudspeaker. We were curious about this event and wanted to see it for ourselves.
People don't have to wait here for the call, but they probably like to because there is a fair-like atmosphere with tons of vendors serving traditional foods, candy, cotton candy, popcorn, drinks, souvenirs, etc. There are booths where you can put on traditional clothing and have a picture made and some entertainment in the outdoor amphitheater, traditional dance and more!
We got there about 2 minutes before the call and there were people EVERYWHERE. People were sitting on blankets (looked like a million picnics) with their baskets of food. Most of them had their food in hand ready to dive in as soon as they could. After the call, it was amazingly quiet considering the number of people...they were all eating. People cleared out quickly after eating and starting having fun with the various activities. We ate and walked around for a bit. After a while, the crowds were starting to get a bit annoying and we decided we had seen what we wanted to see; we started heading home.
Experiences like this are fun and they also stir our hearts. It also made me really, really want to speak the language better. We are working hard but getting a lot less practice these days because we spend most of our out-of-class time shopping and making arrangements to have work done in our new apartment. We expect to move in toward the end of this week.