last weekend we had a really exhausting bogazici mandated tour with an extremely boring archaeology phd student. we saw some sweet stuff, but the tour went from 9 am to 8 pm (i got left behind at a bathroom at around 4:30, al-hamdulillah!). also, we were overloaded with details of architectural history, it would have been nice to hear some information about social importance of these areas (alas, might have deviated from the secular narrative). this weekend, strangely enough, no one signed up for the edirne trip with the same guide, and it was cancelled. i mostly ate, drank, and squeezed in a museum between the consumption. i was not crazy about the botero exhibit at the pera museum, but there were some pretty sweet orientalist paintings in the permanent collection. word.

today in discussion class we talked about discrimination. us american students were mostly bringing up discrimination towards african-americans, slave history, etc. our ta leading the discussion brought up discrimination towards women, especially in the east.....she mentioned honor killing, general sexism as being specific to eastern turkey. i'd like to look at this idea further, how the practices of honor killing is represented towards the "western" part of turkey, and also how the state deals with these issues.