My second week here has brought a multitude of new and exciting experiences!

I am currently home in NYC and honestly I feel weird. I feel out of my element, there are so many things I miss from Istanbul. The first thing that was weird was not hearing the prayer call anymore. After hearing the prayer call 5 times a day, for 5 months I definitely got used to it. I also miss the food. Where is the kebab, durum, simit, the elma chai?!

Yea, this is definitely cultural shock. I even miss seeing all the stray cats and dogs, why aren’t there any animals at my doorstep?

The best places to go in Istanbul

1. Ortakoy: You can have the best meal of your life in Ortakoy for about $13, Kumpir+ Waffle. It’s a beautiful area to relax with your friends and its the last place I visited before going home.

2. Emirgan: This area is breathtaking. It looks like a boardwalk with the beautiful Bosphorus to your right. On this street you can find many awesome restaurants, however these are the restaurants that tend to be more expensive because of the location.

The “Pioggia di Rose” ceremony is a tradition following the Pentecost mass held at the Pantheon every Pentecost Sunday. The ceremony involves the raining of thousands and thousands of rose petals from the Pantheon’s oculus. Just as the Holy Spirited descended on the church in flames, the raining of petals parallels the first Pentecost experience.

Saturday night, we wanted to go check out the Colosseum and we ended up missing the entrance hours so we can leave it for another day. Regardless, we thoroughly enjoyed the views from the outside! Also, we ended up catching Rome’s Pride Parade as it was passing by the Colosseum and it was quite the experience!

While there’s a lot that I can say about what I’ve been learning about the Italian culture and Rome, I think some shots of locals can help me highlight and explain some of the qualities of life here in the city.

As of today, we’ve been in Ecuador for three weeks. From the Amazon to the high Andes, I feel like I’ve visited several different countries within that time span. 

In the Amazon, we stayed at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station for four days and went on a night hike through the rainforest, floated down the Tiputini river, and walked across the top of the forest canopy on foot bridges.

I woke up this morning at 4am with a hole in my stomach. I don’t know why, it just felt so empty and then the feeling crawled into my chest. I could hardly sleep to begin with and had been incredibly restless for the three hours I had been laying in bed. I kept dreading the next time I’d turn over to check the time again – hoping that it’d be more than just another half-hour, but it wasn’t. Finally at 4am I decided that posting how “this is gonna suck when I have to be awake in 4 hours” on Twitter was a reliable method of venting.