Sunday – Orienteering – day 5 – thank goodness it’s over

We are all posting individually dear reader, so please excuse the repetitions.  We hope that you will enjoy each of our individual perspectives.

Today was the last day of orienteering  –  the university campus sprint.  Again, as during the past 4 days, the weather was very hot and humid, and we were once again dripping with sweat  before reaching the first control.   The campus had more than its fair share of steep contours (surprise, surprise).  Unlike Monash, a lot of the buildings are joined together with no alleyways between, which meant having to run all the way around.

Everything went well for me until I got midway through my course when suddenly things ground to an abrupt halt and I had a major episode of brain fade.  It took me almost 10 minutes for me to get my act together, and eventually finish.   My excuse is that I’m absolutely shattered after 4 days running in impenetrable bush, and I’m sticking to it !!

One of the most frustrating parts of being in Istanbul is being unable to read labels on food products as they are only written in Turkish.  We aren’t easily able to identify items that contain wheat products, which Ian can’t have.  In Dubai at least the labels are in both Arabic and English.   This means that our diet has been limited to the information we can find on line via the Turkish to English translator.  We’re looking forward to Italy where hopefully this won’t be as much of a problem.

As we are only a matter of 200 meters from the Sea of Marmara the sound of shrieking seagulls is the only birdcall we hear.  I miss our magpies caroling to welcome the day at home.  Our guidebook advises not to swim at any local beaches unless you have a death wish.  Understandable when you see the vast amounts of rubbish in the water.  Despite this many people line up along the seashore and along bridges to fish.  I can’t help wondering whether they actually catch anything, and if they do, are they brave enough to eat what they catch.

Marissa, Tina and Bev, at the Grand Bazaar there are a multitude of amazing shops selling just about anything you could want for your home – a vast array of things, including colourful fabrics of all kinds.  There are also shops that exclusively buttons of every colour size and shape, and shops that sell only threads, again of all colours and descriptions.  I didn’t see any knitting wool.

The Grand Bazaar is the world’s oldest “shopping mall” and dates back to the Byzantine time, and is absolutely enormous.  Once you’re in there it’s very easy to lose your way among labyrinthine alley ways and aisles which go in every direction.  Needless to say we got lost, but finally managed to find our way to the correct entrance again.  It must be very challenging to compete in a sprint race there at night, with headlamps to guide the way.

More next time.

Allan, how’s Pat??  Please give her our love and best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Lots of love to Ella, Marissa and Luca.