As I sat on my 9-hour flight to Maui, I thought about a 10-hour flight (still my longest direct flight to date) from NYC to Istanbul ten years ago. During those two-weeks in Turkey, followed by two weeks in Greece, there were countless memories or stories that I can recount. The first one that comes to mind, though is a stressful memory related to a potential case of food poisoning. This story is hopefully a humorous example of how to role with the punches and also very illuminating of my "lets not bother anyone" personality. A version of below was originally posted in April 2020 on Instagram. 🗓 April 2013 A bus trip driving across the Bosporus must have afforded beautiful views. 🌅 I can't speak from experience, though as I spent said bus trip hiding the fact that I was getting sick from a bad case of Turkish meatballs, which I had enjoyed in Istanbul the night prior. 😅
The View I Missed
When we eventually arrived in Bursa to tour the Green Mosque, I prayed that my stomach had settled. I did not want to be THAT American tourist who got sick in such a beautiful place.
Luckily, I didn’t. In case anything bad happened, though, I was grateful to have a scarf around my head to give me the perceptions that I could hide my face. (See the grainy image to the right.)
The Green Mosque is one of my favorite mosques we visited. It sat in a shaded area overlooking a nearby park on a gentle hill above the city.
One side of the Green Mosque, also known as the Mosque of Mehmed I
Green lawn area outside the Green Mosque
The inside was as you would imagine from the name: each room filled with turquoise and green tiles, mimicking the color of the Aegean Sea we would later see in our trip. The mosque was only lit by the afternoon sun streaming through the windows. The shadows added even more variety of the many shades of ocean-colored tiles.
Inside the Green Mosque
The color was welcome after our visit to the Hagia Sophia a few days prior. After the black, white and gold dominated interior, I more greatly appreciated the ocean-colored tiles. (On a not so amusing note, my digital camera died before I could take any photos inside. As such, this blog will never feature any photos from inside the Hagia Sophia.) It was only hours later, after struggling to hide that I was sick, primarily from my professor, that she found out and was understandably upset with me - not with my food poisoning, but that I had not told her.
This was a good life lesson - ask for help and let someone know when you are not okay. As an enneagram 9, or someone who struggles to ask for help in case I come off as a burden, it was something I needed to hear and a somewhat humbling lesson to learn. Besides my ill-timed bad Turkish meatball experience, I have only ever had one other case of food poisoning, or at least a prolonged digestive problem while traveling abroad. That was while I was in Quito back in October 2017. To this day, I am still not sure if it was the "everything can be made into a churro" shop or the Chiptole-style Chinese place I went to. The jury is still out. Have you ever experienced food trouble abroad? Or on a more positive note, any favorite mosques or religious places that you have visited in the Middle East?
Comments