ISTANBUL DAY 2 - TOPKAPI PALACE PART 2

The Topkapi Palace is now a museum. Other than browsing through the beautiful palace buildings, there were certain parts of the place which housed many historic exhibits but cameras were not allowed inside.

The palace showcased many important Muslim relics and one of the main attractions were the beards of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The strands of beards were put in individual small bottles which would be quite impossible to see from far.

There was a long line formed where visitors had to move from one room to another to observe the exhibition. At times, the line would move a bit slow and there would be a bigger crowd of curious people at certain station as they would try to spend more time there.

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Click HERE to read more about Topkapi Palace.

More pictures coming soon in Part 3.

ISTANBUL DAY 2 - TOPKAPI PALACE PART 1

11th February 2013 ~ On the second day, we went to one of the must-visits of Istanbul, the Topkapi Palace. There were tourists flocking the palace even though we were there quite early. It reminded me of Hong Kong Disneyland.

 

The place was real huge and we, again, just followed the flow of the stream of visitors. We had to walk quite a distance from the entrance to the first building where people had already formed a beeline so we just went there to join the crowd.

T O   B E   C O N T I N U E D . . .

RECYCLING CAMPAIGN IN SCHOOL - DAY 2

You can bring a horse to a well, 

but you cannot force it to drink. 

As planned, the form two students were asked to bring old newspapers and other paper-based materials that could be recycled today. They had to put what they had taken from home at Balai Bestari according to their own classes so that we could see which class had the heaviest paper collection.

Sometimes we could not expect too much from the students. Even after I had gone around the form two classes reminding them to participate and contribute - some just didn't care despite the fact that this was one activity that they had to do to achieve a band 5 for their School Based Assessment for subjects like Geography and Civic.

We are still lucky as there are still other students who are more obedient and have displayed positive attitude. Although this programme might not look that important, it was actually one way how we could evaluate students in school.

getting used paper from the staff room

the arrival of the recycling lorry

the weighing process

the happy recycling uncles

I am happy to announce that after two days of the campaign, the afternoon session students had collected and sold 2600 kilogrammes of old newspapers. Puan Huan had not yet calculated the exact weight of other paper-based materials sold but the money that we collected from the sale (for both the old newspapers and other types of paper) was RM906. Just imagine the amount of cash we simply throw away everyday. 

The winner of the Recycling Campaign will be announced in the assembly next week and cash money will be presented to the lucky form teachers (to be used for their class parties).

Congratulations to all the afternoon session students (and teachers) who had done their part in making this campaign a success. Please remember to always reduce, reuse and recycle, and save our Mother earth.

KARAKOY FISH MARKET IN ISTANBUL

We just followed the flow and walked across Galata Bridge, and upon arriving at the other end, we saw this market. There was only one stall selling vegetables but the others were fish and food stalls. The sea produce looked real fresh, too bad we couldn't cook while we were in Istanbul.(I don't cook in real life, by the way.)

the food stall entrance

Then we decided to enter one of the stalls to try out their freshly cooked fish. We were not so sure of what to eat so we just ordered by looking at the menu.

the first dish

The first plate that arrived contained nothing but vegetables. I felt as if I was a hamster at that time.

 

The next plate was fried fish that looked like our local "ikan tamban", and that should be a complimentary dish from the stall owner. It was fried with salt and we were supposed to eat them just like that, no sauce whatsoever.

And the main dish consisted of different kinds of fish, mostly small ones with a few pieces of shrimps and squids, again with a lot of vegetables. The smell of fish stayed on us for quite some time, we still smelled fishy after we arrived at our hotel room. TRAVELLING TIP: I had a feeling that we were overcharged as we had to pay 120 lira for eating fish. And only yesterday, I read someone's review in one of the websites advising tourists not to eat here as it would be very expensive. I just wonder if Malaysians restaurateur or food hawkers do the same thing to tourists eating at their food outlets.

NEXT POSTING: Topkapi Palace.

RECYCLING CAMPAIGN IN SCHOOL - DAY 1

Today was recycling day in conjunction with the school's Environment Month. This activity was done as an inter-class competition in which the winner will be given CASH which could be used for their class party later (most probably for Teacher's Day). At the same time, this is one activity for Band 5 that will be taken into account for their Geography and Civic subjects' School Based Assessment (or known as PBS).

While some students were excited to contribute, some just did not care. With the present number of students that we have in school, the collection of old newspaper, books, magazines, boxes and used paper should be more than what we had today.

As for today, the teacher in-charge had only added the weight of the old newspapers accumulated from all the remove and form one classes and we managed to collect about 1300 kilogrammes. We had to separate the old newspapers from other materials as the price was not the same. 

the recycling lorry is here

We will see the response from the form two students tomorrow.