So starting to get a little slow on blogging, and am now two days behind.
Saturday was our first day of real Festival stuff. It started with a press meeting, back at the Wedding Palace, where we had lunch in costume (sorry Kathy). The mayor of Küçükçekmece (the city on the outskirts of Istanbul we are in) was there and had quite the security set up. But all in all, was fairly good.
From there we went off to Taksim which is kind of downtown in Istanbul proper. They have lots of trendy shops and stores, and a lot of American chains. We did our first parade there which was about a 1km walk (and in the process passed 3 Burger Kings). Stephanie Andrews (former Tryzub dancer, now living in Istanbul) met up with us for the parade, and it was good to see her.
After being soaked and with warm feet walking out in the heat, the parade ended at a statue where all the groups formed a really big circle and did a little Turkish dance around the statue. Then madly tried to put together a group photo.
From there we went back to the hotel and relaxed for a little bit prior to dinner, where most of us grabbed a cool beer and just relaxed. After dinner it was off to the Opening ceremonies. They started with another parade into the stage area, but this one was shorter, about 250m. The show started with the opening, and we performed our new Welcome dance and Celebration. It seemed like a pretty good show, we even had a good picture in one of Monday’s papers.
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