I'm home!!!!!!! But I still have some tales from Turkey that I'd like to post before recounting my transition. I'll get them up as soon as I can!! Also, it seems that it is posting some of my posts at the date I started them, which is a while ago in some cases, so if you're interested look back!

Black Sea Region

At the end of April, CIEE took us on a trip to a couple of towns in the Black Sea region, most famously Trabzon. This whole region had a very different feel than the other places I've been to in Turkey. Istanbul is busy and cosmopolitan; Ankara is quiet and modern; Diyarbakir is arid and "Arab"; Antalya is touristy and laid-back. And this region is different from all that. The towns themselves have their own slightly tourist, slightly bustley edge, but for me what is much more salient is the lush, quiet nature that dominates the area, in some cases even the towns.

The first day of the trip we toured around Trabzon, visiting mosques, churches, and bazaars. We also went to see the Sumela Monastery, one of the most famous sites in Turkey. It's literally built into a cliffside, way up high. It's gorgeous from every angle, seen from the valley below and from the buildings within. Although to get there was another story. Usually there are minibuses that take tourists up the cliff to see it, but for some reason that wasn't included in the itinerary so we got to really appreciate height of the building and grade of the cliff by walking up to the monastery. I'm not sure I would've made it if I hadn't been singing Disney songs with Susannah and Conor all the way. I even stripped down to a tank top, something I rarely do in this conservative country. But it was incredible (the monastery, not the tank top). The inside was covered in beautiful, colorful frescoes. Infuriatingly, they have been vandalized by visitors of all different language-backgrounds, political affiliations, and relationship statuses. Here's the view out from the vantage point of the monastery:

This is the inside (you can't really see the frescoes at this distance):

After this we took the bus into deep valleys covered in rivers and bright green trees. It was so beautiful. Also, much of the ground was covered in a funny little shrub that I found out was tea. This area, particularly Rize, is famous for its production of tea. We even got to go to one of the factories, and try some of their delicious tea.

We spent some time in one of the villages here. We walked up the slopes, between tea fields and dense clouds, seeing gorgeous views whenever the fog parted. We also split up into groups to have lunch with some of the villagers. This was one of the most incredible meals I've ever had. Everything on the table was fresh and derived from somewhere nearby, "all natural", as we say in California. And there was SO MUCH. There was:

• çoban salatası (shepherd's salad: a Turkish standard: tomatoes and cucumbers)
• chicken and potato stew
• ballı kaymak (=honey with cream butter. This is one of my favorite Turkish dishes anyway, but this one blew my mind. The honey, harvested from the backyard, was totally bitter, and the cream butter was so fresh. And of course, it was eaten on fresh bread.)
• muhlama (cheese with corn starch... wait for it... fried in butter. You have no idea.)
• thought we had enough carbs and saturated fats? Our hosts didn't. There was dessert: sütlaç (Turkish rice pudding, also translates as "most delicious thing you've ever eaten". Always amazing. Never this amazing. Every once in a while I have a transcendental gustatory experience, and this was one of those times.)

Here's the muhlama mid-cooked:

Here's the view out the window of the home where we were served the feast:

After eating, we sat and chatted a bit with the family. Then ol' papa Turk took out a bagpipe and played a little. Although he wasn't very good, it was exciting for me to see.

Our last day we took a short hike in the mountains, had a picnic, and then went to some hot springs nearby. The area was really beautiful, of course. The hot springs were in a building and all, so it didn't really seem any different than a regular hamam, except way hotter. Regardless it was quite relaxing. Besides us there was a large group of Turkish women there, who started singing at one point. I was all about it :)

Misha!!!

In April my brother came to see me!! It was so nice to see him and have a little whiff of home in the middle of the semester. It also ended up being a great opportunity for me to explore the historical part of the city a bit more. Misha had a lot of jet lag so I ended up just walking around on my own in the afternoons, stopping to chat with the hassling merchants, getting a lot of free tea, practicing my Turkish,....

The weekend started off rather inauspiciously, actually. The hostel we had intended to stay at was somehow overbooked, so we got shifted to a hostel next-door. They, however, were also booked so instead of staying in one of the normal rooms we stayed in the apartment of some of the staff. It felt really uncomfortable, especially since the front door didn't lock. We could lock our own room, though, so it wasn't so insecure. It mostly just felt uncomfortable to be kicking some people out of their own space and staying in someone else's home. The last couple nights room opened up in the regular hostel so we got to move.

With my brother we went to the mosaic museum and the archeological museum, my first trip to the latter. There were some really amazing Egyptian and other tombs. And some real mummies as well.

My brother and I also went to a hamam (Turkish bath). I've been to hamams before but never with the full traditional treatment. It was definitely full treatment. First we were asked to undress and wear only a cloth. Then we waited in the main hamam area which was really warm. There's a big flat heated stone in the middle that you lie on. This was already super relaxing. Then the friendly woman who had been at the reception area took me into a separate room. She and I were both wearing only our underwear, no bras, and no cloth. Then she scrubbed me down. All of me. She scrubbed parts of me I didn't know existed. As she scrubbed she excitedly showed me the gray dead skin of whose presence she was relieving me. This whole process was followed by a soap "massage", which is pretty self-explanatory. After my hygiene had been thus assisted I re-wrapped myself up and returned to the main hamam area to rinse off more and wash my hair. I met my brother there, who had just had the same experience. The slightly stunned expression on his face pretty accurately reflected my own feelings. Afterward my brother got an oil massage and I changed and had some more tea while waiting for him. The feeling I had at this point was delicious; incredibly clean and relaxed.

The next day we tried for a second time to visit Dolmabahce Palace, which historically had served as a residence not only to the Ottoman Dynasty but also to Ataturk himself. Ironically, considering the fact that he took down the Empire, this was the place where he died. At the moment he passed all the clocks in the building were stopped and the bed where he had suffered until the last moment is still guarded.

However, it seems it was fated for us not to see neither the clocks nor the bed nor the palace's excessive ornateness; tourist season having started, the line to get in was almost two hours long. So instead we decided to hop on a boat to one of the Prince's Islands, in the Aegean. It was a long ferry ride, but the island was beautiful. The weather was sunny and warm. On these islands cars are prohibited so everyone moves around on bikes and horse-drawn carriages. Yep. We walked around for a while, had lunch, and for dessert got some lokma (basically honey-soaked donut holes). Since I had never been there before and didn't get a chance to prepare, we didn't really know what to see or do but just walking around was lovely.

Our last day together my brother actually came to campus with me and sat in on a couple of my classes. It was nice to share it with him, but it was a long commute. The following day I made the trip again and he went to join an organized tour that would travel throughout Turkey and then on to Greece.

Spring Break!

For spring break, I went with a group on a tour of south western Turkey. The group included Ethan, Fiona, Emma, Nicole, and Andrew from the US, Zehra and Angel from Singapore, and Barlas from Turkey. As with fall break last semester, this was such a fantastic group of people and the best part really was hanging out with them, which is saying something cause the rest of the trip was incredible as well.

I missed a day at Pergamum and met up with the group in Selçuk, near Izmir, where we saw Ephesus. This was an ancient Greek city that later became Roman. This place is old. Like, really old. We're talking centuries B.C. What's so amazing is how good it looks despite its age. What's left is really beautiful, columns, capitals, mosaics, facades.... It was really stunning how well preserved it is.

This one's for you, Therese:

This is the facade to the library (?), probably my favorite part:

Here's the amphitheater:

Also, in Selçuk we were lured into a rug shop that had really beautiful works. The owner of course was pretty eager that we get something, but seemed content with just showing us his wares since all that is expensive. Here was one of my favorites:

In the hotel in Selçuk there weren't many other guests besides us, but at breakfast a couple boys our age were at the next table. I couldn't tell what language they were speaking and I was dying of curiosity. Every once in a while it would sound like Spanish, which really threw me off cause that's one I should recognize. Finally I asked them and it turned out they were BASQUE!!!!! And they were SPEAKING BASQUE!!!!!!!!! I was excited beyond expression. I basked in their Basqueness. I've never met Basque people my age, and certainly not people who had grown up learning the language. I floated for the rest of the day.

After Selçuk we took a bus to Pamukkale. This is one of the places that I remember my mom talking about since I was very young, so it was really really special for me to be able to actually go and see it. And, of course, it was mind-blowing. Pamukkale has two really cool things: a necropolis (think fancy Roman graveyard) and huge hill of calcium bicarbonate. There are pools in the hill that fill up with water that varies from warm to cool. Here's us walking up:

And here's a view of the necropolis:

We ran around and climbed on the tombs for a bit :).

Next we went to Aphrodisias, an ancient Greek city in honor of the goddess Aphrodite. The ruins here were amazing as well. Here's part of Aphrodite's Temple:

There were a whole bunch of other sites as well, including a massive stadium incredibly intact. It was so cool to sit on the seats and imagine who was sitting in that exact spot thousands of years ago and what they were watching. We enacted gladiator fights and olympic games in the field :D

Next we went to Fethiye. As usual, I didn't know anything about this place before going and was more than pleasantly stunned. Here wasn't so much about ancient ruins as it was about gorgeous nature. We took a hike starting off at a ghost town that had belonged to Greek Turks who were forced to emigrate to Greece during the Population Exchange of 1923:

The rest of the hike over the mountain and to the Mediterranean Sea was gorgeous. The vegetation made me feel like I was back in California (a lot of pines and warm weather :D), but then cresting the hill the sea appeared in colors I've only ever associated with the tropics. It's really hard to tell in these photos cause Blogger seems to post them rather washed out, but you get the idea:

Here we picnicked on the beach and swam, despite the fact that by this point the sunny weather had turned gray and slightly chilly. I also ran into a couple of my friends from Oxy!! I had seen them briefly in Istanbul before heading south, but hadn't realized that they were going to the same place. That was really really nice.

The next day we took a hike into Butterfly Valley. Usually, people get here by boat, since the valley is lined by vertical (actually, though) cliffs that even cut off the beach. Instead, we decided to take the vertical-cliff route. Asking locals how to get there or for advice, most of them advised not to try this hike, to the extent that two of our group opted out. The rest of us were game, though. Amazingly, Angel even climbed down in cute flats since none of us had realized we would need to bring serious hiking boots on the trip. It was definitely difficult. There were many sections that were so steep, ropes had been tied along them, without which I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been possible. Also, the rocks at these places were slippery in the humid climate. But it really wasn't as difficult as I, at least, was afraid, and a couple in our group were experienced hikers so it was all good. Ultimately, it was incredibly rewarding and definitely a good bonding experience. And of course the valley itself was beautiful. At the bottom we first headed to the back of the valley where there was a waterfall, which of course we climbed. Then we had a picnic on the beach and headed back up, at which point it was raining :P So glad I go to the gym every once in a while.

Our next destination was Olympos. The hostel where we stayed while here was really neat, super hippy. It's actually referred to as the tree-houses, even though only the "princess suite" is in an actual tree. There was a fire pit in the middle of the camp with Ottoman-style cushioned seating areas around. The surrounding nature was beautiful, including a creek that passed right next to the property. Actually, the highlight of this part of the trip was probably just sitting in this area at night, playing the guitar and singing along to songs on the computer. Sort of technologically advanced hippies. Something we did do while here was go to the Chimera. This is a hill where natural gas leaks at various points and burns. Apparently ancient people interpreted the fires as a monster with a lion's body, a snake's tail, and a goat's head (chimera). We only saw it during the day, but it was still pretty cool. Here's Ethan dancing at one of the fires:

Our last stop was Antalya, a town famous for its warm beaches. At this point we were all pretty exhausted, so we took it pretty easy. We walked through the big bazaar, bought some cheap knock-off goods, ate some delicious lahmacun (bread with minced meat on top),.... We also spur of the moment took a boat tour (Emma and Fiona):

Angel and Zehra are good friends with a Koc student who lives in Antalya, so she took us out to dinner on our last night. It was really a delicious, semi-fancy dinner. Afterwards Angel Zehra and I went out clubbing :DD

The next day we had a little bit of trouble with the bus service home, but figured it out eventually and spent the following 8 or 9 hours traveling. Fortunately, Turks take bus travel seriously. It was comfortable, we could charge our iPods, and we were constantly served cookies and refreshments. We came home really tired, but it was a fantastic trip :D

Eskişehir

Maybe a month ago, CIEE took us on a trip to Eskişehir, a college town in between Istanbul and Ankara. Honestly, it was kind of a random place to take us, but CIEE is usually able to make things interesting against all odds.

We started things off with a lecture on urban planning in one of the town's three universities. The lecture itself wasn't particularly interesting , but it was neat to see how the new plans were being applied to the town. For instance, there's a small river running through and the town has built a whole bunch of lovely bridges along it, also adding peripheral green-space and gondolas. We took a boat ride along here at one point:

We hung out for a while on campus and then had a folk dance lesson. Of course, I was all about it while everyone else seemed quite unenthusiastic. A couple of my friends flat out refused to participate. But there was live music and exactly the style I love so I had a grand old time. Outside there was a small political demonstration related to education reforms that also included some traditional music.

Next, we went to a couple museums. First was a glass works museum that was really interesting even though it didn't really have to do with particularly Turkish artistic traditions. Then we went to a museum of meerschaum, a special white stone that is particularly abundant in the Eskişehir area. It's extremely porous and therefore very light. It's often used to make pipes and, I just read on Wikipedia, apparently changes color when used to smoke! In fact, the museum mostly consisted of pipes, amazingly and imaginatively carved into all kinds of designs. Never have I so desired a nicotine addiction:

After this we went to a cartoon museum. I had never been to one before and it was really fun. Most of the cartoons were biting and political, but there were some cute and sweet ones as well:

Also on this trip we went to a museum of the Republic (consisting almost exclusively of photographs of Atatürk) and a car museum. The car museum was quite built up, our guide telling us beforehand how Turkey had hoped to begin car manufacture, but the grand plan had unfortunately failed. The museum consisted of... the only car Turkey had ever been able to produce. One car. And when they brought it to the capital to be driven by the president at the time, they forgot to put gas in so it didn't even work :P

We had a great meal while we were there. I don't really know what it was, but it was something like bread soaked in meaty, creamy tomato sauce. I know it sounds kind of weird but it was DELICIOUS. And followed by chocolate pudding ;)

Before heading back home, we spent some time in Kent Park, which can pretty accurately be described as Fairyland. There was a castle and a pirate ship, a mini Noah's arc and big dinosaurs. It was great. I didn't do much running around there though because Tim and I were immersed in a profound conversation about the nature of consciousness:

From there we took the bus back home. A group of us got off early in order to go to Taksim, where we went to a karaoke bar and a Latin club!!! :DDD Here's a view from the bus home:

Diyarbakır and Mardin

I know it's been a while! Turkey blocked blogger because someone was using it to stream video of a football match, or something like that, and I just figured out how I can access it at my school (which uses the international server yay!). Anyway, I have quite a bit to catch up on.

So, quite a while ago (a month maybe?) I went to Diyarbakir and Mardin with Tyler, Jamie, Ethan, Lewis, Dan, Tim, and Juliayn. These two towns are in the south-east, in the region that is sometimes, and very controversially, referred to as Kurdistan. In fact, Diyarbakir is considered the "capital" of Kurdistan by many Turkish Kurds at least. One of the group mentioned going to Kurdistan in his facebook status and immediately incited a heated status-comment debate involving primarily Turkish students at Koç versus international students at Koç, the former passionately rejecting the use of the term and the latter defending it. One of the nights we were there we spent a couple hours just following the argument as people were posting.

Both towns were really interesting in totally different ways. Diyarbakir was like a culture shock. It really felt like a different country than Istanbul. Not only is this a highly Kurdish area of Turkey, it's also very close to the Syrian border (as well as the Iraqi border) so there is a great deal of Arabic influence in various ways. First of all, the accent is highly influenced by Arabic; at times I even thought some people were speaking Arabic when they were actually speaking Turkish. Also, the landscape, dry, rocky, hilly, yellow, with little vegetation, very well fit some of my associations with a more Middle Eastern climate. Something I really liked about it was that it was way less touristy. Not many people spoke English and walking around felt much more like a legitimate experience of local life. It's more conservative there and there were a lot styles of dress I hadn't seen before. Paricularly, I saw several old women who wore a different style of head scarf and had interesting tatoos on there chins and/or foreheads. Here's the only picture I got of one such woman (but you can't really see the tatoo):

First, we walked around this big market. It was incredibly crowded and all locals. They were selling fresh produce, cheap shoes and clothes, traditional scarves, etc. Then we started exploring the massive walls that run through the town. They were kind of like vertical mazes, somewhat run-down with varyous passageways to the top. There was also evidence of all kinds of shenanigans going on there, including massive homemade water bongs.

While on the walls a group of pre-teen boys started asking us for money and at one point even tried to steal one of our cameras and pick someone else's pocket. It was kinda scary cause we were on the top of an ancient wall. We got down and tried to lose them, but they followed us. It was interesting to see how the boys were communicating with each other through hand signals and whistles. Eventually, we got to a mosque and a very nice man there sensed that something was going on and helped to scare them away. We ended up having tea with him for a bit.

The next day we went to Mardin. It was sooooo beautiful. Old Mardin is a smaller town built on a hillside overlooking a vast exanse of flatland that extends to Syria. This expanse is cultivated and in the atmosphere looks blue-green so that I was constantly thinking it was the sea. What is most striking about Mardin is the architecture. It's dominated by these old buildings that are all the same golden color of sand, blending into the surrounding rocky landscape. They are decorated and carved in gorgeous Arabic styles and patterns, from courtyard arcading to the way the columns are carved.

We did a lot of walking around the city, saw a couple mosques and a monastery that had been converted into an orphaage. It was incredible just to be there, in such a beautiful place. We also ran into a demonstration celebrating the Kurdish new year, Noruz, which was the next day. They were playing traditional music and wearing traditional costumes and waving flags.

It would have been really neat to be able to stay the next day and see the Noruz celebrations, which involve jumping over fire!, but the half of the group I was leaving with had to leave too early. The other half of our group, though, had a really good time joining in the festivities.

So here's a rundown from some of the events from the past week.

First, I got shingles. :((( It started as a couple itchy, tender bumps on my shoulder and then spread to my ear area and didn't go away. I was really freaked out for a bit cause I thought it was some kind of weird bug bite and since I thought there might be bugs in my bed I was having trouble sleeping :P Which is kinda a vicious cycle in the end because shingles is aided by stress. Anyway, I went to hospital a few times and started treatment and now it's all good. I just feel terrible now cause one of my friends has it really bad all of a sudden and I know it's not supposed to be contagious (except to people who haven't had chicken pox, which doesn't apply to her) but I still feel responsible :(

Last weekend started off with a couple of our Iranian friends cooking dinner for Caitlin, Ivy, and me. It was sooo good. It was nice to get a change of cuisine as well. We had some really great and interesting conversations during dinner, talking about gender issues and love and all that. It was interesting to get the perspective from these Iranian guys. Something they said that I thought was really interesting was that although women are required to cover their head when out of the house in Iran, they thought that women in Turkey, where head covering is not required, are much more submissive and cautious of men than in Iran. Of course, it's not just about the head covering but about the conservativeness that the head covering reflects. And then conservativeness in this context is often correlated to gender stratification. They said specifically that they felt that their female peers in Turkey seemed to cringe away from them when they didn't know them and the boys started talking to them, which apparently isn't the case in Iran. I mean, it's hard to tell what this might actually be the result of. Maybe these girls were intimidated by the fact that they were male and foreign. Maybe it's because they don't feel comfortable speaking English with strangers and feel more pressured around men. At any rate, the fact that Turkish girls don't shy away from me when I talk to them probably means that this is a gender issue, but I don't know if we can make the cross-cultural comparison yet :P

Last weekend was Ivy's birthday!! We went all out. The theme was pink (Ivy's favorite color) so everyone had to wear at least something pink. Starting out, Ivy, Caitlin and I got dinner in Taksim (just Pizza Hut lol but it was DELICIOUS), and then we settled into a hostel with Tim, Max, and Paul. We got all dolled up and spent the rest of the night between ESN (Erasmus Student Network bar), K-Box (a karaoke bar where Paul and Max are now soul mates with everyone who works there), and Riddim, which is always a good time for me. During that day I'd made Ivy a not-red red velvet cake, decorated like an armadillo (requires lots of imagination to see it) because that's her favorite cake and favorite animal. So when we got back to the hostel around 5 am we all ate cake :) :

This weekend has started out pretty solid as well. Thursday night we went to a trivia night in Taksim. I contributed to one question (the answer being "Colin Firth") the entire night, but I still enjoyed it a lot and learned some things (that I have since very successfully unlearned). Yesterday during the day CIEE took us to an exhibit at the Sabanci Museum called Treasures of the Ağa Han. I think Ağa Han is just the family that owns all of these beautiful Islamic artifacts. Some were so incredible, especially the Qu'rans. I'm not sure if this is one of the ones we saw, but just so you get an idea of the type:

It was also really cool that the exhibit included works from all over the Islamic world, India, Iran, China, as well as the Ottoman Empire. There was so much creativity, it really made me want to find a script to decorate lol. Maybe I can do Shakespeare's sonnets or something ;) After the exhibit Tyler, Emily, Ethan and I met up with Jamie and Kelsey in Taksim. We got super cheap dinner (small plate of meatballs and potatoes + bottle of water + limitless bread = 3 TL = $1.80) and then went to an INCREDIBLE chocolate cafe (which was WAY more expensive). My blood sugar rose in anticipation just entering the place. They had all different flavors of hot chocolate and way too many incredible desserts. I got coconut hot chocolate and Emily and I split a caramel cheesecake. And the ambiance was so nice, really cozy and they played Ella Fitzgerald and Edith Piaf the whole time. I'm eating all my meals there from now on, btw. Afterwards we went around, had a good time at K-Box but wasn't so much fun at any of the other places. There was an Erasmus party but it was full and somehow we didn't really find anything good. It's alright though. By this point I was in a group with Alanna, Paul, Ethan, and Kelsey, none of whom I know very well so it was a good opportunity to hang out with them. In general that's been a good point to this weekend cause I hung out with newbies on Thursday and yesterday during the day as well.

Tonight I think I'm going to stay in :P Also, my host family is having guests over so that might be a really great opportunity for me to practice Turkish. Other than that I think it would be a good idea to do some homework at some point :D