Kapadokya

This past weekend I went to Kapadokya (Cappadoccia)!! I went with ISS (International Student Society). It was only 150 lira, about $100, for transportation, food, hamam, and disco so I couldn't really pass it up. All in all, the trip was pretty rushed and since there were over 60 people the organizational challenge somewhat prevented the trip from being all it could be. But I was not about to complain.

Since it was ISS (not CIEE) the 60+ constituents represented a whole bunch of countries. That was probably the best part about the trip, getting to know some non-CIEEers from all over the world. Meanwhile, Kim and Tim from CIEE were also on the trip which was really nice to have as a "base", especially since they're both fantastic and I really enjoy hanging out with them. I hadn't really hung out much with Kim up to this point so it was nice to get to know her better. Here are some more fabulous people I got to know even just a bit better on the trip:

• Nina (Germany)
• Claire (Canada)
• John (Netherlands)
• Eunice (Turkish but lives in Germany)
• Valentina (Italy)
• Abraham (Pakistan)
• Stephanie (Miami)
• Christina (Canada)
• Marina (France)
• Ben (Indiana)
• Jasmine (USA)

Some of these people I basically only met, and there are definitely others not on the list. It was really fun to hang out and get to know some of these people. Also to get a break from the CIEE dynamics (even though I love them). And then I could always kick it with Tim for some familiarity.

Bus ride there

We took overnight buses there and back. Not my cup of tea. I've taken them before, so I was not looking forward to this part of the adventure. Of course, the first few hours are always fun, you talk and meet new people, or watch outside if there is interesting scenery. After a couple hours if you get bored you can listen to music and daydream. By hour 4 or 5, however, when it's way past your bedtime and everything has lost its novelty, the chair quite suddenly starts to feel extraordinarily uncomfortable. This decrease in physical comfort correlates to increase in sleepiness. Soon you reach this horrible point when you are far too tired to stay awake, and simultaneously far too uncomfortable to sleep. All of a sudden your teeth turn to fangs and your skin to scales and your friends are the casualties. And none of the food at any of the rest stops can make it better. And I definitely drooled in front of Eunice on the ride back.

Fortunately, on the way down this experience was minimal because I had the seat next to me at times. The ride was a couple hours longer than it should have been, though, because while stuck in hard core traffic (still in Istanbul) the bus driver came too close to a metal trailer and chipped off the bottom left corner of the bus, including the headlight. As the trailer moved away, it took the left side view mirror with it. So for the remainder of the 13 hour nighttime trip our disproportionately tall tour bus drove through torrential rain and audibly high winds at rebelliously high speeds... missing one headlight and one side view mirror. And the bus driver and his second were smoking the whole time lol. At one point in my comatose stupor of the way-too-early morning I opened my eyes enough to see (ironically) that visibility was about 20 feet through the most incredible fog I've ever seen. Needless to say, it was an adventure before we even got to Kapadokya.

Ceramics

After enjoying a sumptuous breakfast, we went to a ceramics center. The styles were traditional or inspired. We even had a little demonstration of a man creating a vase using a pottery wheel. The patterns were really beautiful. I loved this blue style:

These pitchers are really cool. This is a Hittite form. Servers put their arms through the center hole and rotated the pitcher along their shoulders to pour:

Rock formations

One of the things Kapadokya is most famous for are these crazy, really weird and unique rock formations. A long time ago three volcanoes erupted in the area and covered it with lava. Since then, the stone has become sandstone (forgive me, geologists, if any of this doesn't make sense). Extensive erosion carved out these stone pillars all over the place. Meanwhile, there are pieces of granite in places (like the tops of the pillars) that could not be worn away as easily.

The softness of the sandstone meant that it could easily be carved by humans as well, who made many cave dwellings and churches. The insides of the churches were beautifully painted and frescoed. Even though most of the art was at least partially worn away you could still tell how impressive it had been. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the insides, though.

After wandering around these crazy rocks we headed "home". By this time the lazy drizzle of the afternoon turned into a full on lightning storm, which was great to see over the wide open landscape. We went to a hamam (Turkish bath) at a hotel, which was fun even though it wasn't the real deal per se. There was a REALLY hot pool, a place with faucets to actually wash, and a steam room. Apparently, in really traditional hamams there is a person there to scrub off your last two years-worth of skin as well. People keep telling me that they've never felt so clean in their life. Even though we didn't get the full scrub, it felt great afterwards. We ate dinner and then went to a "disco", which was djed by a couple Koc students. It was a small room and there weren't many people dancing, but the place was furnished with flashing colored lights and a bar so it felt a little more legit. It was also the actual Republic Day, the reason we had a four day weekend, and we got little Turkish flags :). Despite the lack of people I danced from start to finish and had fun. Also, for a little while a Turk was playing traditional rhythms on a dumbek along to Britney Spears and whatever other pop was playing, which was really fun for me.

Unfortunately, this very luxurious hotel was not the one we were staying at. The one we were staying at was surprisingly unclean and unaesthetic (which only added to the feeling of uncleanliness). The bath was industrial size and industrial style: a huge block of dusty marble. The shower was a tube from the pipes. I didn't mind all this really, and ultimately slept fine, it was just kinda funny.

Winery

The next day commenced with a trip to the winery, which is surprising considering the way some people celebrated Republic Day the previous night. Apparently, Kapadokya is famous for its wine. Unfortunately, my naive palette was not able to tell why it was so special based on the samples.

Underground City

This was really cool, probably the best part of this trip. This really was an underground city. Back in the day, lots of Christians escaped to this area to flee persecution. In order to hide they created literal cities underground. It's amazing. It's speculated that there are probably many more than have been found already. Really, it was so weird going down there. There are all these winding, narrow tunnels, some of which you have to double over to get through. Branching off of them are rooms of all sizes, shapes, and apparent functions. People carved arches, windows (from one room to another), doors, shelves, niches, etc. Plus, there are ventilation shafts that extended farther up and down than we could see. I have no idea how a community could actually function in a place like this, but apparently they did. There were even a couple moments when I started to feel slightly claustrophobic, which is really unusual for me. The temperature underground was really stable, in our case much warmer than outside (where, according to my Californian sensibilities, it was freezing).

After this I believe we were meant to hike through the Ihlara Valley and get dinner right next to it. Because of organizational difficulties, we hadn't eaten lunch and everyone was starving so we ate first and by the time we finished it was dark and the Valley was closed. However, through the darkness we could see just enough of the valley to guess that it probably would have been a really awesome hike. Next time.

Bus ride home

From there we set off home. We were now equipped with all the left-side parts of the bus. I sat in the front again, this time with Eunice. It was cool getting to know him. Everything else about the ride was pretty rough, though. I'd barely slept Thursday night and probably only 6 hours on Friday night. So this time I was way more tired and somehow even less able to sleep. Sunrise was great, though :{. Most times when I peered over at the speedometer the needle was at the maximum point, about 120 km/hr, or 100 mph. Nevertheless, we had to stop to switch buses because there was a technical problem with ours and it wouldn't be able to take the hill up to Koc. Needless to say, I slept a lot when I got home.

That night, Nathan, Kathryn and I went down to Sariyer for dinner followed by some wine and a whole tub of ice cream. It was really nice, none of us had been together over the weekend, and there was definitely some bonding. Since then I've had a couple of midterms that I'm hoping went well. Tomorrow we leave again (!), this time for Ankara.

Lots of love to everyone back home!!