Turkish Adventures

Leaving my Turkey Blog Behind!

2011-08-14T00:35:00.000-07:00

Hello, my devoted readers,

I have moved to Barcelona, Spain, where I will be teaching at an international school for the next two years. I've started a new blog called "Cavorting in Catalunya." Here's the link:

www.cavortingincatalunya.blogspot.com

And by no means are my Turkish adventures complete! But for the time being, I will be cavorting in Catalunya.

Southeastern Turkey Take 2

2011-07-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

This is my second visit to Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Harran, and Gobekli tepi. I visited this region with my friend, Christy, last spring break. But as this was one of my favorite areas of Turkey, I wanted to go back one more time and share it with Randy. We started off in Gaziantep. I didn't take too many pictures as I'd taken loads last year, but here's a quick photo tour of the sites we saw:

The old citadel:

The copper merchants:

An old hamam:

We flew into Gaziantep mainly to see the famous Mosaic museum that had reportedly finally opened after months of restoration. But we were sad to find out this was just a myth. So that evening we took the 2-hour bus ride further east to Sanliurfa. This is Balikli Golu, or Fish Lake, the supposed site where the prophet Abraham was forced to jump by a king who wanted him dead into a pit of fire, but the fire turned to water and the burning logs to fish.

The next day we rented a car to drive to Gobekli tepe and Harran. The last time I went to Gobekli tepe, it was featured in Smithsonian magazine. This time, it was in the current issue of National Geographic, which Randy brought with her.

The day we drove to Harran and Gobekli Tepe, it was 113 degrees Fahrenheit, so no pictures of Harran survived :)

Antalya and Aspendos Theatre

2011-07-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

We stayed in Antalya for 3 nights after our backpacking trip in a comfy pension in the Kaleici (old town). Unfortunately this time of year, the merchants are tweaked out on parasitic crack, and it was a little intense for both of us to all of a sudden be in such a touristy environment with everyone shouting at us, "Where are you from"? and "Yes, please!" But we were able to rest up for the next part of our journey, see some of the iconic sights of Antalya, and acclimate to the heat we were about to experience tenfold in southeastern Turkey.

The big treat for both of us, and we actually extended our stay in Antalya to do this, was to see an opera at Aspendos Theatre, as part of their International Opera and Ballet Festival held there every summer.

Aspendos is an ancient town from 469 BC, and its theatre is one of the best preserved in Asia Minor. It was originally constructed by the Greeks, and later altered by the Romans. It could accommodate 14,000 people in its time, and exhibited both theatrical and gladiator shows.

They let the audience in at 8pm and we watched the sun go down in time for the 9 o'clock performance of Puccini 's opera "Tosca" performed by the Kazakhstan Opera Company.

This is a depiction of Dionysus in the keystone above the stage. The roots of ancient Greek theater lie in the cult of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility. I can't imagine how many performances this Dionysus has watched in Aspendos theatre, but it was sure a satisfying feeling to be watching one of them as well.

This is a really happy Randy:

The Lycian Way

2011-07-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

The second leg of Randy's and my Turkish adventure included a 4-day backpacking trip along the Lycian Way, or Lykian Yolu as it's known in Turkish. The entire Lycian Way is over 500-km. long and takes a month to complete, but as Randy and I had limited time and were attempting this in off-season (we were the only ones on the trail because it's so hot in July), we opted to do the first stretch of 55km starting in Ovacik, near Oludeniz, and heading east.

The Lycians were a pre-Hittite people that occupied this mountainous region of the Turquoise Coast between Fethiye and Antalya. They were famous for their fierce desire for independence. On two separate occasions the Lycian citizens of Xanthos built a funeral pyre and burnt themselves alive so as to avoid being conquered. They had their own language and customs, for instance figuring their heritage by their mother's side and not their father's lineage. The Lycian cities organized themselves against external authority as the Lycian Federation, a democratic grouping of voting units, electing national and municipal authorities until the control of Lycia was assumed by Rome. The Lycians are first mentioned in writing in Homer's Iliad, in which they fought as allies of the Trojans. Persian and Athenian domination of the region began in the 6th century BC, and by the 3rd century BC the Lycian's native language was replaced by Greek. By 43 AD, the region was joined to a larger Roman province. Most of the ruins seen along the trail are Byzantine and Roman.

Other than a couple side treks down valleys to the beach, our entire trek had views of the ocean from high up mountainsides, and a seabreeze kept us going in the hot temperatures.

We spent our first night in Faralya. The entire town was perched on a cliffside, making open land hard to find for camping. A nice lady who owned a market offered us her garden to camp in; in exchange, we had breakfast at her market the next morning.

We began the second day with a brief day hike down into the famous Butterfly Valley. We had initially been disappointed on the Blue Cruise that we didn't get to visit this valley, but after seeing the Valley from above and dropping into it via ropes and a steep path, we agreed seeing it this way was much more stunning.

The second night we stayed in Kabak Vadesi (Squash Valley). We hiked down to the beach for a swim and to cook dinner.

We found a pension in town offering camping, but since the place was so empty, the owner, Fatih, offered this raised wooden platform with a view of the sea and the mountains as our bed. Under the stars with a glass of wine to boot. It was slowly becoming clear by the number of villages along the way that this so-called "backpacking" trip could have easily been a series of connected day hikes, and that we didn't need to be carrying our homes on our backs. We were even able to "bath" in the pool before and after bed. (Sorry about that layer of scum we left behind, Fatih.)

We came across these old gravestones in a forest along the trail the next day.

Our last day and night were the most wild and uninhabited. We hiked past the small town of Alinca. Since water had been more scarce on this day, we were glad to have gotten water from a nice family in Alinca. And we actually camped outside of town, making the backpacks we lugged the last 50 km. totally worth it!

On our hike out the next morning, we past the most impressive of our ruin sightings: an Ottoman cistern.

I highly recommend this beautiful long distance trail to anyone living in or visiting Turkey, especially in the months of April or May. If you want to make it an easier vacation, each town with its pensions is only 10-15 km. from each other, so you could just hike with a little day pack. This is such a beautiful part of the country!

Showered and ready for a meal and a soft bed in Antalya:

Fethiye and my Second Blue Cruise

2011-07-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

On my very last day of work at BLIS, I flew down to Fethiye to meet up with my friend, Randy, who traveled from Bellingham, WA to spend my last 3 weeks in Turkey traveling together. Our first adventure was to meet up with 8 of my friends from Ankara for a 4-day Blue Cruise out of Fethiye. These pics are from hiking around the city together before embarking on our cruise.

Fethiye is the ancient Lycian city of Telmessos. The rock tombs belong to the Lycians

As for the Blue Cruise, there's not much to say in terms of history or culture. It was just purely beautiful, relaxing, and fun.

This group MadLib did come out of the trip, however:

When they cast off from the marina, they had no idea that CHARITY (group member's name) would be the weakest link in all their Catchphrase games. But there would be many other surprises as well, such as the name of the Blue Cruise: "The 10 (number) Island Tour," which only meant a series of STALACTITES (rock feature) clumped together in a 2 (number) -square meter space.

They split their time between DIVING (leisure activity), SKYDIVING (active activity), and SPELUNKING (adventurous activity). CARRIE (group member name) proved to be the most adventurous, as was made evident through her willingness to NIGHT SWIM (risky activity) so that all could enjoy KNOBBLED (adj.) bread and get within 3 (number) kilometers of Butterfly Valley. The butterflies were sparse, but the sea landscape was abound with ELVES, GIANTS, and DUCKBILLED PLATYPUSES (3 creatures).

Many nature discoveries were made by Olivia, Carrie, and Katy during the first day on the beach, the most interesting being a SEVERED ARM (thing that washes up on beach). While snorkeling, Jeff spotted a SPERM WHALE (sea creature). They heard DOLPHINS (sea creature) splashing around at night, and all assumed they were CENTAURS (fantastical creature). While swimming on the second day, they all experienced a TINGLY (skin sensation) sensation all over their bodies, which was quickly forgotten about during MOJITO (drink) time. Truth be told, all discomforts were quickly forgotten about when they assembled around the dinner table, where YAPRAK SARMA (vegetarian dish), KARPUZ JAM (type of jam), and a SEALED PAIL (type of container) of butter waited for them.

The water gave the Blue Cruise its name, despite their wish to rename it the CHARTREUSE (color) Cruise due to John's affiliation with the SOCIALIST CHOIR (fascist party organization). The water was a mere reflection of the color of the sky: TURQUOISE (color). And it was 21 degrees Celsius (temperature), and had a SOUR (a taste) taste. There was enough salt in it for all to float like buoys, except for Jeff who had LOOSE FLATULENCE (a reason for being different), and needed a RAFT (flotation device) to stay afloat. They relied on the water for all their bathing needs, and after the third day, all had SMILY (adjective) hair, especially JEFFREY (group member's name) who had mysteriously grown to resemble RIP VAN WINKLE (actor's name).

Randy spent some of her leisure time trying to learn TAIWANESE (language), so when anyone sneezed, she would reply "AK DENIZ!" (Turkish phrase). The trip would not have been complete without a little testosterone-driven dare-deviling. Uriah and Jordan found an OUTCROP (rock feature) for cliff-jumping. The girlfriends watched nervously from the deck of the boat, and as Uriah was about to jump, Leyla shouted, "GO FUCK YOURSELF!" (a phrase for chewing someone out).

Some couples arrived on the boat as such, but some new coupling arose as well. John, Randy, and Captain Ilhan were caught in some kind of love-TRAPEZOID (a shape), which began when the Captain learned that Randy's name in British English meant "SMART" (adj.). But the Captain seemed torn between this American beauty and this British ASKIM (term of endearment). The rest of the crew looked on at their SQUEEZING (type of embracing) with astonishment, keeping an eye on the Captain's hand placement at all times. Despite John's inability to detect when males were hitting on him, he was quite aware of the difference between the American and British pronunciation of SPHINCTER (word with a "r" after a vowel).

The group got along SADLY (adverb), and with the 17 (number) horizon lines of mountains ahead of them on their way back to Fethiye, LEYLA (group member's name) was able to sum up the overall feeling of the trip perfectly when she exclaimed, "CONDITIONER MAKES HAIR SILKY SMOOTH!" (famous movie line).

CAS Trip to Kuytuca Village School

2011-07-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

Every year, our CAS coordinator, my friend Kivanc, organizes a trip for the 11th graders to travel to a remote village school in Turkey and engage in service projects. CAS is an acronym for Community, Action, and Service, and is a component of the IB Diploma program, requiring students to obtain a certain number of hours of each of these with the goal of becoming well-rounded global citizens. Every year, a major tractor company in Turkey picks a village school to donate money towards building them new bathrooms. Then they contact Kivanc to follow up this restoration by building a library for the school and engaging in creative activities with the students. This year, the tractor company picked a village near Ardahan, so far away in eastern Turkey, that for the first time, our students and staff had to fly to the location. This year was also different in that the school we were going to had many more students than our team is used to, so I was fortunate enough to be asked to join the chaperones. It was a special end of the year opportunity for me to spend time with my 11th graders that I am leaving behind.

We stayed in a high school dormitory in the town of Gole. Most villages do not have high schools; the high school we stayed in was a boarding school for the nearby villagers opting to send their children to continue their education. Many village boys do not continue past 8th grade because they need to help their families tend the livestock, and girls who do not attend high school stay in the village for early marriage.

We took over the local restaurant in Gole for dinner each night.

When we arrived at the village school on Monday morning, the children were waiting for us at the gates. They were so excited to meet these "big kids" from Ankara who were going to spend time with them for the next two days, but terribly shy at the same time, a marked contrast between the sugary hugs and "I love you's" that came at our departure.

Our 11th graders' time was split between leading a classroom activity with a grade level, and doing a more physical project like building shelves, or painting the library wall.

My job was to just circle around the classrooms and help out when I could.

In order to establish a library, we begin a bookdrive at our school months before the trip, and carted the books across the country. In between activities, the village children kept visiting their new library to pull out books and look at them. A group of young girls pulled out elementary level picture books to teach me Turkish. They put on their best "teacher voices" for this process.

One of our school's signature trademarks is the tree we paint in the library we leave behind. Our art students paint the tree, and then the handprint of every person involved, teachers and students from our school and theirs, is added to the wall.

Another group of our artsy students designed and painted a mural in the kindergarten.

This year, the tractor company donated 11,000 Turkish Lira towards the new bathroom facilities. Here's a pic of the cute elephant sinks they put in the kindergarten building.

Here's the chaperone crew:

I was so impressed by our students, every single one of which stepped up into a leadership position in the classroom with these village children. The village children were thirsty for this attention, and completed every craft activity with concentration and smiles. Despite conditions our students weren't used to (no heat in the school, no hot water the first night in the dorm), they all donned the attitude that they were there to make a difference in others' lives, and they stepped up to these challenges. The village children adored the big kids, and goodbyes were extensive and involved tears.

After our last afternoon at the school, we drove to a nearby walking area to acquire some "action" hours. A very similar landscape to the Kackar Mountains, which are not too far away to the north. It was the perfect way to decompress before beginning our journey back to Ankara.

On the morning before our return home, we packed in some sightseeing. We drove towards the Armenian border to the site of Ani, once the capital of Armenia. The name "Ani" comes from "Anahit," a Persian water-goddess who was a chief deity of the early pagan Armenians. Ani flourished starting in the 5th century as a Christian community, and enjoyed a golden age trumphing that of Constantinople an Baghdad at the time. In the middle of the 11th century, battles with the Byzantines took their toll and the city was annexed in 1045.

The Armenians were known for their stoneworking, so the remaining fortifications and churches were stunning, a blend of sandstone and harder volcanic rock. The Church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator is the best preserved church on the site. St. Gregory is the saint who brought Christianity to Armenia at the start of the 4th century.

This is the Ahurya River Gorge that separates Turkey from Armenia:

Each night after we returned from the village school, or students wrote reflections and then shared some of their thoughts out loud. It was clear that this was a very meaningful experience for our upper class students, who will be the future leaders of Turkey. Some said they didn't know prior to this trip that they could make other people so happy, that this experience was sacred, and they felt honored to be a part of our group. When we returned to school the next day for the last day of school and their award ceremony, Kivanc the CAS coordinator was bestowed with this thoughtful gift from our students:

Ankara's Sun Disk

2011-06-06T05:31:00.001-07:00

Let me tell you the story of a monument that has intrigued me since I arrived in Ankara. This story starts 4,000 years ago.
Once upon a time, the Hittites established a kingdom in Anatolia, becoming one of the great powers of the ancient world. They conquered Babylon and challenged Rameses II’s Egypt, as well as Greece and Troy. The Hittites were referred to in the Old Testament as well as Egyptian and Assyrian records, but unlike other major civilizations of the ancient world, these brief references made up the only knowledge of the Hittites until relatively recently. In the 20th century, the cuneiform script of the Hittites’ Indo-European language was “cracked,” leading to the confirmation of both the extent and importance of this empire.
Hittite sites have since been discovered throughout Anatolia and northern Syria, the capital being Boğazköy (also known as Hattusas) 240km east of Ankara. Ankara is right in the middle of the Hittite’s old stomping ground.
In the 1930s, in Alacahöyük, a town near Boğazköy, 13 Royal Tombs were excavated, uncovering a vast collection of gold, silver, bronze, copper, and iron artifacts which date back to the early Bronze Age. These included figurines of bulls and stags. In the nearby city of Beycesultan, once a Hittite religious center, archaeologists uncovered shrines containing altars in the form of rams’ horns and bulls’ heads. I have viewed all these Hittite artifacts at the Anatolian Civilization Museum in Ulus, Ankara several times.
But according to me, the most intriguing find in all these digs were the "sun disks," which were also found in the Royal Tombs.

Mystery surrounds these artifacts. We know not why they were placed in tombs, sometimes more than one in each. The majority of the sun disks are made of bronze, but two striking examples are in silver. Several of the sun disks are adorned with figures of stags and bulls and framed with bulls' horns. Due to the spiritual beliefs surrounding these animals, archeologists conjecture that the sun disks had some sort of ritual significance.
In the Hittite mythology, the stag was a protective deity. Other Hittite gods were often depicted standing on the back of a stag. The bull was equally revered. Tilla was a bull-god in both the Hurrian (the civilization preceding the Hittites) and Hittite pantheons. He is the attendant of the weather god, Teshub.
Archaeologists also conjecture that the disk shape is a representation of the sun. Also, many of the sun disks have projections coming out of the bottom as they were probably attached to the top of wooden poles for carrying. Poles with handles made of gold or silver were also found. Some of the decorative elements (animal figures and flower buds) are firmly attached to the disks, while others are left to make a jingling noise if paraded through rituals or festivals.
To me, these tiny sculptures and figurines on display at the museum seem potent and full of stories and wisdom. But these Hittite symbols have also become important symbols for the city Ankara.
The sun disk was adopted as Ankara’s official emblem when Vedat Dalokay was mayor in 1978. It was, and remains today, a controversial issue that arose from the new city’s desire to adopt an identity or a history. A Hittite symbol as Ankara’s official emblem suggests the country’s roots preceding Ottoman times, and refers to an ancient civilization which represents some of the first Turkic peoples who immigrated to Anatolia. Despite the emblem’s adoption, however, the nationalists did not like the idea of a Pre-Turkish symbol and the Islamists did not like the idea of a pre-Muslim symbol.
In Sihhiye, a mid-point between the northern region of the poor and the richer southern region of Ankara, a likeness of one of these Hittite artifacts has been sculpted into a monument. Traffic has been diverted around it, making the monument and its square an island surrounded by several urban motorways.

The initial controversy over the Hittite symbol bore its head again in the mid-90s when the symbol was finally changed. In 1995, Ankara’s official emblem was changed by Ankara Mayor Melih Gokcek –a pro-Islamic mayor still in office today. The new emblem, which can be found all over Ankara, consists of a white silhouette of a mosque combined with Atakule Tower, the first shopping mall in Ankara, on a dark blue background. The mosque is not only reminiscent of ‘old Ankara’, the Islamic-Ottoman past, but also of the then recently completed Kocatepe Mosque, the largest one built in Ankara since the country became a secular republic.
Despite the official emblem being changed, the Hittite monument still stands in Sihhiye, and will forever be an icon of Ankara. It’s also worth noting that both Lausanne square where the monument is located and Abdi Ipekci Park are two places where many protests have taken place in Ankara. Consequently, the monument now contains some of the essence or connotation of “protest.”
So that sums up the four thousand years since the icon was created. But today, I sit on a narrow medium of green grass, a few scraggly rose bushes around me, surrounding by major roads on both sides. It is a quiet Sunday morning, and I am here to sketch the monument that has always caught my eye. I am not alone. A few public service employees surround me. Their job is to landscape the small square and medians surrounding the monument. They stop by one by one to look over my shoulder, and comment in Turkish, “Very nice,” and “Take it easy.” When I asked one of these men how to spell Sihhiye, he said, “I don’t know. Ask my friend.” And when I wrote down several possible spellings, his friend looked at all three and said, “Yes, that is where we are.” I found it endearing that despite their probably living and working in the city center their whole lives, and even adding beauty to it with their rose bushes and green grass, none of them knew how to spell the name of the area in which we were. One even asked if when I was done, I would give it to him. It seems that no matter what you know of it, everyone is a bit intrigued by this Hittite symbol.

Van

2011-05-24T20:51:00.000-07:00

For our Youth and Sports Day Holiday (commemoration of the beginning of the national liberation movement initiated in 1919 by Atatürk's landing in Samsun & dedicated to the youth of Turkey), my friends and I flew eastward to Van, Turkey. With a population of 600,000, it is situated on a 4,000 square kilometer freshwater lake nestled against snow-covered mountains. As far east into conservative Turkey as it is, it's more "cosmopolitan" feeling that one would think. This whole combination reminded me of Missoula, Montana, as much as a town not too far from the Iranian border can remind one of Montana.

This was my first time staying in one of Turkey's oğretmen eviler, or "teacher houses." Not only is "teacher" a respected enough profession to earn you your career's name on your tombstone along with only soldiers and doctors, but being a teacher also allows you to stay in any of these teacher hotels which are situated all over the country. They're often quite basic, but safe and affordable. You live dorm style, in that you share your room with other teachers, and there are common reading areas on each hall (because us teachers ALWAYS have to read, even on vacation), as well as a garden outside for breakfast. Dale's roommate, Ozgur, ended up joining us for the weekend's adventures. He is in the middle of his compulsory teaching placement in Hakkari, a small town nestled in the mountains near the Iraq border, three hours from Van. From him, I learned that a new teacher has 3 compulsory placements at the beginning of his career, one uncomfortable, one semi-comfortable, and one very comfortable. So after living on the very comfortable Aegean Sea, they placed him in the heart of Kurdish unrest. From a hiker/skier's perspective, Hakkari is in a prime spot. Unfortunately, these mountains are totally off limits due to the dangers.

As each town in Turkey is known for some culinary treat, Van is known for its breakfast. So our first morning we took a walk down to "breakfast street" as we called it.

After breakfast, we decided to take a trip to the "Cat House" (Kedi Evi) to see the famous Van kitty. Van cats are famous for their two different colored eyes and their ability to swim. It used to be that you could see them around the city, in shop's, etc.. But now they're so well-protected, our only opportunity to see them was at a breeding house on a university campus on the outskirts of the city. The mini-bus kept going and going, and then dropped us off in the middle of nowhere it seemed, where we followed signs to the "Kedi Evi." Weird.

After our morning seeking out the kitties, we set off on a journey to Akdamar, an island just off Lake Van's southern shore. But first, lunch on the quay (my new Scrabble word).

Akdemer is an Armenian church built between 915 and 921 AD. The Armenians were the first nation to adopt Christianity as their official religion. Van used to be the capital of the Armenian Kingdom, and its churches are sprinkled throughout this region. However, Akdemer, due to its location and exterior engravings is one of the most famous.

The church is very small, only 15m by 12m. The reliefs on the outside bear Biblical stories.

Here's Jonah and the Whale:

Samson and Delilah:

Gagik the builder-king presenting a model of the church to the clergy:

The inside of the church was less impressive and told the church's age, as most of the frescoes were worn off.

Around the church were khatchkars - Celtic-looking, very ornate crosses- carved into the rocks. They looked like teetering tombstones.

After tea in the tea garden, we raced to the top of the island.

The water of Van is the same aqua blue as the Mediterranean.

Crows and seagulls playing together:

On our second day, we explored the Van Castle. This fortress has been inhabited by different people throughout time. The Urartian's from the 9th century BC, built a temple on its side, and carved cuneiform reliefs. The Armenians' presence can be seen from the top of the fortress, where you can look down on what remains of "Old Van."

Old Van was destroyed in 1915; only a few mosques and fragments of an Armenian church remain. The Armenians began arriving from the Caucasus area around 500 BC and successfully battled for independence from Parthian and Roman hands. Under the Romans and Byzantines, Armenia played a large role in the growth of Christianity. Towards the end of the 3rd century, they adopted Christianity. However, the Armenian Apostolic Church differed from the Byzantine in belief over the co-existent nature of Christ, as the Armenians believed that the human part of Christ was absorbed in the divine. This religious antipathy over time fatally weakened the Armenian Empire so that the Selçuks absorbed them, and then they found themselves in Ottoman hands. As to what happened in 1915, supposedly during the global conflict of 1912-1915, Armenia thought it a good time to try establishing an independent Armenian state centered on its traditional territories. As a result, local Turks and Kurds attacked Van's Armenian civilians, who had barricaded themselves in the old town. From above, the Armenians' walled quarter was then pulverized by heavy artillery. The fighting ceased temporarily when Russians took the town in May 1915 and when the Ottomans counterattacked, the remaining Armenians fled with the Russian army.

Here is what's left of Old Van below:

Van Lake beyond:

After venturing into town for dinner, we came back out to catch the sunset from atop of the castle:

Then, on our last night, we stopped for baklava at a place owned by people from Gazianteppe (the town famous for pistachio baklava as opposed to walnut baklava which the rest of the country serves).

Back home in Ankara the next day, I still felt the spirit of the east around me. I love visiting eastern Turkey as it is so alive with tension and change and the fervent pride of minority groups. And of course, the hospitality of this country does not stop at ethnic Turks; the Kurds and Arabs I have met in eastern Turkey have made my visits there extra special. Whenever anyone asks me where my favorite place in Turkey is (I've seen A LOT of Turkey at this point), I cannot pick ONE place, as it's the combination of all these different places that uphold and support the beauty of each other. For example, Istanbul would not be as interesting to me if I had not see the small town of Van, and the Mediterranean resort town of Fethiye would not be beautiful if I had not seen the small conservative town of Amasra on the Black Sea. I remember before arriving in Turkey reading in my guidebook that this country is a land of opposites and contradictions. And though this has been proven true by my travels, these opposites have less of a polar effect and are more of a paradox or a gestalt. Despite the tensions between political parties, ethnicities, and regions, there is a harmony to all these opposites that is really quite beautiful.

King Midas of Gordion

2011-05-01T11:22:00.001-07:00

A day trip to Gordion, the capital of Phrygia, 90 km west of Ankara.

The original settlement of Gordion dates back to the Bronze Age, but is best known as the capital of the Phrygians. The Phrygians were a Balkan people who reached Gordion from southeastern Europe. The Phrygians followed the collapse of the Hittites, and dominated western Anatolia from the 8th century BC to 700 BC. King Midas was their last ruler; he was reported to have committed suicide in 714 BC when the Cimmerians of what is now south Russia invaded Gordion. There's little left of the records of the brief flowering Phrygian Empire, excepting the myths associated with King Midas, the most important Phrygian king. Also, Phrygia was the first state west of the Euphrates to develop an alphabet. After the Cymmerians destroyed the Phrygian Empire, the city was occupied by the Lydians for a short spell, then the Persians, and in 333 BC, Alexander the Great wintered in Gordion during his great march eastwards. The legend of the Gordion knot comes from his stay. Here's the story:

An oracle foretold that a poor man would ride into Gordion by ox-cart and one day rule the Phrygians. As the king and his subjects were discussing this prediction, in rode a farmer named Midas. King Gordios, who had no sons, named Midas his successor and Midas' cart was placed in the temple where it would stand for half a millenium. Somehow the belief also arose that whoever untied the knot that fixed the cart to its yoke would become ruler of Asia. It was Alexander the Great who severed the Gordion Knot during his winter stay in Gordion. He did become ruler of Asia, but he also died at 33, and the superstitious thought his early death was a result of his severing that knot.

Today, there is a small town on the site of Gordion called Yassihuyuk. But, really, you're in the middle of nowhere.

First, we hit the museum. There was a plethora of pottery, brass fasteners, and figurines. Even gutter systems complete with decor. All these things are from peoples who have settled in this site from the Bronze Age onwards. I took pictures of the things that caught my eye, but what most interested me was the bottom line that human beings have always had a need for decorating and surrounding themselves with beauty.

Tumuli (large artificial hills of dirt covering tombs) dot the landscape around Gordion, the largest of which is called King Midas' Tumulus, although it has not been proven that he was actually buried there. Material found within the tomb suggests it possible that it was a later Phrygian king's tomb.

The tumulus is 300 meters in diameter and over 50 meters high. The burial chamber is at the end of a 60-meter tunnel bore by American archaeologists in the 1950s.

The actual tomb consists of gabled pine logs, the oldest wooden structure in Anatolia. The logs have been preserved under this mound of dirt since 725 BC.

I kept asking if tumuli were artificially created. Seems like a lot of work to move all that dirt, pre-bulldozer. But I guess it's like a small scale of the Egyptian pyramids. The tumuli were the first clue to archaeologists that people settled in this area. From a bird's eye view, the mounds look out of place geologically. Today, even the gophers of Gordion have caught on to the tumulus idea:

The other site worth visiting is the raised acropolis. You can walk around its perimeter and look down into the excavated site. This site was the heart of the city, home to the royal palace, temples and government buildings.

Remains of a huge Phrygian town gate, over 10 metres high, make the gate one of the biggest pre-Classical buildings in Anatolia:

At the heart of the palace are four megara, large halls with a kind of porch. One of these megara had a floor mosaic of geometrical patterns. These pieces were excavated and moved to the museum:

Overall, I was surprised to find the capital of the Phrygian Empire to be such a small city. It's hard to believe it once dominated western Anatolia. It's also hard to believe that a group of people, the Cimmerians or "Sea People," came all the way from what is now southern Russia to conquer this "empire." Considering all the empty land between them, like magnets these different people found each other in the high desert to dominate a region, not even out of vying for resources.

Now the fun part. The legends. King Midas. (It's so fun to stand in the "homes" of stories I read as a child in a far away land.) Several Phyrgian kings bore the name Midas, so over time emerged a composite mythical figure "King Midas." The best known story is that of King Midas and the Golden Touch. According to this legend, Midas captured the water demon, Silenus, after getting him drunk by pouring wine into his spring. In ransom for Silenus, Midas asked Dionysos for the ability to turn all he touched into gold. Dionysos granted him this wish, but Midas was dismayed to find that all he touched did turn to gold, including his daughter and his food. (Imagine getting what you wished for!) So he begged Dionysos to release him from the curse and Dionysos ordered Midas to wash his hands in the River Pactolus. The cure worked, and thereafter the river ran with gold.

The second famous Midas tale is this: Midas was asked to judge a musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas. Midas decided in favor of Marsyas and in revenge, Apollo caused Midas to grow donkey's ears and skinned Marsyas alive. Midas tried to hide his new appendages under a special hat, but could not hide his donkey ears from his barber who, desperate to tell someone the king's secret, whispered into the reeds by the river, "Midas has ass's ears." The river reeds whispered this gossip for ages. Unfortunately that river has since changed courses and no longer runs by the site of Gordion. However, I did videotape the grass on top of the acropolis. Tell me if you hear anything:

Some poetography from the day:

Paris in the Spring

2011-04-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

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This year, for some reason, I found myself traveling to Europe on my breaks: Venice in the fall and Paris in the spring. For our much-anticipate Spring Break, last week my friend, Katy, and I traveled to Paris for five days to visit our Turkish friend, Gozde, whom we met acting in the pantomime this fall. Through the Erasmus program, Gozde is in Paris for a semester of working on her phD. The three of us stayed with her friend who has an apartment just around the corner from the Eiffel Tower. We enjoyed the perfect mixture of relaxing in sidewalk cafes and walking the streets, seeing some famous sights, accidentally lighting on fire a napkin in a fancy restaurant, and belly-laughing.

On our first full day, we walked along the River Seine alongside used book stands, a tradition occurring here since medieval times. As we walked, we watched the original island of Venice start and Notre Dame come into sight.

We crossed the bridge to Notre Dame, and came across these padlocks on the "Bridge of Love," where sweethearts have padlocked their love.

Notre Dame was by the far the most impressive church I've seen in Europe. Everywhere you looked, an intricate story was carved into the stone. Its construction began in 1150AD and took 200 years to finish; the foundation was built by volunteers who could only imagine their great-great-grandchildren enjoying the fruits of their labor.

And in the Gothic style, the church was just drippppping with gargoyles.

I looked up the myth of the gargoyle on wikipedia, and here's what it said: "French legend that sprang up around the name of St. Romanus ("Romain") (AD 631–641), the former chancellor of the Merovingian king Clotaire II who was made bishop of Rouen, relates how he delivered the country around Rouen from a monster called Gargouille or Goji. La Gargouille is said to have been the typical dragon with batlike wings, a long neck, and the ability to breathe fire from its mouth. There are multiple versions of the story, either that St. Romanus subdued the creature with a crucifix, or he captured the creature with the help of the only volunteer, a condemned man. In each, the monster is lead back to Rouen and burned, but its head and neck would not, due to being tempered by its own fire breath. The head was then mounted on the walls of the newly built church to scare off evil spirits, and used for protection.[4]"

Here's a few pics from inside the church:

Across the bridge from Notre Dame, we visited a famous bookstore called Shakespeare & Company in the Latin Quarter. The Latin quarter has been the home of bohemians since medieval times, when the language of intellectuals was Latin and what you heard on the streets. In that tradition, an American woman, Sylvia Beach, opened this English bookstore here during Post World War I when many American writers were moving to Paris because the rent was cheaper and the atmosphere was more free than prohibition America. She offered upstairs apartments to struggling artists, and helped James Joyce publish Ulysses when no one else would. Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others visited this bookstore for their English books. I could've spent all day in there.

It's always fun to be in a Christian country during holidays, for the familiarity. As we were here a week before Easter, chocolate stores had amazing chocolate Easter displays, and amaaaaazing chocolate in general.

We stopped for coffee in the same cafe Sartre frequented and discussed existentialism in its early days. The city was full of literary ghosts, which I loved. Not only stories, like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Man in the Iron Mask, but it seemed like every cafe was home, at some point, to a famous author.

The following pictures are from our evening walk that night along the Seine and to the Arc de Triomphe, which we climbed to view the city.

The Basilique du Sacré-Cœur can be seen in the distance. Since our baggage was lost arriving in Paris, I didn't have my camera the first day. But that was the day we bought a baguette and a bottle of wine and hiked up the Montmartre Hill to visit Sacré-Cœur (The Church of the Sacred Heart). We sat on the steps overlooking the city and, over a bottle of wine, caught up with Gozde, whom we hadn't seen in a few months.

The church is not only interesting architecturally (it was built in the late 1800’s in the design of the ancient Romano-Byzantine), but bears an interesting story, too. During the years following the French Revolution, there was a schism in France between the devout Catholics/royalists and the socialists. It was a trying time for all. Many were starving still, and resorted to eating animals off the street (dogs, cats and rats). The church was built to inspire faith in the French people. During WWII bombs blew out all the stained glass windows but the church remained standing, giving locals the feeling that this church was, in fact, blessed. Our favorite fact about the church, however, was that at any given moment, a nun is on duty with the responsibility of directing her prayers to ask God for forgiveness of the sins of the world. In the main apse of the church, there is a mosaic among the largest in the world, called "Christ in Majesty," in which he opens his arms and bleeding heart to the visitors below.

Okay, back to our evening walk through the "City of Lights."

That pretty much sums up our aimless wandering. Since we had only five days in this magnificent city, we carefully chose our tourist activities to be visiting the impressionist paintings at the Musée d'Orsay (Monet, Degas, Gaugin, Van Gogh) of which I took no pictures, and visiting Versailles.

Versailles amazed me in the way Conrad's Heart of Darkness amazes me. When there are no checks and balances, there is no limit to what man can do.

The court of Versailles was the center of political power in France from 1682 when Louis XIV moved from Paris to this "suburb" 20 kilometers outside the city. The royal family ruled from this retreat until the French Revolution forced them to return to the capital in 1789.

Though the riches of the chateau had us "oohing" and "aahing," the wealth was so over-the-top. And the fact that the angry mobs of the French Revolution had dragged out King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette resulting in their trial and death, gave this beautiful place a strange feeling.

Everyone was milling about the chateau with handheld audioguides glued to their ears, which inspired this silly pose from us... which snowballed into the goofy "Triplets of Versailles" series you will see interspersed throughout the rest of my pictures.

The gardens were expansive, like the chateau. We had lunch at a cafe hidden away in a landscaped maze, then walked towards Marie Antoinette's hamlet, a 45 minute walk away. If we had been royalty in the 1700s, we would have taken a boat along the "Grand Canal" to her retreat. But alas...

Marie Antoinette's gardens of Le Nôtre consist of 86 acres of a pond, farm, windmill, and cottages. She was known to have idealized the life of the peasant, and prance around in lawn dresses and straw hats. It was here that she gambled, played parlor games, held concerts, put on plays with her friends in her very own theatre (we were a little jealous of this), and discovered the joys of a simpler life — churning butter, raising animals and growing a garden. This hamlet was so much like a fabricated fairytale world, you couldn't help but feel sorry for her. She seemed such a little girl.

On our final day we had sunshine, so we picnicked under the Eiffel Tower before catching our flight back to Ankara. It was complete with baguette, goat cheese, wine, strawberries and chocolate, so as you can see, we had become fully Parisian after just five days in Paris!

Eymir Lake Opens Spring

2011-03-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

With the clocks springing forward, the sun out and warmer temperatures to stay, this was the first place I was itchin' to visit.

Climbing in Northern Cyprus

2011-03-21T11:52:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I caught a flight afterschool on Friday to Lefkosa of Northern Cyprus to visit my friends whom I used to climb with my first year in Ankara. It was just a quick weekend getaway, but a great chance to get a dose of spring, climbing, and friends I hadn't seen in two years. I had met Mark, Annie, and their little girl, Annalisa, in Ankara; they lived above me in my apartment building. Mark was a professor at Bilkent, and Annie and I shared yoga and climbing.

Now they live in Kyrenia, 20 minutes away from a great limestone crag called Gargasuyu. It overlooks the Mediterranean, and on a clear day such as we had on Saturday, you can look out across the Mediterranean Sea and make out the mainland of Turkey, some 300 miles away. I tried to adjust the exposure on my camera to catch this. Can you see it?

The climbing felt great. I feel really strong after a winter of training at the local bouldering gym. This was the best transition into climbing outdoors I've ever experienced.

This is their little girl, Annalisa, now almost three, who is still totally afraid of me. I wasn't allowed to touch any of her toys :( Luckily, I brought my own (climbing shoes and harness).

On Sunday, we were all packed up to head to the crag for day #2 of climbing when it started to rain. So instead we headed to the capital city, Nicosia (known as Lefkosa to Turks), for a wander-about.

The old city is in the shape of a mandala. It was called Ledra from 600BC onwards. It was controlled by the Venetians in the 1400s, then the Ottomans in the 1500s. (This IS the place where Shakespeare's Othello and Desdemona met their demise, the Venetian-Ottoman battles for Cyprus bringing them to the island). Then from 1878-1960, the Brits had control. Since the city experienced extreme violence around the time the Cypriots gained control from the Brits, a U.N. Buffer Zone was put into place. Nicosia is the world's last divided city, divided down the middle by a UN sanctioned Buffer Zone called the Green Line. The tension between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots is still palpable. Also, many Turkish Cypriots whose families have been present on the island since the Ottoman Empire want sovereignity from mainland Turkey's government. Mentioning you're from Ankara is not a great thing to say to anyone here. There was a children's book in a museum shop we wandered into that sums it up: "Cyprus: The Island That Everyone Wants."

I think it's most important to note that this is the island where Aphrodite arose from the seafoam.

We took a walk in the rain through this Buffer Zone, and experienced both the Turkish and Greek-occupied parts of Nicosia. The Turkish side had an interesting medieval cathedral-turned-mosque.

The Turkish side also had many rundown shops, mostly men sitting at cafes, untidy children wandering the streets, much the scene of any poor village in Turkey. As we crossed the Green Line, it instantly felt like we were in Europe, with boutique shops, Starbucks, and a heterogenous mix of people.

No pictures of the Greek side. I'd put my camera away upon crossing the Green Line because I remembered getting reprimanded last time I tried to take pictures in this buffer zone, when I crossed it two years ago heading to Paphos for Spring Break with Stacy, Liam, and Gabe. So you'll just have to trust me that it looked and felt just like Europe :)

Shortly thereafter, I caught a Sunday afternoon flight back to Ankara. And now I have the climbing bug and the spring bug.

Beading: A Gathering of Women

2011-03-09T00:57:00.000-08:00

Across the world and far into the past, beading has been a craft passed from generation to generation largely through women. Certain bead colors, shapes, and combinations could speak for the solidarity of clans, for religious devotion, for wealth and status. For instance, in Canada, the First Nations' traditions of beading have been passed down using the patterns that are of the family or the area. In Africa, tribes like the Zulu have expressed themselves through beadwork for ceremonial occasions using organic materials.

Similarly, I come from a clan of beaders. My mother and my three half-sisters have traded homemade jewelry and beading supplies for special occasions for as long as I can remember. Themes came and went with these gifts: like the Christmas we all received a strand of beads ending with a crystal to hang from the window and cast rainbows across the walls, or the year of the beaded bookmark. Or the year I tacked a strand of beads around a candle, and sent one to each of my sisters.

Traveling has turned me into a bead collector. And this started even in the States. I still have strands of matte-finish, salmon-colored beads purchased at a Spokane Indian pow-wow in Washington state. Beads are a souvenir that hold the memory of a place, and through my international collecting, add the eclectic to my adornments. During my travels in Turkey, I've collected seashell beads from Sinop, ceramic beads from Ulus, Ottoman coin beads from Konya...

Several years back, I began hosting a women's beading gathering during the long winter months. When the bleak weather brings on a need for color, the company of women, and the slow steady meditation of beading, I call together my closest girl friends for this event. I love sharing my beads. I love seeing familiar shapes and colors that hold the memory of a place I've been on the necklace of a friend.

This year's beading gathering took place last weekend, and once again fed the soul with wine, laughter, good food, creativity, and great women.

Tango & Ski Festival in Bursa

2011-02-25T08:35:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, I went to the 3rd Tango and Ski Festival on Uludag Ski Resort. A ski by day, tango by night, sleep little kind-of-weekend. I met my friend, Robin, there, who also teaches at Bilkent University, as well as some Turkish friends I've made through the Ankara tango community. I've been looking forward to this event for a year, ever since I learned of it, as it seemed specifically tailored for me!

Uludag is the original ski resort of Turkey, and is outside of the city of Bursa, an old city known for its part in the Silk trade. It was an epic journey to get from Ankara to Uludag. Friday night, my flight left Ankara at 11pm, and finally after several buses and taxis, I arrived at the ski lodge at 2:30 in the morning. An early rise the next day, and then a full day of skiing, a tango workshop, and dancing into the wee hours of the night. Only to rise early on Sunday, and ski all day once again, before taking taxis and buses back down to a hotel near the airport. Robin and I caught an early flight back to Ankara on Monday morning, and I was able to waltz, or shall I say "tango" into work (still bearing a day's worth of sticky skiing sweat, of course) by 9:30am. It was a whirwind, but totally worth it.

There were about 160 dancers there, filling up five different hotels on the ski hill. Forty Greeks from a tango club on the island of Lesbos were present, as well as tango dancers from all over Turkey. There were about 10 of us representing Ankara. Some of the Ankara gang:

During the day, tango workshops were offered by well-known tango couples from different cities of Turkey. I could only peel myself away from the ski hill for one of these afternoon classes. But it was my first tango class in English, and I can't emphasize enough what a treat that was!

The skiing was fantastic.The resort was bigger and the runs were longer than I expected. And it was spring slush, second best to powder. And fun to do something totally different with friends I normally see during nighttime, donned in fancy evening wear.

Now time to change from ski pants to tango dress and heels. The milonga was to be held in an Apre Ski bar on the ski hill from 9:30pm-4am.

A milonga, by the way, is what you call an evening of tango. It involves fancy dresses, a bar, a DJ, and the social etiquette of various men asking you to dance throughout the night. With each man, it is custom to dance three dances in a row. The first is to feel out each other's energy, the second is to experiment with some more difficult figures, and the third is to be one in energy. It kinda sounds like the "three cups of tea" concept now that I think of it. Half the reason I love tango is for the challenge of learning to follow so many different types of leaders. The female always follows the male as he choreographs on the spot. It is her job to not anticipate what he might do but to make it appear as if she has thought of the same step at the same exact moment. I can't tell you how many times on the dance floor, a man has reminded me that it's my job to follow, which of course I intellectually know, but the hardest part of the whole dance is to let your mind go and not anticipate. I like to respond to such a man by asking him if he has ever 100% followed anyone, to encourage him to have empathy for how difficult it is to follow. The woman can only do so by reading small cues from his body, so he must send clear signals. Hmmm, sound familiar? Other than being a giant metaphor for relationships and life, tango is super zen, yo.

Okay, philosophy aside. Pure fun: Because the bar was a ways up the mountain, the Festival provided us with free snowmobile rides up the hill. So under my tango dress, I had to wear my long underwear and boots, straddle the snowmobile and tightly clutch my tango shoes and the person in front of me as the snowmobile driver, who drives just as fast and crazy as the taxi drivers here, flew up the mountain. It was so fun!

It was so funny to see people's expressions as they got off the snowmobiles and walked into the bar. But I'm now 100% sure that the coolest way to arrive at a milonga is by snowmobile!

The inside of the bar was like a cozy ski lodge, with fireplaces around the edges and wooden floors.

Around 1:30 in the morning, three couples from different cities in Turkey put on a show, each dancing three dances. I recorded the couple who taught my workshop, because I really liked their style. They seemed to truly be dancing for each other, feeding off each other's energy, oblivious of the crowd gathered, not there for the show.

Despite a late turning-in, I rose at 8am the next morning to hit the ski slopes again. Another bluebird day.

Even though it was a lot of effort and planning to make this weekend fall into place, it was totally worth it. I felt so charged and glowing all week. I could definitely live in a Tango Ski World for a long time without getting bored.

Photo Shoot on a Winter's Day in Ulus

2011-02-12T12:06:00.000-08:00

Going Away Gathering in Eskisehir

2011-02-12T05:09:00.001-08:00

Eskisehir is over 200km west of Ankara, but the cool thing is the "fast train" connecting it to Ankara, which will eventually be built all the way to Istanbul. The new train is swanky, and it's a cheap, quick weekend getaway. This past weekend, some eight friends and I headed there for an overnight, to celebrate our friend's heading out to begin a grad program in Australia. This was kind of a going away party. I went to Eskisehir for the day with Wowie last year and saw some of the sights; this trip was more about hanging out with everyone than seeing everything.

After a kofte feast, we walked around the old quarter of town, and though everything was closed because it was late in the day and Winter season, the pastel-colored, restored Ottoman houses were abound.

Within the old quarter, we came across the Anadolu (Anatolian) University World Education Cartoon Museum, which was open and full of warm heaters. There were some great political cartoons about Turkey as well as some laugh-out-loud cartoons commenting on human nature. Here are a few greeting card reproductions I purchased:

Since Eskisehir is home of Anadolu University, it's also a cool university town, and not too far from the Ottoman houses, there are going-out strips, and a cafe-lined river (in the spring you can pay for a pseudo-Italian gondola ride from a white-and-black-striped-shirt pseudo-Italian guy).

Once the sun went down on Saturday night, we hit the bar strip. And in between a bar and dinner, we were "accosted" by a street celebration, a sending off parade for a young man about to to his compulsory military duty. You come across these celebrations often at airports and bus stations, and they are complete with fireworks, drums, and traditional Turkish live music.

On Sunday morning, while the rest of the world was sleeping in, I ventured off by myself to wander the streets. The only sign of life on this sleepy sunny morning were the cats.

I did come across an interesting find in a small market that has been the hot topic of conversation at lunch this week. It was a small yellow-colored box bearing the picture of what looked to be a royal Ottoman woman. The back of the box had an English translation; the ingredients were a mix of spices and herbs, such as cinnamon, allspice, black pepper, cumin, etc.

The description of the product read:

"Mesir Paste which was made of 41 different kinds of herbs and spices by the period famous medical doctor Merkez Efendi who worked as an administrator in Sultan Mosque and its social complex was told the make Masir Paste in 1522 with the order of Ayse Hafsa Sultan who was Yavuz Sultan Selim's wife and Kamuni Sultan Suleyman's mother. Mesir Paste helped Hafsa Sultan get cured. Therefore, it was ordered to toss off the dome of the Sultan Mosque so that the public could benefit as well. Mesir Paste Tossing Ceremony which is held every year on Nawruz Day has come up to those days as a traditional celebration."

I wondered what exactly this paste cured, so I bought some to take home and ask my Turkish friends. Well, at lunch the other day, my question was met by laughs as I was told it is "Turkish viagra." That makes a lot of sense if the Sultan's mom and wife asked a doctor to design it. They wanted little Sultan babies. None of my Turkish male friends wanted to split some for the promise of a wild afternoon of teaching, for they all assured me they "didn't need it." But most of the ladies tried it. It's actually really tasty, though I didn't notice any new vivacity in my teaching that day.

Barcelona!

2011-01-27T07:12:00.001-08:00

Finally a quiet moment to announce the results of a difficult decision, a stressful process, and some cryptic yet inspirational Facebook quotes that I have been breathing as mantras.

This past weekend, I attended a job fair in London for international teachers just to "see what was out there," not at all convinced my time in Turkey was finished. After the stressful "speed dating" experience of interviewing at 8 schools from all corners of the world, and weighing some job offers against the possibility of staying at BLIS longer, I accepted an offer to work at Benjamin Franklin International School in Barcelona, Spain starting in August (a 2-year contract).

I love my life here in Turkey, and so it had to be a very special opportunity me to leave after what feels like 3 short years, but Barcelona has so much to offer for a girl like me. It is one of those rare gems of a city that is full of amazing music, art, and culture, and yet also has an amazing outdoor scene just out its back door. The Catalunya area of Spain is recognized as one of the best sport climbing areas in Europe, and the Pyrenees (skiing and hiking galore!) are just an hour north. Not to mention the beach, the weather, the Mediterranean blood of the people, and a beautiful language (Yes, I am going to once again work really hard to learn a language that only a small region of the world speaks: Catalan).

Oh yeah, and the school.... It is being accredited as an IB school as I write this, and I won't cycle in to teach IB until the following year. But I will actually be relieved to take a little break from IB and just teach regular English classes. Teaching IB is often so challenging, it is exhausting. And I am excited to use my experience to help the school transition to IB.

So there you have it! Mostly right now I am relieved to have this decision behind me, a weight off my shoulders, and six more months to thoroughly enjoy my time in Turkey. Because there is no time like the present.

Around Antakya

2010-12-28T10:39:00.001-08:00

On Day 3, we headed west towards the sea and toured some sights in the countryside.

Our first stop was Vakifli, Turkey's sole surviving Armenian village. During the Turkish deportations of the Armenians in the early 1900s, the inhabitants of this village held out against Turkish forces until evacuated to Port Said by the French and British. Most of the villagers returned in 1919 when the Hatay became part of the French-mandated Syria. When the Hatay joined the Turkish Republic in 1939, the Armenians excepting those of this village, left, ending up mostly in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

The village is set among Cyprus trees and orange groves, and consists of only 100 or so residents, about 30 families. They subsist on organic farming (mostly citrus fruit export), and selling handicrafts and embroidery.
At the center of the village is the Surp Asdvadzadzin Kilisesi (The Church of the Virgin Mary), built in 1895. The church attendants unlocked the church for us, but we were not permitted to take photos. Inside the church courtyard, a village woman's homemade jams and liqueurs were for sale, of which we partook.

Next, we visited the coastal town of Cevlik, which was the port of Seleucia ad Piera. From here, St. Paul and Barnabas were said to have departed for their first evangelical mission to Cyprus.

We hiked through the Roman ruins of Titus ve Vespasiyanus Tuneli (or Titus Tunnel): a 130-meter long tunnel carved into the hillside to prevent flooding and silting of the harbor. The construction of the tunnel began in the first century, and took 10 years to finish.

After our hike, we ate lunch at a restaurant overlooking the sea and Kel Mountain.

Our last stop was the town of Harbiye (Daphne). Many of the mosaics from the museum had been unearthed from this town. Harbiye is also famous for its waterfalls, and is the supposed site of the story of Daphne and Apollo.

The story goes that when Apollo saw Daphne he fell in love with her and wanted to speak with her. But Daphne, knowing that mortals who had relations with gods ended up in a bad state started to run from him. Apollo pursued her, and right at the moment he was to catch her, she prayed to Mother Earth to protect her. At that moment, Mother Earth turned her into a tree: her hair to leaves, her arms to branches, her legs to a trunk. And there emerges the Daphne (laurel) tree. Apollo said to her, "From now on, you shall be the holy tree of Apollo. Your leaves that do not turn yellow and do not fall to the ground will make the wreath on my head. Heroes will always wear laurel wreaths on their heads. And in song, our names will be uttered as one: Daphne and Apollo."

The waterfalls were pretty, but the walk to them a bit disappointing due to the amount of merchants selling cheesy made-in-China items along the pathway. However, the legend remains in the laurel soap I purchased.

Driving back to Ankara the next day was a bluebird day. The snow-covered Hasan Dag, our beacon of home, and the Salt Lake, our companion for the tail end of our journey.

Antakya

2010-12-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

A few days before Christmas, my mom and I loaded up the car for a trip to Antakya, a town located 12 km from the Syrian border on the little part of Turkey that dips around the Mediterranean. The town is due south of Ankara, as far as you can drive in Turkey. Our drive involved a lot of fog, and the Ala Daglari (Crimson Mountains).

Antakya (referred to as Antioch in the Bible), from its founding in 300 BC was home to many different peoples and cultures: Greek, Hebrew, Persian, and Latin were all spoken in the streets. This is one of the major reasons Christian pioneers, St. Paul and Barnabas chose Antakya to spread Christianity. According to the Bible, it was in Antakya, that Christians were first referred to as Christians, and in 40AD the authorities of Rome named the community as such. For this reason, we thought it would be an interesting place to spend Christmas.

Our first visit was to the famous Mosaic Museum, one of the best collections in this part of the world. They are Roman mosaics, and depict Greco-Roman mythology.
The Yakto mosaic took up the floor of an entire room (5th century AD): The woman in the middle is called Megalopsychia, and she represents the loftiness of spirit (a gal after my own heart). She is surrounded by hunting scenes. The border represents a tour of the city of Antakya, from an Olympic stadium to the waterfall where Apollo raped Daphne.

Here is Orpheus playing on his lyre the beautiful music that charmed beasts and trees, and even charmed Pluto to release Orpheus' wife, Eurydice from the Underworld.

Mosaic of Awakening (5th c. AD):

Next, we visited Habib-I Neccar Camii (Mosque). Antakya saw Muslims for the first time in 638 AD after the invasion of an Arab Army led by Abu Ubayd. It became an important city for Islam as well as Christianity, spreading the religion through Anatolia for the 300-year period of Arab rule. This mosque was constructed in the same year, and is regarded as one of the first of Anatolia. It is named after the town martyr who bears an interesting story: Habib Neccar was a carpenter, who during the formative years of Christianity, carved idols to the pagans in his cave in the mountain. He was the first Christian convert in Antioch, as when the disciples arrived to preach the new religion, he stopped worshipping idols. However, the speeches of the disciples angered the community, and the ruler of the time threw two disciples in prison. When Simon, a third disciple, arrived to persuade him to free the men, the locals devised a plan to stone all the disciples to death. When Habib heard of this plan and tried to stop them, they killed Habib by cutting off his head. His head rolled down to the place where his mosque and tomb are now located.

We were on the hunt for information about Christmas Eve services. We found the Greek Orthodox Church all lit up with Mutlu Noeller (Merry Christmas) first, and planned to return the next day, Christmas Eve, for service. This church was built in 1833 in the Byzantine style, but the church burnt down in an earthquake in 1872. The Ottoman state allowed the church to be renovated and rebuilt according to the original structure. Russian engineers were involved in the renovation, and so the resulting architecture has Russian elements.

The Turkish Catholic Church was impossible to find at first. We finally found it the second day, on Christmas Eve. You can see, by the tiny sign marking its existence (Katolik Kilisesi), why we had trouble.

The Catholics arrived in Antakya in 1846 and were permitted by the Sultan to build a church. In 1977, it was moved to this residency, a small eastern-style monastery with enclosed gardens of orange trees.

From the rooftop, you can see the nearby mosque's minaret behind the church's cross.

There, we learned that that night a bus would be leaving from the Turkish Catholic church to go to St. Peter's grotto, for Christmas Eve service at 9pm. St. Peter's is the oldest church in the area, erected in circa 40AD. But, first, we would attend the earlier mass at the Orthodox Church:

The service lasted for over an hour and consisted entirely of a kind of Gregorian chanting, but with an Arabic influence. My mother and I had never heard anything like it, and rather than try to describe it, listen to the video below.

The priests conducted this service from an altar room, where they were hidden from our view. Occasionally, they would come out and lead the congregation in making the sign of the cross. There were tons of professional photographers there taking pictures of the congregation, the people lighting candles, etc. They were actually a bit obtrusive, and made me realize what I must appear like wandering around mosques taking pictures of a religious tradition not my own. We had to leave a bit early to catch our bus to St. Peter's.

St. Peter's church is situated inside a cave 2 kilometers from Antakya in the foothills of the Habib-I Neccar mountains. When St. Peter arrived in Antakya, he looked at the mountain and decided he'd erect his church there. It was supposedly the first church after the main one in Jerusalem. When the church was originally used, there were catacombs where the early Christians could hide from the authorities seeking to punish them for illegal religious activity. The escape tunnel has since been sealed shut by a landslide. St. Peter was thought to preach there from 47-54 AD. The facade of the church was built in 1093 by the Crusaders and was repaired in 1863 by Capuchin monks.

This service differed greatly from the one at the Orthodox church. Children put on a pageant, telling the story of baby Jesus' birth with acting and song. A 10-piece band of guitars, traditional Turkish instruments, keyboard, and drums accompanied our hymns. We sang Turkish lyrics to many familiar tunes, Silent Night, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. A Turkish politician (we think he was the mayor...and again many of the same photographers shot this event as well) spoke and then a man from a small country outside of Russia spoke with a Turkish translator. He said he was Buddhist, and there for the International Women's Chess tournament, and was delighted to take part in the Christmas celebrations of Antakya.

The small cave was so alive with children and joyful music, and when we visited the cave the next day to see it in daylight, it seemed so ordinary and lacking. Here are pictures of the church the next day:

And from the mountainside where St. Peter's grotto sits, Antakya at sunset.

Note the dense (smelly) fog sitting over the city. It was with us almost our entire stay and is a result of the many poor people burning coal to stay warm. We enjoyed our time in this old, interesting city, but were also glad to return home to a more modern, cleaner Ankara.

In and Around Ankara with my Mom

2010-12-28T03:24:00.000-08:00

My mom is here visiting Turkey for her second time. She was here last in the summer, and beyond seeing the country in a different season, this trip has also been a chance for her to see my life in full swing (rather than me in travel mode during a summer off). We did take one 5-day trip down south to Antakya (Antioch) for Christmas, but other than that, have stayed around Ankara. Here's what we did:

She accompanied me to the Turkish American Association where I auditioned for the play, "Women in Mind." I don't think she was too disappointed that she wasn't allowed to come in to the theatre to watch my audition, because she and Rukiye made ebru paintings (marbelling) with an ebru artist on display in the gallery.

She came to watch one of my tango classes:

We took a trip to the pazaar (open-air veggie market) in the suburb, Umitkoy:

We drove 90km to Beypazari, the nearby town of Ottoman houses, carrot products, and silver jewelry:

A trip down south to Antakya involved an overnight stop in the town of Goreme (Cappadoccia). Sorry if you're sick of seeing pictures of Cappadoccia. The place is just so darn photogenic.

The cave hotel we stayed in was my favorite yet. We also visited El Nazar Church on a walk down a new valley. The church's frescoes were from the 9th century, and it was made a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985. The ticket seller/interpretive guide seemed like he lacked visitors on that particular December 23rd, for he tried every trick in his basket to get us to stay and spend time with him. Besides canned jokes about locking tourists in the gated room where priests used to change, he offered us tea, free brochures, and finally when we were walking down the hill in the sunset, he ran after us yelling, "Wait! I never gave you your tickets!" And when we said we didn't need them since we'd already seen the church, he paused and repeated himself, and then finally, realizing his plan for company had failed, muttered, "Throw them away?"

Christmas in my lojman (apartment):

Sleeping Beauty the Pantomime

2010-12-11T23:40:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to measure how long I've lived in Ankara by how many pantomimes I've been in. Instead of telling people, "I've lived here 2 1/2 years," I've started saying, "This is my third pantomime." I've gone from a dragon in Aladdin (pardon me, the end of a dragon, with no lines and no one ever actually seeing my face), to playing the Prince in Cinderella, to Kate in Sleeping Beauty. Everyone keeps asking, "Who is Kate?" Yes, she is a made-up pantomime character; she does not exist in the Disney version. But she's a fun character to play. Kate is one of the sweetest characters in the panto; she is a reprieve for the audience from all the other nutjobs. She is also in love with a courtier who doesn't know she's alive for most of the play, so I have fun playing awkward and shy whenever he is on stage. She solves one of the largest dilemmas of the play by writing a fake magic potion spell that doesn't work, and in the end, when her love interest realizes she's been fawning over him the whole time, he stomps across the stage and gives her a Hollywood kiss and the audience cheers. This year, some more of my Bilkent friends starred in the play with me: Katy, our new drama teacher, as the witch; Jeff, our Physics teacher as the Queen; and Paul, the art teacher, as the King. Enjoy the pics!

Buona notte, Venezia! Buona notte, luna!

2010-11-19T11:28:00.000-08:00

I've finally stopped answering the Italians in Turkish, and the whole island seems to be rocking like I'm on an eternal waterbus ride, but, alas, it is time to go...

10 Things that Surprise Me about Venice

2010-11-17T12:11:00.000-08:00

1) There are no coffee shops, the kind that you can stay in for hours, drinking little, but slowly, while reading or working on your laptop.

2) Three- or four-course meals are not long and drawn out affairs. Rather, plates overlap or appear in immediate succession (#1 and #2 create a rushed feeling to ingesting liquid and matter... slowness is reserved for wandering the streets).

3) The locals cart backpacks on wheels behind them. What they carry inside them, God only knows.

4) I think I could live here, on this tiny, tightly woven web of stone and water, the Dolomites only 3 hours away by train.

5) Wine is as cheap as water (maybe not surprising?).

6) Men actually do say, "Ciao, Bella!" It's not just a T-shirt.

7) It's rare to find a wi-fi hotspot (maybe relates to #1).

8) A 1/4 bottle of wine still makes me tipsy, even in Italy. I'm such a waif.

9) Espresso immediately drunk after wine, ironically, does not work immediately.

10) This city was actually built! It didn't just stop at an idea. And it suffers from so many problems that must have been foreseeable while planning: in the Winter at high tide, parts of the city (like San Marco square) flood for two hours every day; motorboats' reverberations are disturbing buildings' foundations; wastewater? where does it go?; the lagoon is polluted; building facades are crumbling down, materials wet and saturated. All these problems must have been present in the minds of those who planned this city, and yet, they built it! And despite all these ridiculous problems, the city is enchanting because the idea is magical, kid-like.

Daytime in Venice: A Photo Essay

2010-11-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

20 Things I Love About Venice

2010-11-17T00:41:00.000-08:00

Prologue: I am staying in Venice for a week, and other than a few pre-arranged dates with couchsurfers to make sure I don't go insane, I am largely wandering the streets alone, putting my thoughts to paper, and loving it. I made a pact with myself to leave my camera in the apartment every time I venture out, so I will record my thoughts and observations with a pen, because this trip is largely about recapturing the poet's spirit I felt so strongly here when with my Ezra Pound classmates two summers ago.

Today, I shall post for you pictures of my apartment and the view from its balcony (because I am not cheating if I take pictures from within the apartment, you see), and also list some things I love about this city. Perhaps you can feel it or see it without my sharing pictures (however, I am going to take my camera out one afternoon and "write with light," because I just can't help myself).

Note: I have begun publishing my poetry on a sister blogpage, www.foropendiscussion.blogspot.com. There will be a delay before anything Venetian appears on it, as I like to spend some time with a poem before putting it out there, but I have been updating the site with recently finished material.

20 Things I Love About Venice

1) When saying goodbye on the phone, Italians say between 3-5 "ciao"s spoken fast and in a row.

2) Italians pronounce every vowel in ciao.

3) Men frequently sing to themselves on the street, in rain or fog.

4) Nowhere else in the world would I feel so safe in poorly-lit, tall, narrow alleys.

5) It is impossible to access one's sense of direction while wandering the winding streets of Venice.

6) Culturally-rich surprises can be found around corners, ie, the extended exhibit of Stanley Kubrick's photography from the 1950s.

7) The city is sinking unevenly, and there is a church tower leaning dangerously over a canal.

8) There are no cars.

9) Public transport is by boat.

10) The lagoon water is opaque emerald green.

11) There are umbrella stands inside the doors of all shops, and wellies are for sale around every corner. Winter flooding is a matter of fact.

12) Shopkeepers don't stand at their doorways yelling at me, "Yes, please!" and they don't follow my around in the store. (Sorry, Turkey. There are many things I love about you, but this is not one of them.)

13) Every time I leave the apartment with a certain goal in mind, I get lost or sidetracked. Plans get me out the door, but end there.

14) Italian is not a quickly-spoken language. The second to last syllable of every word is drawn out and stressed.

15) Women wear tall boots, colored or patterned tights, and short skirts.

16) The food is putting a kind of hearty nourishment into my body which Turkish tummy has deprived me of for two years.

17) Venice is home of tiramisu.

18) The view from my balcony of red-tiled roofs is evoking in me some kind of childhood memory of a Disney movie.

19) I am at a concert in the Salon of La Fenice, one of the most famous opera houses which burnt down and was rebuilt twice, and I have no idea what kind of music I purchased a ticket for, but there are exactly 15 different drums on stage.

20) My apartment is in an attic and has eaves. I've always wanted a "writing room" in such a space.

Making Yaprak Sarma with Rukiye

2010-11-07T07:47:00.000-08:00

Yaprak sarma is one of my favorite Turkish foods. It's grape leaves wrapped around a rice mixture topped with yogurt and maybe tomato sauce depending on the region of Turkey you're in. I regularly crave it, and have narrowed down a few restaurants in Ankara that serve the best sarma.

My Turkish friend, Rukiye, had me over one rainy Saturday to teach me the Izmir way of making it. Izmir is a city on the Aegean Coast where she is from. I can't tell you exactly how to make it, because it seems more of a kinesthetic, pass-it-on-in-person kind of tradition, but I can tell you what's in Rukiye's mixture: rice, onion, fresh parsley, fresh mint, and tomato pulp. I've also tried making the stuffing with currants, pine nuts, and cinnamon. And I've had it with ground meat as well.

Rukiye had planned for us to roll about 100 of these little guys, a tedious process, but like an Turkish tradition, there were lots of breaks to drink tea, eat sweets, and chat.

Rukiye is a Turkish Literature teacher, and her English is about as good as my Turkish. If anyone were to watch us spend time together, they would have to laugh, because I speak in Turkish and she speaks in English so we can both practice. We're never speaking the same language at the same time, and we're each speaking at a 4-year-old's level in the language that the other person teaches IB literature in!! At one point, when Rukiye noticed I was tiring of rolling the yaprak sarma, she suggested I read aloud to her a child's picture book called "The Polar Bear," because she is working on reading it, and wanted to listen to it in English. I started to read it earnestly, and then we both suddenly caught the giggles at the ridiculousness of two grown woman sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, the Turkish woman rolling yaprak sarma while the American woman reads aloud a children's picture book.

Youth Award Camping Trip

2010-10-17T08:41:00.001-07:00

Every year, some of our students participate in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award program, an award out of the UK which my friend who heads the CAS program also supervises. The DoE program exists at three levels, Bronze, Silver and Gold, and students can achieve these awards by completing a personal program of activities involving helping people in the community, getting fit, developing skills and going on an expedition.

This weekend, two of my colleagues and I took 10 female students on an "expedition" which involved camping and hiking for three days in a hilly pineforest outside of Eskisehir. These girls are Silver participants (the level of the award determines the amount of nights spent camping), and for many, this was their first time camping. Though it wasn't a true backpacking experience- the place we camped was more of a picnic area with shelters near by- our hiking consisted of bushwhacking; the girls were responsible for picking landmarks and leading us. Although the forecast was for rain the entire weekend, we were lucky to have solid chunks of time when it did not rain; and even though concerned parents called during the second night when it was hailing in Ankara, it was only dumping rain and not ice on our dinner preparation. The girls were troopers, though, and not once did we hear any complaints.

The players:

The campsite:

The leaders:

The removal of clay from our hiking boots! This is reason enough not to hike/backpack during rainy season in Turkey. You quickly acquire high heel boots when hiking after a rain. Every time we had to cross a muddy path, there was a 5 minute pause for clay removal.

One evening, we took a sidetrip to a nearby village in order to establish connections with the locals, and for the girls to be reminded of the world outside rich Bilkent.
At a teahouse:

I've been fortunate these past few weekends to get out of Ankara and into the forest to witness the changing colors...

Chestnut trees :)

Işık Mountain

2010-10-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

A little dayhike about an hour outside of Ankara. Işık means "light," for this hill is higher than its friends and is always in the light.

Notice I decided to be a rebel and bring some cloudiness to the top of that hill and teach it some modesty!

Fireweed! Even in Turkey!

The Forest Service harvesting wood to sell to furniture makers:

Bring on Sonbahar!

Sinop

2010-09-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

For Seker Bayram this year, I drove to Sinop with my friends, Dale and Rukiye. Another trip to the Black Sea, this time a little further East to the northernmost point of Turkey. Sinop is only 200 nautical miles from Crimea, and used to host one of NATO's listening posts.

Sinop is a town of about 30,000. It hasn't caught up to the nearby towns' beach resort feeling. The guidebook calls it a sleepy town. I don't know if it was because of the bayram, but it was anything but sleepy. People were out til midnight (rare in a small Turkish town), although "laid back" would still be a good word to describe it.

It was fun to be in a town that was celebrating Seker Bayram. Sinop is a more conservative town that Amasra, and so we expected these festivities. Dale bought a bag of candy to give out to children we met on the streets. Seker means "sugar;" this tradition of giving sweets to children gives the holiday its name.

We spent lots of time at the tea gardens lining the harbor.

The peninsula of Sinop has been inhabited since the Bronze Age, but the oldest evidence of civilization consists of 7th c. BC Pontic fortresses on the isthmus, the narrowest point of the peninsula.

We stepped inside this small, empty mosque to explore...

Alaeddin Mosque is a 13th c. Selcuk mosque, the oldest in town complete with tree shaded courtyard. We stepped in to pray; notice the women's area is upstairs behind latticework. Unless you put your eye (or camera) up to a hole, you can't even see the imam leading the service.

Behind the mosque was the Alaiye Medresesi, which dates to the 1260s. This once religious school has been converted to shops.

Sinop gets its name from the Amazon queen and daughter of a minor river-god. Sinope attracted the attention of Zeus, who promised her anything she wanted in return for her (sexual) favors. Her request was for eternal virginity, which Zeus did grant her. "Take that, Zeus! (pause) Wait a minute..."
We wandered around the ruins on the isthmus and felt her presence. Almost saw a mermaid, too.

Another one of Sinop's claims to fame is one of Turkey's oldest prisons. Hard to capture, but this was a dungeon-like room containing no light, only a shackle to the wall.

The drive around the northernmost part of the peninsula was blustery and beautiful, like a fall day in Montana, or how I'd imagine the coast of Ireland to look.

We stopped at a cemetery with the best view in Turkey (the Black Sea). I discovered that teachers, soldiers, and doctors have their professions written on their gravestones because they are such noble, altruistic professions (Note that this is a teacher's interpretation, but no lie, "teacher" was written on several gravestones:"ogretmen"). Water pots were built into many of the raised graves, and bottles of water were stashed away all over the cemetery. It's customary to sprinkle water in gravebeds, to nourish the plants, the dead, the snails.

Diogenes the Cynic was born here in the 8th century BC. He seemed like a true Montanan. At some point in his life, he wanted to show people that one could live with very little in terms of material items or wealth, and he lived the rest of his life in a barrel. I also love this anecdote about him: Alexander the Great admired him and is known to have said, "If I were not Alexander, I would rather be Diogenes." He had also asked Diogenes if he could do anything for him, to which Diogenes replied, "Yes, stand aside, you're blocking my light." What a couple of pompous pricks!
His statue greets you as you enter town:

Stormy day at sea...

We visited a museum to see what kinds of things were unearthed in Sinop. Roman amphorae (the pottery) and mosaics were the most interesting. The kiln was put together by Bilkent University's archaeological department.
I also read this on a plaque, and loved it:
"If life is a sentence, then death is a full stop," said a thinker. Grave stones, in other words, steles, are silent and the only witnesses of this reality. Steles which are standing on the grave and the dead which were once living, laughing, and walking are now together like bosom friends. Grave stones are like faithful lovers who are waiting for the death under the earth. They stand as a resistance against forgetfulness."

On our way home to Ankara, we stopped at Tatlici waterfalls outside a down called Efelek. We were hoping to hike around and see some of the 28 waterfalls in this national park, but when we pulled up to the parking lot, every Turk from within a 100km radius seemed to be having a picnic there with his entire extended family. It was a little much for this Montana girl. We just hung out by one waterfall, then ordered some tea and gozleme before heading back to Ankara.

Kocatepe Mosque and The Night of Power

2010-09-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in the previous blog, near the end of Ramadan, on the 27th day (of 30) of fasting, devout Muslims celebrate the Night of Power, the night when Mohammad received the Koran from Allah. Kocatepe is Ankara's largest mosque, and one of the largest in Turkey. During the last few weeks of Ramadan, it houses an Islam Culture and Book Fair. I went to Kocatepe twice during this special weekend. The first time, we celebrated iftar with our new friends, Patty and Larry, American international teachers who've come from teaching in Korea for 19 years.

I purchased some beautiful artwork of Sultans and Ottoman palaces, and was given a Koran containing English translation as a gift from a merchant who said to me and my foreign friends, "I love you." A calligrapher wrote my name beautifully on marbled paper as a gift, and I bought a cd of ney music from Istanbul (it's a reed flutelike instrument the sufis play to accompany the wherling dervishes).

People were lined up amongst merchants selling scarves, religious paintings and children's toys, waiting for the iftar meal which the mosque served. We intended on eating this meal, but instead joined the people picnicking on makeshift rugs (sometimes pieces of cardboard). We bought simits (Turkish sesame bagels), tea and water, and sat with a family who shared with us their cherry juice.

The simit sellers had their simits stacked and ready for the breaking of the fast.

The call to prayer that breaks the fast. You can see the line for iftar beginning to move and people are drinking water from bottles for the first time all day.

Prayers during the Night of Power are supposed to carry extra efficacy, and so people stay up all evening praying at their nearby mosque. Although we didn't stay up praying all evening, I did go into the mosque for the first time and prayed (for my grandmother who has recently passed away). Women are to pray in a separate space from the men, and in Kocatepe it was a small partitioned area on several floors. It was crowded and warm, and the women were busy chit-chatting and arguing about what space was theirs while, below, the men enjoyed the large open space of the mosque.

Ramazan in Turkey

2010-08-30T02:23:00.000-07:00

Since the Islamic calendar is lunar, Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish), the month of daylight fasting from food, water, and cigarettes, shifts eleven days earlier every year. This year, I returned from the States on August 19th, a week or so into the religious festival. Ramadan is not a public holiday. Life carries on even though half the population is fasting from sunrise to sunset. As a result, there are many traffic accidents during the last hour of fasting. In more conservative towns, restaurants close during the day, or discreetly hide their food-serving behind partitions, but most restaurants in Ankara will serve food during the day even though your waitstaff and cooks are fasting.

Ramazan is a month of heightened devotion and prayer. The main purpose of fasting as described in the Quran is so that one may attain God-consciousness. Fasting is an instrument for bringing one closer to his natural state, and for cleansing from sins.

The fifth call to prayer during the day which occurs at sunset leads to an orgy of eating, a meal called iftar.

As my friend, Dale, is fasting, I have accompanied him a couple of nights this week to an iftar. Some restaurants call for reservations, as a large part of the ramazan experience entails a group consciousness and breaking the fast together is special. The first night, we went to Cukuraga Sofrasi, one of my favorite Turkish restaurants. Dale and I met two former students to share the iftar experience with.

We waited patiently at the tables spilling out onto the sidewalks, as waiters frantically took orders, all of us waiting for the call to prayer to signal our time to eat. Turks break their fast with dates, milk, or water. At the breaking of the fast, one would recite: "O my Allah, for Thee, I fast, and with the food Thou gives me I break the fast, and I rely on Thee."

The second night, Dale and I, are three other friends, Jeff, Olivia, and Rukiye attended an iftar in Ulus.

This is an incredibly hot time of year for Ramazan to take place, and an atypically warm summer to boot. I empathize with the Muslims' not being able to drink any water during the day.

Kunife is our favorite dessert. Imagine shredded wheat stuffed with cheese and smothered in sugar sauce baked in the oven, then sprinkled with pistachio nuts.

Dale asked to buy a t-Shirt bearing the restaurant logo, and they gave one to him for free. Turkish hospitality is amplified during Ramazan!

After our meal, and adopting our food babies, we took a stroll through Altindag, a section of Ulus which, during the day, is filled with hoards of people.

Most of the shops were closed at this time of night, but we did come across one shop selling wedding dresses which was still open. Olivia and I were marveling at the out-of-control colors and designs of these dresses when Rukiye marched us into the store to try on traditional Turkish wedding dresses.

We headed up to the third floor, where the brightly colored dresses were lined up. Olivia and I looked at the pricetags thinking it would actually be fun to show up in these dresses to the Marine Ball, but the tags read 1,200TL to buy, or 250TL to rent for the night.

Rukiye asked the sales attendant if we could try on the traditional outfits that women wear on the evening before their wedding night, and this is the photo shoot that followed:

I think the salesgirl enjoyed our enthusiasm, because she told Rukiye that we should come back during the day to try on the wedding dresses. She posed with us as well.

The next night I am looking forward to is called Kadir Gecesi (The Night of Power), the time when Mohammed is supposed to have received the Koran from Allah. The mosques are beautifully illuminated and full all night long as it is believed that prayers on this night have special efficacy. Last year, Dale and I stumbled across this evening by accident at Kocatepe Mosque, the largest mosque in Ankara, and it was quite the sight to see. Even outside the mosque, people had their prayer rugs lined up in rows facing Mecca and were prepared to stay up all night praying. This evening takes place on the 27th day of Ramazan, so check back next weekend as we will have sought it out by then.

The Black Sea Coast

2010-06-28T03:10:00.000-07:00

Four girls. Four days. Four loungechairs on the beach.

The day after our last day of work, four of my girl friends, Olivia, Shauna, Wowie and I, headed north for a Black Sea vacation. It was my final Turkish roadtrip with Shauna and Wowie as they are leaving Turkey to move on to new countries and adventures.

The drive up to the Black Sea involved a lunch stop at Safranbolu. We noted how U.S. roadtrips usually involve lunchstops at fastfood restaurants, but we got to stop for lunch in a UNESCO World Heritage town, both ways. Here's the view from the restaurant of the cute little town preserved in its Ottoman style

After Safranbolu, the drive to Amasra reminded me of New Jersey. The forests were verdant, lush, and created a green archway over the winding country roads. The Black Sea region gets more rain than any other part of Turkey, and even though I saw the Black Sea last year when I visited Trabzon in the eastern part of the country, it was still very exciting to arrive at our first glimpse of the sea.

We stayed in the town of Amasra for two nights. This port town used to be called Semasus, and was mentioned in Homer's Iliad. Our pansiyon was located inside the old citadel walls, and overlooked the sea.

For a mere 2.50 turkish lira, we rented side by side beachchairs and enjoyed the sunshine...

...until the rain came. But then it got sunny again. And then it rained again. And then it got sunny... The beach attendants laughed at us as they set up umbrellas and we huddled up under our towels, and then soon after moved our chairs in and out from under the umbrellas as the weather oscillated between blazing hot sun and a cold drizzle. Seems the current trend of daily thunderstorms in Ankara followed us to the Black Sea, but I was happy because I got to whip out my favorite Snoop Dog joke (Why does Snoop Dog always carry an umbrella? ... fo' drizzle!).

Not many foreign tourists travel to the Black Sea. The weather is temperamental (thank goodness, because that gives it its green color), so unlike the Mediterranean Sea, there is no guarantee for endless hours of sunbathing. But since this is a true vacation spot for Turkish people, and even a more conservative lot than you'd see on the Med. where some foreigners sunbathe topless, there was a very different feel to this beach. For one, as Westerners we were totally intrigued by all the women who were swimming in their headscarves and totally covered.

The local foods Amasra boasts include a tiny fried fish called hemsi, and a beautifully arranged green salad.

Our next stop was Cakraz, a smaller town 15km east of Amasra. We arrived on an overcast day, and the weather turned cold and rainy so we never even got in our suits in this town. But the beach was smaller, less crowded, and even more beautiful. Our hotel rooms' balconies overlooked the sea, and the sound of crashing waves provided the lullaby for a great night's sleep for all. This beach reminded Canadian Shauna of Nova Scotia and Filipino Wowie of the Phillipines. I love how Turkey has the potential to remind everyone of home, as every single ecosystem is present somewhere in the country.

On our last night, we walked in the rain up to a fish restaurant overlooking the sea.

This last supper was a great ending to a relaxing beautiful trip with good friends who are leaving Turkey to move on to new adventures.

Wrapping up the Schoolyear

2010-06-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

Ankara is starting to get that relentless summer haze that amplifies the already intense Anatolian sun. My classroom feels like a sauna. Students look sweaty and tired. My focus is fuzzy, as in my mind, I am already spending time with friends and family I haven't seen in two years, eating foods I haven't tasted in just as long, swimming in rivers, hiking mountains, and climbing on crags I haven't enjoyed in two whole years. My trip home to the States is so close on the horizon, it's hard to stay focused as I wrap up the schoolyear. This post will present a very spread-thin Carrie; it's a montage as I am doing a little of this and a little of that, not delving into anything too deeply as I do the last of everything...for now. I have every day planned, day and night, until I leave for the States, whether it be spending time with old students, friends who are moving away, or friends I just won't see again until September. I recently had my last tango class, my last poetry group meets tomorrow night, my last girls' roadtrip with Wowie and Shauna is next week, I taught my last class today, will go climbing at Karakaya for the last time this season this weekend, etc. Oof-yah, it's a lot of fun but I'm a bit exhausted and looking forward to the simplicity of sitting by my mom's pool in NJ for a couple weeks.

Here's a brief overview of my recent runnings-around.

A few weeks ago, the English Dept., namely Tim's 7th graders, organized the first BLIS Poetry Slam, which was a total hit, and we'll likely host several next year.

I had my last tango class a few weeks ago. My teacher, Hakan, had been commuting every Saturday from outside of Istanbul, and even though he was a great teacher and we have a great community of tango dancers at Angora Studio, he won't be continuing the lessons due to the commute. So we had our last hoorah at a friend's home. My friend, Cengiz, is so serious about tango that he has a wood dance floor in his living room with all the furniture pushed to the side. So we played tango music, drank, danced, and said goodbye to Hakan. I will start lessons at a different studio when I return in September, but some of my friends from this community of dancers will join me. It's been such a joy to find tango and this community.

One recent Saturday, Dale (teaching partner), Anthony and his family (my neighbor both at school and in our apartment building), Feray (Turkish teacher), and I explored Ulus on the weekend of the Castle Festival.

On a recent Sunday, Wowie and I took the fast train to Eskisehir, a city about 200km to the west of Ankara. It was a rainy day, but we enjoyed walking around looking at the Ottoman houses and the meerschaum pipes and jewelry. Meerschaum means "seafoam" in German and it is a really lightweight porous rock found only in surrounding villages of Eskisehir. Locals carve it into pipes as it has a smoke-cooling effect on tobacco. The designs on both the pipes and jewelry were intricate and beautiful. I bought the following Marge Simpson-style necklace and despite the size of those beads, the necklace is lighter than plastic. A BUPS annual tradition, the Eurovision Party: each person draws the name of a country which will be in this year's pop song contest, EuroVision, and has to dress like a person from that country, and bring a food dish and alcoholic beverage representing that country's palate. We project the show on a screen and whenever a new song/new country comes on, the person representing that country pours everyone a shot of their drink. No one feels great by the end of the night, but it's goofy fun. This year I was Slovakia, so I dressed as a Slovakian schoolgirl, brought Juniper Brandy (Borovicka), and Bryndzove Halusky (potato dumplings smothered with bacon and goat's cheese). On another night, my Turkish friend Rukiye invited a few of us down to her apartment to enjoy an Izmir meal (she is from there), and watch Bright Star, my new favorite film about John Keat's love affair with Fanny Braun. Good times with good people. The other day, Tim and I checked out Hussein Gazi, a climbing crag within the city limits of Ankara. The local climbers don't rave about it, but the basalt is o.k. rock for how close the crag is. Pretty cool to look out over a city of 6 million and still be emersed in greenery and quietness. And hearing the call to prayer from so high up is pretty neat.

The Faces I've Stared at for the Past Two Years

2010-06-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

Our Senior Graduation ceremony was last week. I taught almost all of these students, some for two years.

It's a tradition at our school for the just-graduated graduates to take their teachers out to dinner. This year's seniors took us to the same place as last year, a fancy restaurant called The Wall. The girls get their hair done and don gorgeous prom dresses, and the guys wear tuxedos. They shocked us with how beautiful and grown-up they looked. We sat intermingled at long tables for a fancy meal, and drank with them (though the drinking age here is 18, it's always a bit weird to drink with your students).
Damn, we look good!

Climbing in Olympos

2010-05-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

Due to Youth and Sports Day, we had a 4 1/2 day holiday, so Tim, Erin, Uriah, Leyla and I drove down to Olympos to beachbathe and climb.

The roadtrip:

We drove through Afyonkarahisar (translation: Poppy Black Castle), Turkey's leading town for producing legal opiates (Turkey's rumored to be one of the leading countries of legal opiate production). Along the highway were fields and fields of white poppies in bloom.

We stayed in bungalows at Bayram's treehouses, a super chill place for hanging out on çardaklar, raised wooden platforms littered with pillows for lounging while drinking tea.

And right across the street, there was climbing. We took our friends, Uriah and Leyla, first-time climbing.

That evening, we hiked 1km up a hill in a neighboring valley to see the eternal flames of chimaera. In Greek mythology, the Chimaera was a fire-breathing creature of Lycia in Asia Minor (the Lycian Way goes right through Olympos), composed of the parts of multiple animals: the body of a lioness with a tail that ends in a snake's head, and the head of a goat. The earliest literary reference to the Chimaera is in Homer's Iliad: "a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire." Sighting the Chimera was an omen of storms, shipwrecks, and natural disasters (particularly volcanoes). In the myth, the Chimera was defeated by Bellerophon, with the help of Pegasus. Since Pegasus could fly, Bellerophon shot the Chimera from the air, safe from her heads and breath. He attached to his spear a lump of lead that melted when exposed to the her fiery breath but still killed her. The myth supposedly took place on this hillside we visited: an area of permanent gas vents called Yanartaş (flaming rock) in Turkish, consisting of two dozen vents in the ground, which emit burning methane thought to be of metamorphic origin. In ancient times, these were landmarks by which sailors could navigate. (Thanks, wikipedia- the English translations in Olympos were spotty!)
The site was really cool! To see flames coming up out of the earth all along a hillside, the crackling sounds, the warm night!

The next day, we climbed in the valley across the street:

We tried to sunbathe on the beach a few times, and each time a massive cloudfront moved in. The water was only warm enough for this Montana-blooded girl on one of the days. Chilly in Olympos! Thank God we have this other hobby! Last day of climbing!

My First Turkish Poem

2010-05-14T04:29:00.000-07:00

Since my Ezra Pound poetry "bootcamp" experience last summer, I have continued to write poetry, and once a month meet with a group of friends at a different cafe to share what we've written. I also have been, in an effort to improve my Turkish in a fun way, translating Orhan Velli's Complete Poems. I was shooting for one a day, but am lucky if I translate two a week. I hope to finish the translations this summer. The following poem, my first in Turkish, came out of my pen in Turkish, and surprisingly, the difficulty ensued when trying to translate the line, "Küçük zamanlar büyüktür," into English. Which adjective for büyük? Huge? Large? Big? Magnanimous?

Küçük Zamanlar

Tango provası yok, ama
çiçekler var.
Okulu sevmedim, ama
Duygu ile konuşmayı sevdim.
Küçük zamanlar büyüktür.
Ah, şimdi varolan rüyaları yazmak!

Small Times

There is no tango practice, but
there are flowers.
I didn’t enjoy school, but
I loved talking with Duygu.
Small times are large.
Oh, to write dreams that exist right now!