Climbing...again

It's been way too long since I published a post about climbing...

Here are some pictures from a beautiful fall day at Karakaya (which means black rock, by the way). My friends, Annie, Mark, and their little baby girl, Annaliesa, whom I have been climbing with at the gym, joined Andrew and I. So did a herd of sheep from the local village. The leaves are finally changing color here; Autumn is a much longer season here than I am used to. Montana has had their first snow, and winter is on everyone's mind there. Here, the days are still bluebird Indian Summer-esque.











Andrew and I are going down to the Mediterranean coast over our next week-long holiday in early December to a world class climbing area called, Geyikbayiri. Hopefully, I can pronounce it by then, because I'm havin' a real hard time with it right now. Geyikbayiri is a red-limestone, extensive sport-climbing area featured in my treasured "Rock and Ice" magazine issue. I frequently fondled this magazine issue while in Montana, dreaming of my upcoming climbing adventures in Turkey, and even lugged it Turkey for some more fondling. We have been training at a local climbing gym every week. Needless to say, I'm excited.

OBAMA won!!!

Election night was very special this year, as I celebrated it with not only my American friends, but friends from Australia, Canada, England, etc.. as our next president greatly affects all these countries as well. My friend, Stacy, and I camped out on her living room floor and watched worldCNN all night as the results rolled in, falling asleep and waking up on-and-off to see the progression. Finally, at 6am, with the sun rising on the horizon, from far off in the distance, I heard the words, "Barack Obama has been elected the United States' 44th president." and I opened my eyes. What amazing words to wake up to! At school that day, students stopped by their American teachers' rooms all day to congratulate them. The feeling of hope and excitement filled the halls of our international school, and that evening the teachers gathered to celebrate the commencement of this hope!

The Intercontinental Marathon

This past weekend, eight of us BUPS teachers headed to Istanbul on the overnight train for the 30th INTERCONTINENTAL ISTANBUL EURASIA MARATHON. Two of my friends ran the marathon, three ran the 15km run, and the last three (including me) walked the 6km "fun run." All the races started on the Asian side, crossed the Bosporus Bridge and finished on the European side. Unfortunately, due to the massive rainstorm that was not in the forecast which started Saturday night and did not let up for 24 hours, the "fun runners" were unable to finish the race. Cold, wet, nearing hypothermia, these three troopers were forced after crossing the arduous Bosporus Bridge to hail a taxi to a friend's house where they recovered by watching movies, taking naps, and ordering in Chinese Food while staring out the window at the rain, thinking of their friends, Pierre and David, who were "still running."

Their friends who were able to run and generate enough body heat to finish their races did exceedingly well, and we're very proud of them.





The overnight train to Istanbul was an adventure in and of itself. My first experience sleeping in a sleeper car! The train leaves Ankara at 10:30pm Friday night and arrives Sat. morning at 8am. Normally, the trip would take between 4 and 5 hours to drive, but this overnight train makes tons of stops in order to arrive at a reasonable time in Istanbul. The train was complete with folding-down bunks and a drink car.






When we arrived in Istanbul, we took the ferry across to the European side for breakfast and to our pensyon. The early morning light was beautiful! I love the water in and around this city. It is especially refreshing compared to the lack thereof in Ankara.







On Saturday, I put a dent in figuring out the public transport system of Istanbul and found my way to the Salvador Dali exhibit at the Sakip Sabaci Museum, the largest collection of Dali artwork outside of Spain. This man really dabbled in all the media. The exhibit included a film he created for Disney which consisted of all his crazy images moving and interacting (it's called Destiny in case you want to check it out), the set he created for Hitchcock's Spellbound which was cool because my students are studying Hitchcock in our Film Studies class, and some weird black and white surrealist silent films. There were also many illustrations he did for books such as Milton's Paradise Lost, paintings which he created before ever reading the story, images he conjured up in a dream. There was also a recreation of his "theatre of figures": a room full of images/creatures from his paintings, blown up onto huge posterboard and hung around the room to create the atmosphere of one of his surrealist dreams.


Istanbul was in quite the flooded state by the time we took off on our bus at 7pm Sunday night. Reading the paper the next day, we learned the marathon and the rain paralyzed parts of the city.




We arrived back in Ankara after midnight, crashed in bed and woke up early the next morning for school. Istanbul is a fun getaway but is certainly not of the "R-and-R" type.

A Long Walk Around Ankara

On Saturday, my friend Josh, and I, who is also into photography, walked all over Ankara trying to capture the many different sides of this city we live in. We wandered around the poorer, older parts, as well as the more modern, richer sections. It is a city of stark contrasts.











I especially love wandering around Ulus and Hirar, the ancient parts of the city. I love the meandering alleyways, buildings about to collapse, dirty children playing in the street, pieces of ancient Roman columns recycled as building materials. I don't know why decrepit falling apart things are so beautiful to me, but they are.
















We were even fortunate enough to capture a protest followed by riot police. The policeman looking at me in the last photo was not very happy with our documenting the event. I've never been that close to riot police before, and it was exciting. We couldn't understand the Turkish that the protesters were shouting, but we're sure it was about the conflict between the political party that wants to amend Turkish law so women CAN wear headscarves in universities and the secular party that wants to uphold the founding father, Ataturk's, vision of religion-free public institutions.