Alanya for the weekend

I'm heading down to Alanya tonight and I won't be back to Ankara until Sunday morning. I'm looking forward to the weekend, which will consist mostly of swimming, scuba diving, and river rafting ... in one of Turkey's top vacation destinations. Your tax dollars, may I remind you again, are financing the whole trip.

I'm really going to miss this food

Nothing of particular importance happened today, save a few memorable meals. It was one of those days during which I'm constantly reminded of just how delicious and comforting Turkish food is.

It started out at breakfast. I woke up (without an alarm, at 7am! what world am I living in?), took my shower, and joined my host mother in the kitchen, where she had already prepared the morning's spread of fresh feta cheese, diced tomatoes, sliced cucumber, homemade candied apricots, and tea. She was at the stove, finishing up the Turkish omlette that was to be the bulk of my meal. A few slices of bread were warming in the toaster. I sat down and began to fill my plate with vegetables before my host mother plopped half a skillet's worth of eggs and parsley alongside them. I ate my meal as slowly as the morning would allow, ending it with an open-faced candied apricot sandwich and a big gulp of hot tea.

After a bit of trouble with the buses, I arrived at the TAA building a little bit late and wasn't able to get my water from the local market. During our first break, I ran downstairs to buy a bottle, along with some cold peach nectar and a roll of hazlenut-creme cookies to share with some of the other girls. The rest of the morning went by relatively quickly, and it was lunchtime before I knew it. One of my favorite parts of the day.

We've been going back to the same lokanta for lunch almost daily for the past two weeks. It's close, reliable, and incredibly cheap. For about three lira, I can fill up on lentil soup, salad, fresh bread and tea. For a few extra lira, I'll often split another dish with a friend. Last week, we ate a lot of lahmacun, a type of Turkish flatbread cooked with minced meat, spices, and parsley on top. Today, it was the yogurt kebab. In my opinon, it's the king of all kebabs, and probably my greatest temptation in all of Ankara. There's no way it's at all healthy. But my god if it isn't the most delicious thing on the menu.

The yogurt kebab consists of three (arguably four) layers of relatively simple ingredients that are irresistible when combined. On the bottom is a round loaf of flatbread (pita would be its closest relative in the bread family), slightly toasted and cut into square-inch pieces. On top of that, a layer of full-fat (of course) yogurt. The final layer consists of tomato sauce and chunks of kebab meat, placed on top of the bread and yogurt to create convenient little stacked bites. It's served with spicy green pepper and parsley, both of which add just the right amount of crispness to the dish. I devoured my portion of the kebab (we split it between three people) after having finished my standard bowl of lentil soup.

We had a longer lunch break than usual, owing to a special lecture that was scheduled for the afternoon, so some of us wandered down to the commercial area for some MADO ice cream after our meal. It's a Turkish chain that makes some of the best ice cream I've ever had. I'm currently obsessed with the banana flavor - it's not artificial in any way, and I often find chunks of banana in it. I had some with chocolate today before heading back to the TAA building for our lecture. This afternoon, I walked around for a while with some program friends, trying to find clothes for our trip to Alanya tomorrow, and then made my way home to rest for a bit.

Later that evening, while working in my room, I could smell them before I knew they were real. I went to the kitchen to confirm my suspicions, and sure enough, there was my host mother, making gozleme. Gozleme are a sort of Turkish quesadilla made with filo-like sheets of dough stuffed with either meat, cheese, or potatoes, folded into a square, and fried on a skillet. Along with the salad and soup she'd set out for dinner, my host mother was preparing a pile of feta-parsley gozleme, one of my favorites. (I told her that I love them and now apparently she's making as much as she can before I leave.) At the table, I savored each bite of gozleme with a bit of yogurt and salad until I physically couldn't eat any more. I think I was my host mother who actually pressured me into eating the last few pieces, but I can't say for sure.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take a picture of my lunch or breakfast, but I had my camera ready this evening. Here's what was left of the gozleme after I forced myself to stop eating:

Along with two of the remaining stuffed green peppers my host mother had set out on the table:

I'm guessing my waistline hasn't appreciated the summer as much as I have, but it's been worth it. I won't have easy access to most of these foods three weeks from now (!!) so I figure I need to enjoy as much as I can while I have the chance. :)

As I'm writing, I think I can smell fresh corn steaming in the kitchen. It's already 10pm and I'm incredibly full from dinner... I wonder if I'll be able to say no?

Pointy Hats and Curly Shoes

...It's why we love the Hittites! Or specifically, why one of the girls on the program, an Anthropology major who used to study Archeology, thinks the ancient civilization is just too adorable. I was skeptical of her characterization at first, but I think she managed to win me over a great deal on our trip to the Hittite capital of Hatusa yesterday afternoon.

Not very much is known about the Hittites, who ruled Anatolia about 4000 years ago, other than what can be learned from a vast collection of cuneiform tablets (describing the growth, power, and holdings of the empire) and the little other archeological remains that have been found. One of the major limitations on our understanding of the people is that, as a mentor of our lecturer on Friday once said, "the Hitites lived but they never died." Or rather, no Hittite burial site has ever been found.

We spent most of the day in the bus, driving out to the various sites. But our tour guide was very knowledgeable and the time looking at the ruins was well spent. We saw a few open air temples before eating lunch and heading out to the main site of the capital city. There isn't much left in the way of ruins beside rock foundations, but we were able to see a few city wall gates that were relatively intact (barring the absence of a few statues that can now be seen in various museums throughout Europe) as well as some well-preserved artifacts that were on display in the local museum.

On the three-something hour bus ride back to Ankara, one of our Turkish instructors led us in a game in which we had to name a Turkish fruit, vegetable, or animal. One person was to choose a word; the next person then had to find a word starting with the last letter of the previous word. And so on. Once we had exhausted our limited knowledge of household pets and foods, we decided to move on to verbs (or verb stems, rather, as all Turkish verbs end in k). Now, one of the great things about Turkish is that most nouns or adjectives can be changed into verbs through the simple addition of -la, -lan, or a similar suffix. Or you can ___ olmak (to be ___). Also, a lot of verbs (most of them borrowed) are simply formed by adding etmek (to do) to the original word. Like dans etmek, which means "to dance." As we started to run out of familiar words, the game of coming up with new verbs turned into a cyclical game of finding words that start with the t from etmek or the l from olmak and simply adding etmek, olmak, or another suffix (often meaning "to become") to invent new "verbs." Our instructor had to cut us off when we started to invent meaningless terms like nargilelenmek, which we decided must mean, "to become more and more like a hookah." We had become very tired at that point anyway, so we decided instead to practice one of the traditional Turkish songs we're all learning to perform at the TAA in a couple of weeks. We all know the chorus much better than the rest of the song, especially the few lines in Greek. We're working on it, though.

Update: I've just finished making an album of the trip, which you can see here. And if you're interested in a short piece I wrote about my time in Paris, check it out on onajunket.com, an independent travel writing site.

Kolbastı

I've found a new obsession. And it's far better than the last, because I like it more than just ironically. I've decided to put my c-walk and tecktonick-ing on hold to pursue the finer art of Kolbastı, a newly-revived Turkish dance from the Black Sea region. The music is fantastic, and the dance is extremely infectious. (please let me know if the link doesn't work... I can't access youtube here so it's hard to verify these things.)

Nobody really knows where the dance came from, or why it's become so popular in the last few years, but I don't think that really matters. Unlike Tecktonik, for example, which grew out of a pseudo-youth-rebellion movement in Paris, Kolbastı is a family dance. At the festival I went to a few weeks ago, it amazed me how many different types of people knew the moves. Even my host mother enjoys it, and readily dances alongside her daughters whenever given the chance.

After dinner this evening, some of my program friends and I tried the dance for the first time under the direction of my host sister and her best friend Ceren. The two of them have tried to get me to dance Kolbastı before, but it was usually in public. And of course I try to avoid completely outing myself as a foreigner as much as possible. In any case, I was ready for the challenge tonight, and began to hop and jump around the room to the music as soon as Ceren showed me the way. I was able to do a few of the steps with only mild awkwardness, and I think I'll be ready to perform them (as long as I'm not alone) at the TAA student "talent show" next month. After dancing until the point of exhaustion, we drank tea on the balcony and went for a short walk around the neighborhood. As we were walking back to the house, Ceren took out her cell phone to play the music and we danced down the street together. She and my host sister have a whole routine choreographed, and I'm still working on the easiest of the steps. It was a good way to burn off some of my senior week/Turkish food pounds though, and I've had the Kolbastı song stuck in my head since then.

The apartment has been pretty quite lately, with my younger host sister and host father both out of town, but I think it's actually given me a better chance to get to know my host mom... So I kind of had this fantasy before coming to Turkey that I'd spend hours in the kitchen, learning how to make traditional Turkish food while learning all about the culture and language of the country. And I've done a pretty good job of doing that so far. But I think my dream really came true this evening as I stuffed grape leaves on the balcony with my host mother, actually finishing sentences in Turkish (with help of course) as we went about our work. It was a beautifully cliché moment. It'll only get better when we actually eat the dish for dinner on Thursday night.

I went to see the new Harry Potter movie with some friends after class today, and we spent the rest of the day hanging out in a local cafe. It was one of those perfect, warm summer evenings, spent outside, drinking a beer or two, and postponing the night as much as possible. I grabbed a kebab on the way to the city center, and decided to take a cab for the last portion of my trip, as it was already dark out and I was feeling pretty lazy.

I had a breakthrough moment in the cab, in which I managed to hold a conversation (with little difficulty!) for the entire 10-minute drive, somehow leaving the driver with the impression that my Turkish is actually legitimate. I even managed to talk him into a price I thought was reasonable when he realized upon arriving at my apartment that he'd forgotten to turn on the meter. It was an overall win for sure. Especially considering the fact that I'd been speaking and listening to nothing but English for the 6 hours preceding the interaction. Hurray for slow (but noticeable) language improvement!

We left for Istanbul on Wednesday evening, (theoretically) sleeping on the train during the night before arriving at 7am on Thursday morning. I'm not the type of person who can function on four hours of broken sleep, and so I was considerably delirious for a large portion of the day. When we got off the train, we took a ferry across to the European side of the city, walked to the hotel, and, as it was still too early to check in, tried to change and get ready for the day in the hotel lobby bathrooms.

After breakfast, I split up from the group (which was going to the old part of the city to visit the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, etc) with two other friends who had also already been to the big landmarks. We wandered up a busy pedestrian street (Istiklal Caddesi) and had amazing cappuccinos at a local cafe before slowly walking across the city to meet up with the group on the other side of the Golden Horn. We ate lunch near the Blue Mosque, and I spent the rest of the afternoon making my way back to the hotel with a few friends, stopping to buy spices (which I now know how to use!) and a half pound of pistachio lokum (Turkish delight) in the spice bazaar. I ate most of it in our hotel room before napping and getting ready for the evening. We met up with one of my friend's Turkish friends to get dinner and a few drinks before calling it an early night.

The next morning, we went down to the Bosphorus as a group to get a guided tour of Dolmabahce, an Ottoman palace built in the mid-19th century. The building is a bit ostentatious, but the waterfront gardens are gorgeous. Also, Ataturk died here in 1938 (his bed is covered with a Turkish flag and the clock in the room is still set to his time of death) and so it remains a very important landmark for the Republic.

After leaving the palace grounds, we caught a ferry up the Bosphorus to Anadolu Kavagi, a small town located just south of the Black Sea. The program paid for our lunch, which consisted of fresh calamari, mussels, and fish, and we stayed long enough to walk up to the nearby castle ruins, from which you can see the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. The view was breathtaking, and well worth the hike even in the hot and humid July heat.

We took the ferry back down to Istanbul, rested for a bit in the hotel (where I finished the Lokum from the day before), and went out in Istiklal for the evening. I ate dinner with a small group before meeting up with the rest to figure out our plans. After an awkward and difficult discussion in the middle of the road, we decided to split up into smaller groups and planned to meet up later on. I ended up in Balik Pasaj, a very busy and narrow street filled with fish vendors, souvenir shops, restaurants, and bars, with a group of about 8 people, including one of our Turkish instructors and some of her friends. We managed to find a table on the 4th floor of a bar (the rooftop patio), where the center area was eventually cleared to make room for a dancing. The DJ played a great mix of oldies, pop, salsa, Turkish folk music, and even humored my requests for Michael Jackson. The atmosphere was amazing, as was the view of the street from our table.

On Saturday, I took my time getting ready, had another cappuccino, and grabbed a ferry with one of my friends out to the largest of the Prince Islands, located in the Sea of Marmara. We were supposed to meet some friends of ours and were envisioning a relaxing day on the beach to eat and nap in peace. When we got there, we were confronted with crowds of tourists (most of them Turkish), many of them overweight and unecessarily under-clothed, and could find no place to get out of the 90 degree heat. Eventually, we met up with our friends and had some lunch and ice cream before leaving the island. The experience overall was disappointing, but it was a very beautiful place (apart from the crowds) and I'd like to go again some day to get a better impression.

I spent the last few hours of the day wandering around near the hotel and trying to rest. I bought some more pistachio lokum and devoured it as quickly as the last bag. (I've fallen in love with the fresh (by the kilo) lokum and plan to bring as much as I can back to the US at the end of the trip. If you'll be in New York and you have any requests for flavors, let me know.) We caught the night bus back to Ankara, on which I spent another sleepless night before getting back home at 6am and collapsing for the better part of the day. I've slept about 10 hours of the last 16 (although I did manage to make this album of the trip), and I'll probably be heading to bed fairly shortly.

The trip overall was exhausting, but I was extremely happy to be back in Istanbul. The city is beautiful and fascinating, and it wasn't until we got there on Thursday morning that I even remembered it's most of the reason I decided to learn Turkish. Since then, of course, I've added many other reasons. But it was on my second day visiting city two years ago that I first thought to start learning the language. And as we were leaving, I decided to add living Istanbul to my to-do list for the next five years. The list isn't very long, but it already includes living in Berlin, and I'm starting to realize that I make most of my life decisions based on where I want to be and not what I want to be doing with my life. But then again, I think living in these cities is what I want to be doing with my life.

İstanbul'dayım

I'm in İstanbul for the weekend to feast on Turkish delight and enjoy as much of the Bosphorus as I can before heading back to landlocked Ankara on Sunday. I'll post again when I'm home.

Türkçe zor mu?

Is Turkish difficult?

I'm still trying to figure that out. At times, I think that the language, with its lack of gender, articles, and irregularities, isn't all that bad. I'm getting this, I say to myself. It's totally kolay, easy. Five minutes later, I'm forgetting my vowel harmony again, as I trip over the third of what seems like ten suffixes added on to whatever word I'm attempting to pronounce. I've been told that Turkish is a 3 (out of 5) on the "how hard it is for a native English speaker to learn" language scale,* so it's right between Spanish and Arabic (*that's the technical name, I'm sure). I've been told that French and German are probably both a 2, so in theory this should be the hardest of all the languages I've studied.

I had a long-ish conversation with my host mom and older sister this evening about the many differences between English and Turkish, specifically the ones that are hardest for each of us to learn. For example, they're stumped by the many translations of the locative suffix (always -DE in Turkish), which include in, at, on, near, etc..., and they both agreed that English has too many verb tenses and words for az, which can be translated as little, a little, less... For me, these are the advantages of Turkish. So many words and constructions seem to be catch-alls, applicable in any number of situations. One of my favorite Turkish expressions is çok güzel, which can describe just about anything in life that's nice, good, pretty, or generally enjoyable.

On paper, Turkish is like chemistry. You need only learn the basic elements and grammatical rules (which are hardly ever broken) to form sentences and make yourself understood. Most verbs, nouns and adjectives can turn into each other with the simple addition of a -li or -ci. But to produce these chemistry-like sentences in speech is an entirely different story. Turkish is an agglutinative language, and words can become terrifyingly long very quickly. Mix up one letter in your string of suffixes, and you've changed the meaning of your entire sentence. Forget to harmonize your vowels (there are 8 of them), and people will generally just stare. Learning to remember those subtle changes reminds me of learning to remember gender agreement in French or Spanish, and so I'm assuming it will get easier with time.

Of course, my favorite words and constructions in Turkish are the ones that have no parallels in the other languages I know. These are the parts of the language I'll become most attached to, like fin, machin, quoi, tu vois? in French, frech in German, or awkward in English. I haven't been able to find satisfactory equivalents for any of these words (or many others for that matter), but that's exactly why I love them. One of the best examples in Turkish is the duo of var (there is) and yok (there isn't). They're words that primarily express existence, but often "yes" and "no" as well. For example, instead of saying directly, I have money, you'd say param var. Literally, my money exists. Or if you want to express, all at once, that something is wrong, does not exist, or that you disagree, simply say yooo(k). My favorite verb tense, used primarily for unwitnessed past or unconfirmed knowledge, is also a treasure of the Turkish language, but I'll have to save that for another day.

My mind has been all over the place today, so don't expect a coherent post. I took a long break from life yesterday afternoon (read: nap, blogs, reruns of American tv on my computer) and I've had a difficult time readjusting to the here-and-now. This morning, all I could think about was my (yet to be started) new life in New York, and this evening, I've been going back and forth between that, drooling over Turkish food, and trying to understand my host family better.

In terms of conversation, I'm back in a mostly listening stage, especially since the guest (a friend of a cousin..? I'm not really sure) staying with us this evening talks about as fast as I do when I'm in my high-speed SoCal mode. As she talked, I went back and forth between trying to pick out individual words I understood and playing a game in which I don't focus on actual meaning, but rather try to distinguish each word from the rest while maybe catching a verb tense here and there. This exercise isn't productive when I'm actually trying to understand a conversation, but I think it's useful when someone is speaking so quickly that I wouldn't be able to make sense of it anyway. I noticed an improvement in my listening comprehension by the end of the evening, but the spoken words still didn't come.

Our morning classes today were replaced by a lecture on Ottoman history, given by a professor at METU, the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Being one of the few people on the program that doesn't seem to have a background in any Turkish history, I really appreciated the overview of the empire's rise, decline, and overall structure. The same professor is coming back on Wednesday to talk about modern Turkish history, and I'm looking forward to that quite a bit. I'm hoping she'll be able to elucidate some of the tenets of Turkish secularism, as I'm kind of fascinated with its similarities to French laicite. I was originally drawn to Turkey because of its connection to Germany, but more and more it's making me think of France. Don't tell Sarko this, but I can't help but feel that the French and the Turks have a decent amount in common.

After class, I spent about an hour drinking tea in a local cafe with program friends before heading home. On my way, I ran into my host sister and her best friend, so I turned around and walked back with them to the city center, where we looked in some stores before saying goodbye to the friend and meeting up with my host mom. On our way back to the apartment, we stopped by the local market together, and I nearly collapsed at the sight of about 1/4 mile of beautiful produce stretching down one of the main roads near our apartment. Piles of tomatoes, peaches, peppers, potatoes, melons and more lay next to each other without barriers or any sort of embellishment, allowing what I consider to be the only thing worth showcasing, the food itself, to take center stage. A few signs here and there pointed to the prices, but they were overshadowed by the sheer quantity of produce displayed on the long tables lining the road. We bought a few bags full of cherries, grapes, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, and greens before picking up a whole watermelon and schlepping it all up the rest of the road back home. Our dinner on the balcony consisted of mushroom soup, (shepherd) salad, fresh grilled fish, and arugula. About an hour later, my host mom brought out a bowl of grapes and cherries that we quickly devoured before drinking our evening tea. I've been getting worried in the last few days that I might get sick of eating only Turkish food soon, but I think I've still got a while to go before that happens.

On an unrelated note, I've set up a poll on the right to find out what you'd like to read about. Feel free to leave comments as well if there's something in particular you'd like me to write about more. I'm writing this blog in large part for myself, but I'd still like my readers to stay interested. :)

I was going to go to bed without blogging again, but I just downed three cups of tea and it’s about 90 degrees in my room right now. Sleep won’t be happening any time soon.

Yesterday morning, we were treated with a special visit to the headquarters of the current ruling party in Turkey, the AK Parti. We met with a representative from their foreign policy division, who spoke with us and answered questions on a variety of topics ranging from Turkey’s political history, to both internal and external Turkish affairs and the goals of the party itself. After that, we were invited to lunch in the building (which is gorgeous, having only been built a few years ago) before receiving a special tour of the Turkish parliament building. The entire complex is pretty impressive, with the exception of the bright orange seats that fill the main assembly hall. Apparently the color helps keep the MPs awake during long sessions. I was really glad to have been able to get a behind-the-scenes taste of Turkish politics, as well as a little AKP brainwashing. I particularly enjoyed the party’s official buses, several of which were parked outside of its headquarters. This one reads, “You are Turkey, think big!” The AKP’s symbol is a light bulb.

After leaving the parliament compound, we had about an hour and a half of afternoon class before the weekend officially started. Most of us decided to kick off the afternoon by going out for beers in our now favorite bar, “Random.” At one point in the conversation, one of the girls told me she wouldn’t have pegged me as a Californian, and that I seem much more like I’m from New York. I took this observation with a grain of salt, but it still made me think. I’m torn between being proud of re-rooting myself and sad that I’ve lost a certain kind of connection I used to have with San Diego, a change I started noticing a few years ago.

When we left the bar, we decided to get Kokoreç (a delicious sandwich made with finely chopped seasoned cow intestines) for dinner, and it was even better than it was the first time I tried it. Our group became smaller as the evening went on, and eventually I was with two friends, one of their Turkish host sisters and her friend. We went to a few cafes in the city center before driving to a random stretch of bars and clubs (only accessible by car) to chill out in an outdoor bar and hookah/tea lounge. I started to learn how to play backgammon, but couldn’t see half of the board and gave up after about five minutes. One of my goals is to learn how to play by the end of the summer, and to beat someone in at least one game. I didn’t get home until after one, and as we had to get up super early for our “trekking adventure” this morning, I was in no mood to write a post.

Today, I woke up earlier than usual to meet the program group and our trekking instructor for the day, a super-fit ex-commando hiker and all-around Rambo character whose frustration with our pathetic hiking ability seemed only to increase as the day went on. We drove out to Kızılcahamam, which is about an hour away from Ankara, to hike about 10 miles (1000 m in elevation) through the local mountains. Some of the paths we took were almost impossibly steep and covered with slippery pine cones, needles, dry leaves, and rocks. The hike was definitely beyond our fitness (and enthusiasm) level at times. But once we got closer to the top, we were treated to some really beautiful views. I really enjoyed spending time with the people from my program, and we amassed quite the collection of quotable moments as the hike progressed and our sanity waned. At one point, I believe I yelled at some ladybugs that no, I do not want to be your friend!

When we finally made it back to the bus, our trekking instructor explained to us for the second time,When we go back to the center, I’m going to kiss this man, but it’s because he’s my friend. I’m not gay, don’t worry. We all laughed awkwardly before one of the girls mumbled, smiling, It’s ok, if you were gay, we wouldn’t care! From the stories I’ve been hearing, it seems this concept is lost on a lot of Turks.

After stopping for tea and cake on our way out of the mountains, we drove back to Ankara, where I took the metro into the center and walked home to the apartment (bringing my distance walked to a total of about 13 miles today) only to find that the power had just gone out. My host mom warned me that there was no hot water to take a shower, but I was too desperate to be clean at that point to let that stop me. The ice-cold shower felt almost pleasant after the long and hot day, and the enormous portion of soup, potatoes, bread, beans, ayran (a mixture of water and yogurt, it’s my new favorite drink) and baklava that my host mom promptly fed me was exactly what I needed after the hike. We spent the last hour on the balcony with her sister in-law and my host sister, chatting, drinking tea, and enjoying the cool evening air that has somehow managed to avoid my room.

A Day in the Life

Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across.... no wait.

I got up at 6:30 this morning to frantically finish the Turkish homework I hadn't done last night before getting ready for class. We have two different teachers, so I only had time to do the work due for the one we usually see in the mornings. Of course, they switched timeslots today and when I arrived (late), I was completely un(and over)prepared.

I left the house after rushing through my breakfast (forgetting to drink my tea in the process), and was unpleasantly surprised to find I had a blister the size of a nickel forming on the bottom of my foot as I walked down the apartment's staircase. Limping from the pain, I hurried as quickly as I could through my neighborhood, past Kocatepe, and to the bus stop in the center of Ankara. When I entered the underground walkway to cross Ataturk Boulevard, I could already see from afar that it was a busier-than-normal day. Getting on a bus would be a challenge. I exited on the other side, putting away my ipod while pushing my way through crowds of morning commuters into the glare of the already too-hot morning sun.

The bus stop (or rather the stretch of curb alongside which buses occasionally stop but generally just cut off taxis, pedestrians, and other buses) had been moved well into the second lane of the boulevard by the hundreds of Ankara'lis waiting for their ride. In Ankara, the buses come fairly regularly and are quite reliable. They're just not big enough. Nor do they have air conditioning. I looked at my watch, noting that I only had ten minutes left to make it up the hill to the TAA building and make a pitstop at the adjacent market for my morning peach nectar, banana, and large bottle of water.

When the bus stop is this full, I usually wait for the second or third bus to be heading in my direction to let the crowds thin out before trying to fight them for a spot. I decided to try my luck today, though, and started to edge past those standing around me as I saw the 413 approaching. The bus driver stopped the vehicle for a good three minutes, letting the 50 or so people trying to get on at once (through the one entrance) have a go at each other. I was a foot away from the bus, ready to give up, when a large Turkish man behind me started pushing everyone in front of him as hard as he could. I had my arm inside the bus, my other hand on my purse, and one foot on the first step as we began to drive away. Not wanting to be left out by the closing doors, the man pushed us harder and I was smashed into the lower halves of those in front of me. The door began to close, my arm still somewhat in it ... I let out a small cry, managed to readjust, and started to hold my breath against the body odor beginning to rise up from the two Turkish men I'd found myself stuck between. We started up the boulevard, passengers quietly trying to ignore the invasion of personal space that each morning on an Ankara bus so wonderfully brings. As we pulled up to my stop, I gathered my strength for one last pardon, and jumped off the step (I hadn't left the doorway) in relief. In only 10 minutes, I had become drenched in sweat.

I limped into class my usual few minutes late, exhausted, only to see that Nur, the afternoon teacher, had already started the lesson. She, unlike our morning instructor, is a very punctual person. She was asking us to get out the homework she'd assigned, and I let out a sigh. Luckily, no one else had completed it either, so we did it as a class before moving on to the next four hours of Turkish grammar. I started to notice about thirty minutes in that I had forgotten my usual morning caffeine fix, and tried to replace it with a nescafe from the small TAA cafe downstairs. I managed to stay awake for the whole class, but I (and the other students) almost broke down in the last half hour from an overdose of adverbial conjunctions. Nur felt sorry for us and let us listen to some Turkish songs as we finished the last page of exercises.

We had a long lunch period, giving us enough time to leave the neighborhood to eat before coming back for a lecture from the External Affairs Officer at UNHCR's (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) Turkey office. It was a welcome break from our lessons, and I learned quite a bit about Turkey's refugee policies. Afterward, I walked back down to the city center with some friends to hang out in one of Ankara's many cafes before heading home. I made a quick detour to Citibank where I managed (after begging my way into the already closed branch) to get ahold of my new debit card (!). When I got back to the cafe, I was happy to get out of the heat and get my hands on a cheap, cold glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, one of my favorite treats here so far.

When we left, I walked home, crawled into bed to watch some tv on my computer, and waited for my host family to eat dinner. We had a casual meal of lentil soup, salad, stuffed bell peppers and meatballs before I stuffed myself full of watermelon for dessert. It's the first quiet evening I've had in a while, and it's much needed. I've gotten to a point in the trip where I'm very comfortable with my daily routine (barring the short yet extremely unpleasant trips on the bus each morning) and I'm much more at ease when talking to my host family. Daily life in Ankara is treating me very well so far.

In short, Mutluyum. I'm happy.

Pictures and 1000 words...

I should be writing, but I'm taking the day off. I made two new albums on facebook though, so enjoy!

So I was walking to Starbucks after class today (I know, I know, don't judge... I paid the price for my indulgence in the form of a $3.50 tall iced coffee, but it's the only place with decent air conditioning and a quiet area to study in the afternoons) when I told friends I was with that I'd have very little to write about for today's post. Nothing exciting had really happened and I was hoping to have a quiet night at home to catch up on emails and sleep. Of course, I spoke way too soon, and this evening proved to be one of the most culturally intense experiences yet.

While we were going over the day's homework assignments, my host mother called me to ask if I wanted to join the family at their cousin's house this evening. I of course said yes and made plans to meet my host sister at the metro later on. When I did, we went out to a nearby neighborhood where her younger sister was already playing on a swingset with their year-old nephew, Ahmet, and his grandmother. We stayed outside for a bit before heading over to their cousin's house. He and his wife, Zeynip are moving in a few days, and we were partly there to help with some of the packing.

After playing with Ahmet in the living room for some time, my host sisters and I ate dinner in the kitchen while we waited for my host mother and the cousins to arrive. I tried to understand the news that was playing on the small kitchen TV (did Obama misspeak in some way when he met with Putin? or did I understand that wrong?...), but I was mostly distracted by an inscreen live video feed of Michael Jackson's hearse driving up an LA freeway to the Staples Center. It seemed a bit unecessary to show the whole thing, but I guess the King of Pop was beloved here too.

Later on, once everyone was home, I hung out with Zeynip, my host mother, and my host sisters as we helped to pack up some of her clothes for the move. We were crowded into her bedroom, the four of them talking as I tried to understand as much of the conversation as I could. Thankfully, I've gotten to the point where I can understand most of what's said to (or about) me, I just can't respond with more than one sentence at a time. At one point in the conversation, Zeynip looked at me and joked (a little bit too seriously) that I should marry her brother, before suggesting that I try on her bridal costume and take pictures of myself in it. The costume is traditionally worn by the bride on the eve of her wedding - her hand is tatooed with henna ink, her head is covered, and she's expected to cry. We've talked about this tradition quite a bit in my Turkish class, but it was an entirely different story when Zeynip actually brought out her costume for me to put on.

I spent the next half hour or so in the living room, wearing full-on Turkish bridal gear while taking pictures with various combinations of the female family members (plus Ahmet, the baby boy). It's actually a pretty cool outfit, although a bit too hot for the current weather. If I ever do have a Turkish wedding, I'll have to make sure it takes place in a cooler month. But I don't plan on having a wedding of any kind in the near or even semi-distant future, so I won't worry about that too much right now.

After taking the costume off, I watched Tugba (my host sister) make Turkish coffee, ostensibly learning from her as she went about the preparations. When she finished, all of the women came to the kitchen to drink the coffee together. In Turkey, coffee (unlike tea, which is consumed in mass quantities at all times of the day) is traditionally reserved for special occasions, and comes with the added bonus of fortune-telling. After we finished our cups, my host sisters and I turned them over to allow Zeynip to read the lines formed by the leftover coffee grounds. She made up some cute fortunes for each of us, and I felt even more included (if that was possible) in the family atmosphere.

As I was leaving, Zeynip offered me a stack of old Turkish cookbooks that the family was trying to get rid of before the move. I was busy salivating over the pictures when she pulled out a small but beautifully decorated copy of the Koran and handed it to me, asking if I would like it as a present. She went on to explain the proper procedure for handling the book respectfully, as well as the importance of the Koran itself. I tried to express that I'm fairly familiar with most of the basic tenets of Islam (my Turkish is in no way good enough to say any of that) and that I've even read parts of the Koran in the past. I thought I was understood, but the whole family went on to tell me who Muhammed was and that the Koran is the equivalent of "my" Bible. I didn't have the will, energy, or vocabulary to explain that I tend read both (or all religious texts for that matter) in the same way, and that I'm not a particularly religious person, so I thanked Zeynip sincerely and said goodbye for the evening. I'm looking forward to trying to read (with the help of a very large dictionary) some of the text later on, although I'm probably going to need some more help with the half that's in Arabic.

Büyük Ankara Festivali ....

.... or rather, my first Turkish pop concert.

After making and eating a large batch of mercumek köfte (a type of vegetarian "meatball," made with lentils, bulgar, and fresh greens) for lunch yesterday, I took the metro out to the Büyük Ankara Festivali (to see a free concert) with my host sisters and some of their friends. The festival is a week-long celebration conducted for the citizens of Ankara; it's kind of like a cross between a summer concert series and a county fair.

When we got there, my older host sister and her best friend grilled me about my American guy friends (apparently they're looking for something other than Turkish men) while we wandered the rows of stands and worked our way through the crows of locals that had come out to enjoy a government-sponsored Sunday afternoon.

We had some time to kill, so we played in an astro-jump (or bounce-house, as I'm told it's called by some of my program friends), ate some ice cream, and loitered next to a giant red outline of Turkey displayed under an Ataturk banner at the edge of the festival grounds.

The actual concert (featuring the Turkish pop sensations Kutsi and Demet Akalın) was pretty fantastic, as it somehow brought the most diverse group of people (old, young, hipster, conservative,...) together, to sing and dance to some of the most repetitive (albeit catchy) music I've heard in a long time. I started to be able to sing along by the end, and I'm hoping my Turkish will improve enough by the end of the summer to learn at least one of the songs fully. I'm posting some videos of the two artists to give you a better idea of the atmosphere. I'd apologize for the shaky camera handling in the second one, but I think it adds a little something special to Demet Akalın's performance.

We got home fairly late after the concert, and I didn't get to bed until around 1, but I managed to stay awake during class today without much difficulty. Although I was able to skip most of the afternoon session in order to visit the local Citibank with our instructor in a failed attempt to get a new debit card. (An HSBC ATM ate my card last week, and I would have been able to pick it up easily the next day, but we were on our way to Cappadocia at that point and the bank's regulations did not fit with my plans. Apparently, I missed my chance and the card has been destroyed altogether for security reasons.) I've since spoken with a customer service representative and should *hopefully* have a new card by Thursday. I was too frustrated to do much of anything this afternoon, so a few friends and I relaxed over some Efes beers in a local cafe, watching the music videos in the background become progressivly trashier and 80s-er (think CCR and Dire Straits turning into Duran Duran and Eurythmics) while discussing the politics of US presidential races and EU accession. It's been a quiet night since then, and I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep.

Cappadocia

We got back from our trip to Cappadocia early last evening, but I was too exhausted to do anything but eat and pass out around 8:30. After sleeping about fourteen hours, I feel sufficiently revived to write a little bit about what we saw.

The entire trip was conducted as a private bus tour, and we were herded around as a group pretty much the whole time. I had a great time with the other kids from the program, but felt very removed from my "life" in Turkey, which has generally included more Turkish than the few words of "hello" and "thank you" that we needed over the past few days. We spent a lot of our time taking pictures, visiting museums, and eating at enormous tourist-trap restaurants that were paid for by the program. On Friday, I think I heard more French, Spanish, and Greek than I did Turkish. None of us were used to such travel, but we all enjoyed swimming in the hotel pool each evening while watching the sun set over the beautiful landscape and cave houses of Cappadocia.

We left Ankara on Thursday, stopping briefly at the second largest lake of Turkey, the Salt Lake, before arriving in Cappadocia. Due to the unseasonal rain we've been experiencing lately, the lake was full of water, and the evaporation off of its surface created a beautiful pinkish-blue color. It's only about 2 meters deep at the center, and the salt content is over 30%.

We continued on to Cappadocia, where we saw the "fairy chimneys" and other geological wonders for the first time. The beautiful and bizarre rock formations of Cappadocia are the result of volcanic activity (there are three volcanoes forming a triangle around the region) and slow erosion of the ash over time. On our first day, it was very difficult for me to stop taking pictures.

On Friday, we visited the open-air museum, which consists of a number of old Christian monestaries built into the rocks of a valley. These caves are famous for the the frescoes in their churches, most of them painted during the Byzantine era. As you can see in this picture, a lot of the faces depicted in the frescoes have been destroyed (or at least damaged) by various locals since the departure of the Christians.

After eating lunch, we drove to a hillside of cave houses - old mansions built into the stone of the cliff. A lot of these houses in the region have had to be abandoned due to earthquakes and erosion over the years. The newer settlements can be found on the flatter surfaces next to the hills.

Of course, a lot of our time consisted of photo-ops as we drove along the edge of various canyons and valleys in the region. Towards the end, we cared less about the pictures and more about taking a break and getting some fresh air outside of the bus.

On Saturday, on our way out to Konya, where we visited the tomb of Rumi (the Persian poet and mystic), we stopped to explore the region's largest Karavanserai. Karavanserais were important fixtures of the old silk road, providing a resting point and trading place for merchants and travelers. They were funded by the government, and travelers were allowed to stay for free for their first three nights. After that, they were required to pay. The layout of the Karavanserai was generally rectangular, with an open space on the inside functioning as the summer marketplace and the outer rim functioning as a winter marketplace, bathrooms, kitchen, stables, etc. This Karavanserai also had a mosque in the center, which you can see in this picture.

Of course, I left out a few of our stops, and if you want to see all of the pictures I took, take a look at my new facebook album.