Cappadocia Round Four

Six-thirty on a Saturday night. Jena and I had had a glass of wine. Then, thanks to a last minute idea and a phone call, we were in a car, headed to Cappadocia. The idea was to get a couple rooms, watch the meteor shower, and do some hiking the next day. The sky was clear and we could see Orion as we drove.

Other motives for the trip included the possibility of going out for Indian food and going out for some beers at a bar.

We easily found a hotel in the center of Goreme. Since it was the off-season (and possibly because it was nine o'clock at night) our cave rooms were 30-35 dollars. Cave rooms are those which are carved into the rock. Based on our previous experience in a cave hotel, I expected our rooms to be warm, but they were cold. Fortunately, Jena found the hotel cat to help heat our room up.

After Paul (of Paul and Cece, our couple friends and coworkers) took a few photos of the sky, we headed out to find the Indian restaurant.

Upon finding that the restaurant was closed, we had some Gözleme for dinner in a hole-in-the-wall place. Gözleme is a lot like eating a stuffed crepe, though the Turks like to call it a Turkish Pancake. While we waited for our food Jena and Cece left to look at rugs in another store, so when their food arrived before ours, we ate a few pieces of their Gözleme and replaced the pieces with food from our own meals before they returned.

After dinner, we brushed our teeth and headed out to a bar with a dance floor. It was on the second story of a building, and although it was incredibly loud, the overall feeling of the place was a major improvement over the only other bar in town, which we had visited on an earlier trip.

The beer in Turkey is bad. When we entered the bar, we asked them whether they had Bomonti. Unfiltered Bomonti is akin to a light hefeweizen, and it is easily the best beer available in the country, though it's like a bad Blue Moon. We were told it was available when we entered, but when it came to ordering, they said they only had Efes. It was like hearing the bar was out of everything except Keystone Light.

After our beer, which was 7 dollars per small bottle (they have large and small bottles here), we hit up the other bar for a game of Scattergories.

The other bar was more economical, as we knew it would be. This being my second time there, I can say it's an interesting place with pretty bad service and a horrible atmosphere. It's kind of like a dive bar in a run-down strip mall, and the interior has a bunch of bench tables like, as Jena put it, a crappy Pizza Hut. In it's own way it's kind of a fun place to be.

Feeling warm we headed out into the night to retrieve the car. We hoped to find a place just outside of town where it was dark enough to take pictures of the stars. Unfortunately, clouds had crept across the sky while we were at the bar, so those plans were foiled. Instead, we drove a little ways out of town to go on a couple night hikes. It was about one forty-five a.m.

First we explored a road that seemed to end at a field with white rectangular shapes sticking up at evenly spaced intervals. The light sensor and flash from my camera was my only source of light, so I announced that it was a graveyard. Upon further inspection, however, the shapes were merely sun-shades constructed for tomato or pepper plants.

We then hiked down into a valley that Jena and I had explored before. I led our group to a three-kilometer-long tunnel that dips into the earth for sections of one hundred feet or so at a time. Paul with his headlamp lead the way, and Jena and Cece stayed behind. We didn't go too far for fear that the girls would get cold waiting for us, so we soon headed back. At that point, we decided to call it a night.

After our breakfast the next morning, Paul and I went hiking while Jena and Cece did some shopping. On my way up a steep face, I lost my footing and slid down face first for about ten feet. I felt like Indiana Jones, and I had my wits about me to pull my hands up from the rock so that the forearm of my sleeves took most of the scraping, though I came away with a bloody wrist, elbow, and hip.

Later that day we headed to a new valley to explore, and we found old carved out dwellings that had multiple rooms, a stone door, and two long tunnels leading into and out of a chapel.

After working up an appetite, we headed back to town to try the Indian restaurant again. Finding that it was still closed, we settled for a Turkish lunch of manti (similar to ravioli), durum (similar to a chicken wrap/burrito), kofte (similar to meatballs), ayran (similar to yogurt and saltwater), and French Fries (which are very popular here).

As the day ended, we were back in the car and made it back to Kayseri at about five o'clock. The whole trip had taken less than twenty-four hours.


I can easily say that this was the best outing I've been on here in Turkey. It included good food, good friends (including the dogs and cat we befriended), a little drinking, a little riskiness (night hiking/tunnel exploration), and a little pain (sliding down the rock). I feel incredibly grateful that we have friends here that are willing to explore with us, and I'm lucky that our playground, Cappadocia, is so close by.

We hope to have more adventures in Cappadocia as the winter continues, and I can assure anyone who might visit us that they will be whisked off to help us explore this barren and beautiful landscape.

December Walk

Yesterday was a Saturday in December. I’ve been in Turkey for about five and a half months.

In the afternoon, I was studying Turkish while lying face down on the living room floor. Then I decided to go for a walk.

Ever since some cursory explorations, I wanted to explore further the ruins in the hillside of Old Talas. Old Talas dates back to 1500 BC according to the short, undisputed article about the town on Wikipedia.

I packed up a backpack and headed out on foot to the old city.

The day began with few clouds in sight, but by the time it was afternoon, it was overcast.

The monstrosities that are the apartment buildings still irk me, though now I don’t find them as strange as I once did. I told a friend recently that apartment living reminded me of a lot of little science experiments packed into boxes.

I had forgotten how far the hills behind Old Talas are from my apartment. After I’d been walking for fifteen minutes or so, I approached the Jandarma, which is a small army base that offers a respite of open fields to break up the urban sprawl.

 

Past the Jandarma, I found a pathway that went up the hillside among crumbling stone archways. Here, some young Turks walked together, stopping to take selfies and group photographs. Some people were also using the path to carry groceries from the valley floor to their houses at the top of the ridge. My favorite was an older woman using a cane and carrying her groceries as she went off-trail up the steep hillside.

Partially up the hillside is a mosque that was once a Greek Orthodox church (not the one pictured). The collection of history here, makes you feel as if every step you take has been taken before.

At the top of the hillside, I explored a room carved into the rock. The sandy floor was covered in animal paw prints, although the scattered trash suggested that humans commonly came there as well. I went as deep as I could without light, and eventually used my cellphone to light up the final room, which was strikingly large and cavernous.

The days here end at about four thirty, so I began the trek home as a light rain began to fall. At home Jena asked how the walk went, and as we began to relax into our Saturday night, we received a phone call from our friends. They suggested we go to Cappadocia to watch a meteor shower and to stay the night. In the morning, we would hike one of the valleys. We quickly packed, ready for exploration at another ancient site.

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This new tune was inspired by Ken's encouragement. Listen to it here: HERE.

Thanksgiving

Today Jena and I attended a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by a couple who works at Meliksah University with us. It was wonderful. When we came home, I made this song. All the tracks are mine except for the drumming, which Garageband supplied. Click here to listen to it: HERE.

Bogus Moment

Lights are out. The movie is playing on this inward curved screen. The movie theater is bigger than US ones. The movie--The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay Part 1--is loud. Turkish subtitles line the bottom portion of the screen.

In the movie, masses of Pan-Am (or whatever) citizens are gathering for a confrontation with the suppressive forces. The movie cuts to the face of one of the soldiers. Then...

Bam. The screen goes black. It's like the power went out. The whole theater is black, except for the exit sign.

The faint words of a friend make shadows in my mind. Something about a smoke break. Jena and I look at each other. We both say: "This must be intermission."

I add: "Good. 'Cause I need to pee."

The screen flares up again, and the cinema company says something in Turkish about how we have ten minutes. Then a commercial or two play on the big screen. Obviously, I'm not sure what happened. I was one my way to pee.

When I returned, I kept thinking: Need to smoke? Need to pray? It's cool. We've got you covered. Ten-minute break. Mid-film.

I sat down, and Jena headed out to use the restroom. But it's not like we needed to save our seats because Turkey is AWESOME and there is RESERVED seating in MOVIE THEATERS. We were exactly where I wanted to sit. Close but not too close, and exactly in the center. Finally, my obsession with being punctual to movies--inherited from my father--has allowed me to reap a reward.

Jena returned. A couple more commercials played. Then nothing. Just everyone in a pitch black room together. Then bam. Two seconds or so before it cut out, we were back in the movie.

A Day in the Life - Part 2 - Being at Work

Check email. Check coursebook. Review plans for classes--classes which may or may not be consecutive--which will begin in T-minus 27 minutes. Determine whether additional materials need to be printed or photocopied. Commit plans, which have previously remained in your head, to a sheet of paper, folded in half. (It's important to you that this sheet with the Agenda, the Announcements, and the Homework is small. It makes you feel as if everything is more doable. It gives you confidence because there's a finite space to fill up, and it reminds you that you have the ability to improvise when needed.)
Read email. Make mental notes. Mark most emails as unread because you'll deal with them later.

Put computer to sleep. Unplug headphones, mouse, ethernet cable, and power-supply cable. Put computer, coursebook, student workbook, paper-clipped handouts, and half-sheet plan for lessons in computer bag. Wrap up power-supply. Put that in bag, too. Take one more sip of tea from mug. Pick up bag and head out of the office.

Walk along the balcony/corridor, hearing the din of students' voices on the ground-floor below. Say good morning in English and Turkish to a slew of coworkers. Go to the teacher's lounge to get attendance sheet from pigeonhole. Go downstairs.

Say good morning with a friendly tone, but without a smile, to any students who have arrived in the classroom. Set up computer. Make sure the SmartBoard is off by checking this minuscule, hardly transparent button to see whether it is green or red. Type in computer's password. Take the HDMI cable and the USB cable from bag and plug them both into the computer and the wall. Turn on the Smartboard. Hear it make a comforting noise, indicating that it will work. Try touching the projector screen. See that the SmartBoard is actually not working. Switch USB ports. Listen for sounds indicating whether it will work. Sometimes they're there; sometimes they're not. Resolve yourself, annoyed, to the fact that it doesn't seem to be working today. Take pen, marker, clock, and (just in case it magically begins to work) the SmartBoard pen from your computer bag. Write agenda, today's homework assignment, and announcements on the board. Say good morning to more incoming students. Feel a sense of pressure as you note the time and realize that it's T-minus one minute or so. Wonder where half of your students are, but try to be grateful for the punctuality and the bright-eyed looks from the ones who are there.

Begin teaching. Try not to get annoyed by late comers. Try to be patient when students knock on the door before entering. It's not a knock indicating that the student will wait for permission to enter. It's a knock that announces, I'm gonna enter in about one second. And then they enter.

Teach. Use weird, idiosyncratic hand motions to try to make new language more comprehensible. (Ignore the small, nagging voice in your head from your friend who once observed your class and suggested you're hand gestures make you resemble the Abominable Snowman. Ignore the other small nagging voice that reminds you that one of the gestures you're making--as far as you have been informed--indicate that someone is ****ing in the *** according to local interpretations. Ignore the final voice that reminds you that "um," the way you pronounce it, denotes a certain part of female genitalia in Turkish.)

Focus on more important things. Look for instances of students genuinely doing a good job. Praise them. Correct instances of language use that are developmentally appropriate for the class as a whole and individual students. Somewhere, sometime, in each lesson, get a positive, unassailable morsel of enjoyment out of something.

Finish classes. Return to office. Put stuff down. Try to scare up a couple coworkers to join as you make you're way up the campus-road to the cafeteria in the student center at the top of the hill.

Depending on a variety of factors, do your best to make interesting and/or humorous conversation with those around you. On some days just listen. Wait in line for your meal. Scan your ID card, and feel a little pang of guilt because you get this lunch for free. However, your Turkish colleagues don't because it wasn't explicitly mentioned in their employment offer. Sit down at a crowded table, and turn your tray sideways when necessary to make room for others. Eat. Pay attention to the time, especially where you've got afternoon lessons to teach. Finish up. Put your tray in the dirty-tray rack. Walk back down to the English prep-school building that you call home.

Teach in the afternoon.

Return to your office. Take care of what feels like a million administrative issues--recording attendance and participation, answering emails, checking homework, etc. Look over coursebook, and put stars next to activities you'll include in your lessons the next day. Work on specific "materials office"-related assignments, because that's your "committee" for the time being. Do some planning for your American literature class, whether it's putting together a PowerPoint, designing an activity, or grading. Eventually note that most of your officemates have left because the evening has begun encroaching. Hear the office door open, and see the top of Jena's head over the bookcase that obscures your view of the entrance to your office. Make eye contact with her. Know that it's time to go.

Shoulder personal bag. Turn off lights. Lock office door. Find Jena. Head home.

A Day in the Life - Part 1 - Getting to School

What is a typical day like?

A typical day begins with my alarm going off at 6:45 in the morning. The alarm has a standard sound--dee dee dee dee *rest* dee dee dee dee. Even though it is cheap, the alarm provides a wealth of information. It says the time (which I have set to military time, so I don't accidentally mis-set the alarm by forgetting to choose a.m. rather than p.m.). It says the day. It says the phase of the moon (maybe this feature makes the alarm popular in Turkey since Qur'anic holidays are set to a lunar calendar). It says the temperature in Celsius (although I can change it to Fahrenheit if I want to). And it says the humidity percentage. But at 6:45 in the morning, I am prone to ignore all of this information because my mind is preoccupied with a sense of indignation that my beauty sleep has been interrupted and now I must do something.

So then I walk across the living room, and there is Jena, sitting at the table. She is listening to NPR from her ipad, and she is applying makeup. She typically rises at least a half hour before me to do Pilates and to shower.

On some days I shower. On others I don't because I've showered the night before. I just douse my head with the handheld shower nozzle which helps to calm down some of my over-excited hairs that are standing on end after a night's sleep.

I eat a breakfast of yogurt and granola that I have made myself. This is one of my favorite parts of the day. One--I really like granola, especially my granola which I've made from honey, peanut butter, and cashews. And two, as I eat, I do some reading. At the moment, I'm slowly making my way through Moby Dick for a second time, although I'm thinking of changing books soon. While I love the book, it is a bit laborious during some sections. What I get out of it these days is mainly the similarities I see between Ahab and my office supervisor at work. After breakfast, I clothe myself, brush my teeth, pick up my bag, and head out the door.

Jena and I walk together to work on most days. We take the elevator down from our crows nest on the eleventh floor. We say, "Günaydın" to the security man. Usually it's the big guy who knows a little English. Sometimes Jena is turned off by his state of perpetual grumpiness, but it doesn't bother me. He seems bored with his job, and he seems like he's been cursed--due to his English--with dealing with all the "yabancılar" (foreigners) day in and day out.

The weather is getting cooler now, but some days are temperate. This was the case this week. The sky is sometimes grey with clouds, but they are often high clouds that don't give you that claustrophobic feeling the way rain clouds do.

We walk through this maze of square fouteen-story apartment buildings. I would compare it to the setting of the film The Maze Runner, but generally the atmosphere is a bit less gloomy than that. As we walk, Jena often wants to talk about our upcoming day at work and the logistics of winter vacation plans--both of which are extremely stress-laden topics for me. At this time of the morning, I prefer silence or music or the news so that I can disconnect from the realities of my somewhat unstimulating daily existence. I often daydream about what life would be like on a whaling ship. Or I yearn for the ability to travel back in time to the middle ages. (I have accidentally become engrossed in Game of Thrones, and normally I would chastise myself for having such a dependance on a television show. These days, though, I give myself a break and view it as a coping mechanism as I go through the requisite phase of adjustment that accompanies moving to another country and beginning a full-time job.)

We pass by a Turkish elementary school each morning, and in the play-yard kids are often running around. Some kids walk to school alone. Others walk with a parent. It's not uncommon to see a father carrying one of those micro-sized backpacks while his child, all bundled up, follows behind. Oddly enough, Jena and I walk by this school at almost the exact same time every morning. Yet, on some days the yard is mostly vacant. On other days the yard is mostly full. Just this past Friday, their bell--which sounds a lot like the Tetris theme song--sounded as we walked by, and all the children went running to the doors with so much enthusiasm that it made me jealous.

When Jena and I get to the top of this little hill, we cross the busy street to the main entrance of our university. I can't think of a better place for a crosswalk or at least a change in speed limit. Since neither are present, we look both ways with an extreme sense of precaution. I should note, too, that this is a divided road, the kind with a grassy median. Looking both ways sounds silly, right? While crossing to the median, you should only need to pay attention to traffic going one direction, right? Not in Turkey. I have been blindsided more than once by a horn from a car going the wrong way.

After this daily little panic attack of getting across the road alive, we walk through the main entrance of the university where things are a bit more mellow. We pass the security checkpoint for cars, and then we get to these gates--I'm not sure what to call them; they're the metal bars that are waist-high that you use in subway stations that revolve after you put your ticket them and push on them. So we get to these things, and on days when my brain has fully shedded the aegis of sleep, everything goes fine. On days when I can't get the damn things to work, and when my Turkish fails me when the security guy comes to help, I begin my days with a heavy sense of frustration and inadequacy. There's slight consolation in the fact that you have to put your ID against the sensor on your left side while you push through the bars on the right side. So counter-intuitive. So Turkey.

The final leg of the walk is pleasant. There are relatively few cars on the street that heads past the auditorium, past the library, and up into the main part of the university. Usually the bread guy drives by. He's one of the bakers who works for the bakery in the bottom floor of the apartment building next to ours. He's pretty patient when I practice my Turkish with him. There's another guy who rides by each day on a bike. I don't know what his job is, but you can tell he's got his ducks in a row. His bike is old, the kind that has a basket in front and those handle bars that bend back toward the rider. He has this piece of plastic, cut from a water bottle and attached to his mudguard. Clearly, he knows from experience that the mudguard, as originally manufactured, isn't working as well as it should. And when he rides up to the university, he does this little move to get around these speed bumps set in place for the cars. The speed bumps are made from these three or four-inch pieces of hard yellow plastic that are attached to the asphalt in two staggered rows. When the bicyclist gets to them, he maneuvers his bike just so between them and doesn't get jostled at all.

To our right on the sidewalk is a small park area. There's a green area that has flowers of various colors along its boarders. There are a few benches under free-standing arches. The scene is symmetrical: a path on the right and one on the left head to two staircases that circle up behind a wall at the far side of the park. Two small waterfalls splash down rocks on either side of the green area. On warm days students hang out here. In the beginning of the school year, there were concerts here as well.

Between the auditorium and the library, you can catch glimpses of the open area down the hill that belongs to the large state-funded university nearby. The university is growing, constantly erecting new buildings; yet, for the time being, there is a magnificent open area that is free from development. It provides a counter-point to the monstrous apartment buildings surrounding its borders.

Our building, the "hazırlık," is the first building on the left, after the main road curves up a steeper hill. Jena and I walk down the sidewalk to the front doors. Sometimes I keep an eye out for stray puppies because coworkers have found them here before. The front doors of our building are sliding glass doors, like those you'd find in a grocery store, but ours are bigger and free from advertisements. They don't have the most sensitive sensors, so sometimes you have to watch your walking pace so that you don't end up running your face into the glass. When the doors don't open, you take a step back and wave your hand up at the black ball at the top. It's not a huge deal, but the action makes me feel like a helpless idiot, nonetheless.

Once inside, we head up some stairs that are beside this strange amphitheater area that is never used for anything official and that faces a wall. The wall crowds in a little too closely on the stage area, and the wall is covered with wallpaper that makes it look like the wall is made from stone. But it's not. I've checked.

Our shared offices are on the top floor of the building, and when we get there, Jena always turns to me and says, "Have a good day." It's very sweet of her. My "You, too." sounds lackluster in comparison. But it's hard to get a longer phrase in because she is quick to disappear into her office, which right at the top of the stairs. I wander down the hall--to my left are more offices and a couple computer labs, to my right is a handrail because the hallway is actually a balcony that looks over the foyer and the amphitheater. When I get to the door at the end, I head in and begin my work day.