Holiday in Antalya and Two Long Bus Rides

Strangely enough, one of the best night's sleep I've ever had came not in a quiet room in a comfy bed, but in a crowded, thirteen hour public bus ride along twisting unpaved roads along the coast of the Mediterranean. Obviously not a typically relaxing experience. Yet immediately upon boarding the bus from Adana to Antalya at 9:00 pm, my head drooped onto the window, and I fell asleep to the sounds of babies crying and people whispering and to the not-so-gentle rocking of bumpy, unpaved roads and sharp turns.

Most likely the reason it was such a pleasant night's sleep was the way I woke up: to a sunrise opening over a gigantic expanse of pristine Mediterranean shore and sea, dawn's light lifting itself up slowly, revealing more and more land and water as our bus kept rambling along the tiny roads.

And the trip only got better from there. At 10:00 in the morning we promptly arrived at the Antalya otogar (bus stop) where I did a double-take as I looked out at the window to see my host grandfather's brother waiting for us. Though I had never met him before, I immediately recognized him, for he looked exactly like my grandfather. Irem and I stayed at the home of him and his wife for the next four days, for the national holiday Gençlik Bayramı, Youth Holiday. They were the epitome of gracious and hospitable Turkish hosts, awaiting us with a huge Turkish breakfast and lots of plans for our holiday. After our welcome breakfast, we spent most of our day around their house, meeting relatives (there were lots), resting, and (of course) eating tons. In the evening we crowded I believe eight people into a five-person car and drove to a nearby beach, where I couldn't resist swimming in the immaculately blue and clear sea before sitting down on the beach with the family and drinking tea out of a Thermos while watching the sunset - almost as beautiful as the sunrise that morning. Antalya is, though, a huge tourist city, especially for Germans and Russians. A cousin drove us around that night to see the deluxe hotels around the city, including hotels modeled after the Titanic, the Kremlin, and Istanbul's Topkapi Palace, among others. I've never seen so many deluxe hotels in one city before.

The next day we toured the Kaleiçi (literally "inside the castle") - the old city center filled with Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk, and Ottoman ruins. Antalya has a long history. The winding cobblestone streets slope gradually downwards to end up at the sea, and along the way little cafes, hotels, tiny shops, and street peddlers abound. We walked around in there in the late morning and early afternoon and enjoyed the large, seaside park right beside it. We also went to the Archaeology Museum, which had a superb collection of Greek and Roman statues.

The next day we woke up early to board a tekne (a boat like a yacht) tour along the coast. We spent an unforgettable day of crazy weather ("I think we've passed through all four seasons today!" my aunt exclaimed after we were done) and beautiful sights and swimming. Irem and I enjoyed the water slide that opened on the top deck, went through the inside of the ship, and emptied out into the sea. At our anchor spots, we slid down or simply dove off the side of the boat and into the water. My favorite spot at which we stopped was this deserted beach on a tiny island. We swam to the shore from the boat, walked onto the shore covered in tiny, black pebbles, and explored the large caves that loomed directly behind the shore. While on board we had a delicious meal of fresh fish, pasta, and salad.

The next day was our last day in Antalya. We had our return bus leaving at 10:00 that night, but during the day we seized the opportunity to go back to the old part of town and walk around some more, for there was so much to see, and it was such a beautiful and historic area. I bought some beautiful, handcrafted, leather sandals from a small stand in the road. We headed back to my aunt and uncle's house in the afternoon and visited with more relatives and ate more food and drank lots of tea before our bus ride back.

And the bus ride back was just as wonderful as the one coming over. Again I slept and awoke to the sun rising over the Mediterranean. No better way to wake up - and this time I was coming back home. "Evim, evim, güzel evim," I sighed as Irem and I walked through the door of our apartment. "Home sweet home."

Run, Forrest, Run!

This past Thursday I went on a real run (outside! at my own pace!) for the first time since I've been in Turkey. I had been going to a gym for the past three months, but I had gotten a bit bored of doing the same activities everyday, and in a dark basement, when the weather outside had blossomed into a beautiful spring. As I began my first run this past Thursday, I quickly realized that although I had been using the elliptical machine at my gym, it is not the same thing at all as being out in the open air, treading on pavement and dirt and rocks, and actually seeing something beyond my sweaty self in the opposing mirror. The evening weather was perfect. I took a route up a small hill past apartment buildings, around a bend, by one of the city's hippest cafes, and then I turned down a dusty road dotted with little shacks and sıkma stands, past cows grazing in the grass, and to the shore of the city's big lake. I stopped at the bottom to peer out over the lake. I squinted as the bulging sun, shouting its last hurrah before succumbing to the night, glinted across the clear water. I enjoyed my moment before heading back up the hill and taking a long route back home, back past the cafe, back into the city, along one of the major boulevards, through a beautiful, small park by a mosque, and finally back to my apartment.

Now I'm trying to make running back into a regular habit. One of the things that stopped me from running earlier is that it is not a common activity for people to run outside for exercise. I do, in fact, look even more out of place than usual in my jogging pants and sweaty t-shirt, running equally by farmers tending their herds and by people drinking coffee at fancy cafes; as families sit at picnic tables eating kebab and looking over the view of the lake or walk back from the fruit and vegetable market, their arms and backs laden with fresh produce.

For me, it's another viewpoint from which to observe my city and to newly appreciate the natural beauty and the urban life, both of which are literally just around the corner from me.

April Showers

Today I found myself caught in a torrential downpour, unarmed with my şemsiye (an umbrella, which, according to my host mother, should be carried with me at all times to prevent getting wet and thereby getting ill) or any other kind of weapon to ply against the elements. On my way from teaching English at the Gençlik Merkezi (Youth Center) with Sophie, we tried to shield ourselves under various coverings included but not limited to a tunnel made of fake rock in a small park, an overcrowded bus stop, and a shop awning before our savior, a young man, beckoned us into a small cafe, where the power had gone out. Once inside, we shook ourselves off and perched at a table looking out onto the rain, thunder, lightning, and hail outside. The cafe owners kindly offered us erik, a small, green fruit, which I believe is a young plum, and strawberries, along with a Türk kahvesi, the delicious, espresso-like coffee for which Turkey is famous.

We sat there sipping our coffee, not really wanting the rain to abate, as we were settled quite cozily indoors. We entertained ourselves by reading our fal, which is a special way to read the coffee grounds to sort of tell fortunes. A little while later, the other American girls came in, even wetter than we were after evidently wading through gigantic puddles that had accumulated. We sat around for awhile longer until the rain somewhat subsided, then proceeded to run across the street to the bus stop, board the extremely crowded bus, fight through terrible traffic, and make our ways home.

After the forty-five minute ride (standing/slipping around on the wet floor), I got off at my bus stop. I ran into my classmate Ayten there - a coincidence to be sure, but not a surprising one. Though I really know few people in this city, I seem to always running into acquaintances. That makes this rather large city feel like a small town in some ways. She was delighted to see me, for in the front of her nearby apartment building, there was a "wild dog" that she was terribly frightened of, and she wanted me to frighten it away. I walked to her apartment and shooed the dog, a big, yellow mutt, away easing open the gate and coaxing it out while Ayten hid herself around the corner. When I looked up, the rain had completely abated. The sun was shining strangely brightly - perfect rainbow weather, if all the apartment buildings hadn't been blocking me on every side.

Turks talk about "April showers" too, and tomorrow we shall see if they will in fact bring May flowers. And as my childhood joke goes: what do May flowers bring? Pilgrims! As I found out, though, that joke doesn't translate very well into Turkish!

Scrub-A-Dub-Dub

The hamam, or Turkish Bath, is widely known around the world, but most people know it by name only. Not many people know exactly what goes down inside a hamam. After visiting the baths several times, I want to share my impressions of the experience.

To begin with, most of the really traditional hamams were built by the Ottomans. And yes, they still exist, and they look just the same! The same buildings have been used for centuries. Maybe there is a little bit more modern plumbing (this is just a maybe, though), but both the exterior and the interior look straight out of Ottoman times. The one I have been to here in Adana was built in the 15th or 16th century. Located in "Eski Adana"  ("Old Adana"), it is a marble construction topped with several domes. Sounds like it would stick out, right? But you could almost miss this building, which is nestled into a crowded and bustling older neighborhood, between tiny kebab restaurants, tailors, small hardware stores, and a small yet lovely mosque and park. The Big Clock (the tallest clock tower in Turkey!), one of Adana's landmarks, stands just down the street, within view from the entrance.

The hamams have separate days, or times of the day, for men and for women. On one of my recent visits, I came bright and early on a Saturday morning with my friend Charlotte and her host mother and sister. We brought with us the necessary towels (one big one for the body, one small one for the head), terlik (flip-flop-ish shoes), shampoo, conditioner, soap, a loofah, and a change of undergarments. Upon arriving, we were ushered into a large changing room where women in various stages of undress mill around, chatting, drinking tea or water, and preparing to either enter the baths or exit the building. We took of our outer clothing leaving only our undergarments on. Some women choose to wear bikinis, but most just wear their underwear and an optional bra.

Let me just take a moment to correct what could be a possible misconception: the women who go to the hamam are generally not harem-like, youthful, buxom beauties. They are mostly older women. Let your mind imagine what it will. You must be ready to shed all preconceptions of body image or modesty before walking into a hamam!

Well, when we finished undressing, we left our clothes and towels hanging on a hook on the wall and walked up a couple of stairs, through a door, and immediately cascaded into a hot, overwhelmingly humid room. The huge room is made of white and cream marble. The domed ceiling lets in light through small holes. All along the walls are giant marble sinks with faucets running water. Off the large room are many smaller and more secluded rooms where there are more sinks. We perched ourselves in one of the smaller rooms and turned on the faucets, one for hot water and one for cold water. We let the sink fill with warm water and used small plastic bowls to dip out water and pour it onto ourselves, fully wetting ourselves from head to toe, letting our skin relax and pores open.

After a few minutes of this, we walked out and up a couple more stairs into another room, where a giant marble slab lay in the middle of the room, under the biggest dome. We lay upon the heated slab, looking up to pinpoints of sunlight coming through the dome. Occasionally warm drops of water would plop down from the ceiling onto my forehead. Women are always talking as they lie there on the slab - gossiping, story-telling, and sometimes attempting to arrange marriages. In previous times, women would go to the hamams to find wives for their sons. It makes sense - they really get to see the entire bride-to-be! Some women still do this today, or at least semi-joke about it. I actually had a pretty convincing offer from one woman, who described to me her son - his education, his job, and told me he had lots of money, a car, and a summer house! Alas, I declined...maybe next time I visit.

Now we move on to the scrub-down. I walked back into a large room I'd passed through on my way to the marble slab. In this room hamam workers take complete control of you, and what interesting characters these hamam workers are! They are middle-aged and older women who spend all their time in the hamam pretty much naked, scrubbing down the women. Two words come to mind when describing them: gruff and saggy. One took me by the hand and told me to sit on a plastic mat on the ground. I removed my bra and the scrubbing began. The woman took a special, rough cloth out and began grating it against my skin, beginning on my arms and working her way all over my body, leaving basically no area untouched. The first time I had this done, I felt pretty violated. After it was over, though, it was amazing to see how much disgusting, dead skin had come off my body. I was left feeling extremely smooth, especially after rinsing myself off once more in the sinks. That's when we took out the soap and shampoo to finish washing ourselves. After washing myself, I was ready to get out - the heat and humidity take a toll after awhile. I left to go out into the cool dressing room, where I sat for a little while in my towel drinking water before changing back into my clothes, feeling clean yet exhausted.

The whole experience lasts about forty-five minutes to an hour and costs, I believe, eight Turkish lira for the entrance fee and five or so more for the scrub-down. All in all, it's about ten American dollars. The traditional hamam is no deluxe spa. There are more modern, fancier spa facilities in town, but I prefer my hamam to be traditional - full of women of all shapes and sizes doing what they've done, their mothers, their grandmothers, and so on have done for hundreds of years.

A (Brief) Turkish Love Story

This weekend I heard the story of how my Turkish grandparents fell in love.

It was Saturday morning at the summer house in Mersin. My grandparents had graciously agreed to host both me and three of the other American girls from Adana for the weekend. We were sitting at breakfast, a typically large and delicious meal: eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh bread, green olives, black olives, cheese, honey, and so on. We sat on the spacious, open porch at a round table, the morning Mediterranean air hovering, the sun shining little rays onto our table and refracting reddish-brown light from our clear tea glasses. The conversation was lively already, mostly thanks to my grandfather, who is somewhat of a philosopher in his own way - doling out savory morsels of timeless wisdom that sound even fresher to my ears when they come from a new language. The tea was being poured by the glass: "It helps the conversation," said my grandmother as she leaned over with the shiny silver teapot to refill my glass for perhaps the fourth time. After a brief lull, the conversation, as always in Turkish, turned to go like this:

"You know, your grandmother and I have been together for forty-five years," my grandfather said. He held up his bronzed, toughened hand to make a four and then a five. His words rumbled into the air in his deep voice. The entire table of girls cooed in appreciation. "We met in middle school." My grandmother let out her little cackling laugh, her eyes crinkling into a wide smile. "How did it happen? We were playing outside. I saw her from aways away." He smiled and fixed his deep brown eyes on mine. "It was like a bucket of water was poured on my head. I knew right then." The image struck me so clearly that it was as if the metaphorical bucket of water had once again been poured upon my head. "But it took awhile! Her family said I was too poor. It took many years before we were married. But we were. And now we are!" And they turned to each other and laughed and smiled. The entire table sat in a brief second of silence with giddy smiles on our faces. The story had been told so simply yet to such great effect.

The story stuck with me throughout the day as the sun rose higher into the sky and we made our way to the beach to swim in the Mediterranean. I thought of the many love stories I've heard from my American family throughout the years - stories that also evoked powerful images or sensations. Now this story, from across the world, from my "grandfather" who is no blood relation to me, is joining the ranks of the numerous stories I already know by heart of my great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents back in America. For no matter what language or what part of the world they come from, love stories strike a chord; they become a part of the collection of stories that I'll remember and save to one day share with future generations, too.

Fast Food

Burger King and McDonald's may seem about as American as it gets, yet these fast food restaurants also abound over here in Turkey. Turks eat the same burgers, fries, and Cokes enthusiastically (and for a much higher price), and they consider the mass-processed meals almost a delicacy. There is, however, another version of Turkish fast food, the fresh and traditional counterparts to the influx of Americanized fast food. Today I learned how to make one such popular item, namely "sıkma". 

I went with the four other NSLI-Y girls in Adana around noon to the house of...well, I'm not really sure. One of our AFS volunteers, Funda, took us to the house of some of her friends and/or relatives, who live in an older part of town called Denizli. We pulled up to the house, on a busy street tucked behind a store that displayed everything from kites to shoes. Several women, wearing the traditional "şalvar", loose pants with a low crotch, and head scarves came out to enthusiastically greet us. They brought us şalvar and heads scarves to wear, too (we never pass up an opportunity to wear these comfortable pants). They laid out a cloth on the concrete in a little courtyard area and brought out a big tub of dough they had kneaded, some flat trays, and some thin rolling pins (about the circumference of a broom handle). One woman sat and rolled the dough into little balls, and then she would hand us a ball. We used the small rolling pins to roll each ball out into a tortilla-like bread: round and thin. 

A couple of feet away, the women set up a small fire. Around the fire they placed several concrete blocks to use as a stand for a convex, metal tray. After the dough was rolled out, we brought the tortilla-like substance to the fire and cooked it quickly on this metal tray, flipping the dough rapidly from side to side. This takes probably only thirty seconds or so. After it was satisfactorily cooked, we brought it back to the cloth, where we quickly spread butter over the steaming bread, and then added one of three other toppings: a cheese/parsley mixture, a potato/onion mixture, and sugar. We then rolled them up into a thin roll, rather like an enchilada, and ate them with our hands. The savory cheese and potato mixtures were delightfully filling, while the sugar-filled ones made a wonderful dessert. It was so rewarding to make this food - sıkma - ourselves - rolling out the dough, cooking it, filling it, and eating it - all outside on a beautiful, spring day.

This is sold on the streets and in the open markets by women who sit out rolling this dough and cooking it right in front of you. This is just one of the many kinds of Turkish "fast food" that I much prefer to the Burger King or McDonald's that many Turkish youths seem to prefer. Making it myself gave me new appreciation for the women who make it - it's difficult to roll those perfect circles out quickly and cook them just the right way!

I write often on my blog about activities that I do that seem more "traditionally" Turkish to me. This is in part because my day-to-day life had become so standard for me that it seems "normal". I want to write a little bit soon more about my school and family life, my day-to-day schedule, and so forth. To do this I'll have to look at my life the way someone looking in from another place would see it. If anyone has any specific questions about my life here, please let me know, so I can make sure to address them when I write about this subject. Thanks!

Adana'da İlkbahar

In the streets: vendors plying their wares; fresh, plump strawberries piled high atop wooden trays; the tiny, green, fuzzy fruits that spring from almond trees; boys on bicycles deliver kebabs; old women wear flower patterned şalvar and squint in the sunlight; dogs sleep in patches of grass or directly on the cement; children run and shout and sing; music plays from store fronts; ice cream stands abound; trees in bloom; smells of freshly mown grass and dust.

Sprıng has sprung! Get ready for more blog posts!

Second Podcast!

As you may or may not remember, my friend Charlotte and I are trying to get started making a podcast from over here in Adana...take a listen to our second episode! We talk about our recent trip to Ankara and Cappadocia as well as what's going on here in Adana. We even gave a little mini Turkish lesson! We'd love any feedback or comments from all of you. Thanks for listening!

Charlotte and Rebecca's Podcast

More Than Exercise

I arrived at the gym this evening as I often do. I changed into my exercise clothes, walked upstairs, plugged in my earphones, and turned on some music. After lamenting the occupation of my favorite elliptical machine, I had literally just hopped on the stationary bike when the owner of the gym, a friendly, older man, walked over to the bike and motioned for me to take my headphones off. "Some Americans are here," he told me, in Turkish. "Can you translate for me?". I was taken aback at this request - it was so completely unexpected; I would not expect to see any other Americans (besides my friend Charlotte, who also joined the gym) walking into this small gym in my neighborhood. I immediately replied in the affirmative, rose, and walked toward the front desk, where I immediately recognized the "yabancı" - the young blonde woman standing next to a tall and equally blonde man. "Hi?" I said inquiringly. When the woman replied, I realized from her accent that they were, in fact, German, and not American - an easy mistake to make, though. "Could you help us explain?" she asked. And I did! My first real work as a Turkish translator! It was a quick conversation, consisting of a couple minutes worth of inquiries about the price of the gym and length of membership and so on, but the Germans were complimentary of my Turkish and thanked me for my help.

It was only afterward that I realized how easily I had done it! This was something that would have been impossible, even ridiculous, for me to have done six months ago. Even three or four months ago it probably would have been a challenge. But today it came easily to me, without much thought or issue. As I came back to happily find my favorite elliptical empty, I smiled and put back in my headphones. As I ran, I remembered my conversation, and I thought about how I would be doing it even more in the future, especially when my family comes from America in little under two weeks!

I joined the gym a month and a half ago merely for exercise. I've found it to be much more than that. It's a haven for me away from my home here, even though I love my home and am happy there. It's a time to be by myself and a time for me to meet new people and encounter new experiences. It's a place for me to wear myself out and renew myself at the same time.

Yabancı

Yabancı: the Turkish word for stranger, foreigner, or alien. Usually I'm the one being called "yabancı," but I'm giving a shout out to some "yabancı" myself today, though here I'm using the definition "stranger".

I want to throw out my thanks here: thank you, strangers, who speak to me out of curiosity. Thank you, lady sitting in the park with the sweet, little dog. Thank you, man in the bakery, for letting me taste the freshly baked cookies. Thank you, woman on the elliptical next to me at the gym, who kept me company as I ran. Thank you all for speaking to me, for letting me practice my Turkish, and even for complimenting me on it. Thank you for treating me as a stranger and not as an alien. Though these incidents may go in and out of your mind before you even get home, they stay with me - they help me, they boost my confidence, they remind me of the little kindnesses that can mean so much.

Just when I was getting a bit down on strangers, I have been reminded over the past few days that though I must be wary, I must also be open to the encounters I can have with people everyday in my community that can help me not only with my language skills or my cultural understanding but also with simply connecting with people. So here's a little reminder, wherever you are: unplug your earphones, don't walk too quickly, and do have a stop at the bakery if you're so inclined. You might be surprised at who you meet and how a little encounter can make your day.

Keeping It Real...Adana'da

I am excited to announce to you all that I have officially carried with me to Turkey my clumsiness! Tuesday was probably the pinnacle of my clumsiness, culminating in an epic wipe-out onto gymnasium bleachers with a sweatshirt over my head, resulting in two large bruises on my right arm, which are quite lovely. To my relief, my clumsiness did not seem quite as acute today as I practiced with my school's volleyball team for the first time. And actually, it was the first time I've actually played volleyball for probably nine months or so, and though I did not play spectacularly, or even very well, I managed to get through the practice with no embarrassing incident. I had forgotten how much I really enjoy playing volleyball, and even more than that, how much I enjoy playing on a team. Today, even though everyone was really nice, I felt like an outsider to the team, but I still loved watching the team dynamics. I guess I've found a different kind of team here, that of the other NSLI girls here in my city - we just do our playing in a new country and with a new language, rather than on a court and with a ball!

On Wednesdays and Fridays I end school around noon and head across town to the Gençlik Merkezi (Youth Center) to teach English to a rambunctious group of Turkish boys, ages 16 to 20 or so (with a few timid teenage girls thrown in). I only began this program last week; before that I was going to a Turkish kindergarten instead. The dynamics are definitely different between teaching 5-year-olds and 18-year-olds! And to be certain, I am no expert at teaching English. The past couple of classes all we've done is go over some basic phrases, body parts, introductions, etc. The level of English knowledge varies from person to person, but I think we're getting through to most of them, anyway. It's a good chance for me to practice my Turkish, too. 

School this week is passing as usual. I have been using my time fairly well this week, and especially today, as I have been studying my Turkish. I know this is really nerdy of me, but I really love teaching myself grammar. It's especially rewarding here in comparison to learning it in, say, one of my Spanish or Latin classes back in the U.S., because I have been hearing these constructions spoken, and then I find out the pattern and reasoning behind it, and it all clicks. We've also just implemented a new activity in my Turkish lessons - each week we take a Turkish song and dissect it, finding the meanings to the words and phrases in there, and we try to memorize it. The songs we've done so far are ones that I've been hearing on the radio for awhile, and so it's great to finally know the words to the songs and better understand what they mean (though a lot of times the meanings are weird, even when I do understand them!).

As a final note, if any reader out there has any specific questions about my life in Turkey or comments about the blog, feel free to comment on a post. I'd love any feedback! 

Sunny Days and Mondays

The problem with winter here in Adana is not that it is cold. In fact, I'm not sure the temperatures ever even dropped below freezing. The problem is, in fact, that many Turks here are still obsessive over keeping warm, scolding us with yelps of "hasta olursun! hasta olursun!" - "you'll get sick! you'll get sick!" - every time we leave the house (or even go around the house) without appropriate clothing. Appropriate clothing for them is, to say the least, a little excessive for me. Therefore I am glad that the weather is warming up for a premature, though not unexpected, spring here in Adana. The last few days have been gloriously sunny and just warm enough to ward off too many warnings about impending illnesses. Even last night, when rain poured down and I felt sure today would be wet and gross and cold, I woke up to see the sky perfectly clear and a beautiful morning.

Yesterday, Sunday, we went to another village, this time on the far opposite side of town. We crossed through Gazipaşa (the downtown-ish area), past the Küçük Saat and Buyuk Saat (the Little Clock and Big Clock - landmarks here), and through Eski Adana (Old Adana). Old Adana is still an urban area, but it has a completely different feel to it from the newer area where I live and most of the places that I go. The buildings are lower and older. Street vendors pervade, shouting their wares and prices in loud belts. The women are more covered; my grandmother explained to me as we drove through that many of them have come from more conservative cities farther east, like Diyarbakir.

We continued through the outskirts of Old Adana and opened onto wide open fields - the really old Adana, what it was like fifty or one hundred years ago. I went to this village once before only a few weeks after I'd gotten to Turkey. My grandfather's sister lives there with her family in a house nestled in a tiny village surrounded by field after field of farmland. The house is actually built on top of a barn/storage shed where they keep their tractor. I watched my grandfather and my...what do you call your grandfather's sister? great-aunt maybe?...make içli köfte, which is ground up meat and spices surrounded by a bulgur wheat mixture and rolled up into a ball. They rolled up a bunch and then boiled them. We ate the absolutely delicious köfte with homemade ayran, a salty yogurt drink. Usually I don't like ayran very much, but this stuff was good - probably because it was so fresh. The yogurt they had used to make the ayran came from their very own milk from their very own cows.

Back to the city and to reality today, though. Mondays will be Mondays, even in Turkey, although strangely enough I woke up, got dressed, and walked to the bus stop thinking in was Tuesday (am I going crazy? possibly). School passed as usual, and this evening I went to the spor salonu - the gym near my house that I joined last month. It's great to have a place where I can get some exercise that's so near my house, too - I can easily walk there in 5 minutes or so.

I'm looking forward to my family's visit in March! Am doing some planning of places to visit in Istanbul, Adana, and Kapadokya. Even more importantly, I'm trying to plan what foods they must eat before they go! There really are too many...

Podcast!

So a couple of weeks ago, my friend Charlotte and I came up with an idea over a leisurely Turkish breakfast. "Wouldn't it be great to travel the world and make a podcast about all our wonderful travels?" said Charlotte. "It would," I replied, sighing wistfully at a dream that seemed so far off. And then we thought: why not do it now? Let's make one now, start one now - and so we did! We finished our breakfast and sat down to record our very first podcast.

That part was simple enough - we love to talk, and so we created what was basically a conversation between the two of us about various aspects of our lives here in Turkey. That was the easy part. Per lack of tech-savviness, we had some issues getting it online. Now we have it online, and we would love for anyone interested to have a listen, subscribe, and give us some feedback. We know it's a rough start, but we hope you find it interesting! Any comments or feedback (which we would love!) about the podcast can be sent to our email crpodcast@gmail.com.

Take a look at the link below. Thanks for listening, everybody!

Rebecca and Charlotte Make a Podcast

Toto, We're Not in the City Anymore. (A visit to the Köy and back again)

Yesterday evening when I returned home from my Turkish class, I was called into the living room where my grandparents were sitting on the couch and watching television. I kissed them as usual on the cheeks and sat down beside my grandfather, who was smiling profusely. "Yarın köye gideceğiz!" he told me - "Tomorrow we will go to the village!".

So this afternoon, after a long and leisurely morning of a late breakfast (delicious, as always), shower, and general laziness around the apartment, we (my aunt, grandmother, grandfather and I) set out for the village. We drove first by the tall apartment complexes in the area surrounding my apartment. Then we drove farther out, as the apartments began to thin and turn into smaller houses. The lake came into view - the giant lake that marks the boundary between urban and rural Adana. We crossed the bridge and looked out over the water, which stretched to the horizon in both directions. "Deniz gibi!" exclaimed my grandmother - "It's like the sea!". Indeed it did seem like we were crossing the sea, crossing over into a different world, for across the bridge tumbled out hills and valleys, green rolling fields of barely sprouting wheat, herds of cattle and packs of chickens and hordes of wild dogs that roamed beside and across the dirt, bumpy roads upon which we traveled. The early afternoon sunlight illuminated the colors: the blue of the water, the green of the grass, the bright but fading browns, reds, and yellows of the small houses we passed.

Finally as we rounded a bend, I glimpsed a minaret to the left, peeking out over the trees, and on my right I saw a  small house with several people outside. My grandfather pulled over the car - we had arrived. A man came up to the car to greet us. "Selam aleykum!" called out my grandfather as he got out of the car. This isn't a greeting I hear used often in the city - a phrase that comes from Arabic that means basically "Peace be with you". One woman was perched on a stool by an fire pit, frying chunks of fish in a pan. Everyone was wearing şalvar, pants that the more traditional people, both men and women, wear here. All the women had their heads covered with beautifully colorful, floral scarves. They smiled, greeted us, and kissed us as we walked up and introduced ourselves. They immediately sat us down outside in plastic chairs around a wooden table they had set up and covered with a red cotton tablecloth. A woman brought over a giant platter filled with freshly caught and freshly fried fish, thin tortilla-like bread, tomatoes, onions, lemons, peppers, and a big pitcher of water. We sat at the table and devoured our food, looking around as we ate at the chickens and roosters that bobbed around the table, the cow down the path who would occasionally look up at us, and the little girl who shyly smiled at us from the porch.

I was still confused as to who exactly these people were (all I knew was that they were friends of my grandfather's, and my grandmother and aunt had never met them before) and why exactly we were there, but that is one of those things I've learned to accept here: go with the flow. Accept hospitality. Eat when you're given food. Answer questions when asked, and follow the example of the others. Most importantly, relax. And I did. After our bellies were completely full from the fish, which we ate with our fingers after squeezing lemon on top, we walked up to the porch and washed our hands from a little faucet. Then a smiling woman came up to us and offered "kolonya", which is like a cross between hand sanitizer and its namesake, cologne. We sat back down outside, looking over the view of the grassy fields, hills, and the lake below, easing into the  seasonally uncharacteristic, soporific, warm weather.

And then they served us tea. As I took the first sip of tea out of my curved, glass cup, a sensory overload overtook me. Has anyone seen that movie "French Kiss" with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline? Probably not, but I'll go for it anyway: there is a scene where they are at Kevin Kline's family's home in France, and he shows Meg Ryan a box filled with jars with different scents in them. He has her smell a scent, then have a sip of her wine. With each scent she smells, she tastes something different in the wine. That's sort of how it was for me with my tea - all of a sudden I became aware of the many, many scents I was smelling through the taste of my tea. First I just tasted the tea. No sugar, not strong, not weak, normal tea. On my next sip I tasted the grass, the grass that was growing everywhere around me as far as I could see. Then I tasted the fire, its slowly burning embers roasting only feet away from me. I tasted the the cows - the manure, the mud - I tasted the chickens. I tasted the dust. I tasted the frying fish that still lingered in the air. I tasted the fumes of exhaust from the tractor that started up. I tasted the women who surrounded me and the men that were speaking in a circle apart from us and the little girl who was sitting on the porch. I tasted the air.

I ended up drinking three cups of that tea. By the time I had finished the second one, I had become more aware of where I was and more comfortable with where I was. I was, if not an equal participant in the conversation, at least able to understand and insert a phrase or two when I thought necessary. Now I'm not exactly sure how it came up, but the decision was made, by the laughing and jolly women, that they would take me inside and have me put on şalvar and a headscarf myself. So I went for the first time into the actual house, a small, one story place covered with many rugs, and was taken into a back room, where a woman handed me a pair of floral şalvar. I shed my jeans and donned this pair of what I confirmed to be the most comfortable kind of pants I have ever worn. The woman came back in and selected a pink headscarf for me. She tied it gently around my head, and then she walked me out to the porch for my debut.

As I walked out, all the women let out a roar of genuine and warm-hearted laughter. My aunt snapped photos of me with my camera, whose slick silver exterior seemed so out of place amongst the wood and grass and colorful fabrics. I walked down the front stairs and over to the chickens, who were clucking about on the ground and perching in a tree, and my aunt took another photo of me standing with them in the background, along with the lake and the hills behind them. The man who had greeted us at the car looked up from down a small hill, where he had been working, and exclaimed, "I thought she was a köylü!" - "I thought she was a villager!". I sat down beside the other women, dressed exactly like me (except I was still wearing my Converses) and had my third cup of tea, this time as one of them.

I finished that cup of tea and had a cup of Turkish coffee before my grandfather walked back up and said it was time to go. I walked back up the stairs and into the house and sadly took off my şalvar and headscarf and pulled my jeans back on. I walked out to see the women smile at me, say profuse good-byes, and wave as we pulled away, with promises of another visit. As we drove back through the hills, across the bridge, and back into the city, I marveled at the other world I had just visited. The sun set just as we were crossing the bridge. As dusk settled upon the windows of apartment buildings that were coming into view, as it settled its reflection upon the lake, as it settled over the villagers and the chickens and the cows, I leaned my head against my window, opened my eyes, and went along for the ride.

"Sweet Home Adana" Revisited

So I've been thinking about the title of my blog: Sweet Home Adana. And I've been thinking about when I first came up with said name and how I came up with it. When I created this blog, I was still in the U.S. It was about a week before I left that I decided to go ahead and create the blog, and I was throwing around names with my family, trying to find a somewhat creative yet not too cheesy title. Though this may not have worked (I mean, it is undoubtedly pretty cheesy), it planted an idea in my head that needed time to come to fruition: the idea that Adana would in fact become my home.

Let me pause here to look back upon what I knew of the city of Adana then, in the time before coming here. What I knew came primarily from the Wikipedia page and my guidebook, whose one brief page highlighting its limited tourist attractions is a lot better than the description from my friend Charlotte's guidebook, which labeled Adana a "brash, commercial city" through which one should only pass for transportation if absolutely necessary. How could I sit there back in August and create a blog that called this city, which I had only seen through words and websites, my home?

Now nearly six months (half a year!) into living in Adana, it's time to reevaluate how I feel in relation to the word "home", which I so casually donned upon the title of this blog. Now I have become so comfortable in this city, or at least in the parts in which I live and through which pass, that it is difficult to reconcile the two different ideas I have of the city. One is the vision I created out of sentence fragments and online photos last April, ten months ago, when I first received my acceptance letter from NSLI-Y, and it gave me the name: Adana. Adana. Adana? Adana? How even to pronounce it?! I had never heard of it before. An idea swirled around in my mind. An exotic city, dusty and hot, with a middle eastern vibe. It was an Adana that I more felt than really understood and put words to. It was something in the name, as I let it roll over my tongue, tracing the options of the three simple syllables. The different ways to pronounce the word led me to believe that there were different ways the city could be, as if it were not truly determined until I got there, until I arrived there and called it home.

My second idea of the city, how I see it now? I regret to say that after this buildup, after explaining my previous idea of the city, I won't be able to truly explain until I leave this city. For now, though, it's my home, because my home is where I am.

Mevlana/Whirling Dervishes

These are photos I took while visiting the Mevlana, better known as the Whirling Dervishes, in Konya back in late December. I will post more describing them in better detail, but the pictures show a lot of what we saw - men wearing these big white dresses and little red caps who can spin for up to 20 or 30 minutes at a time, never erring from their paths, never getting dizzy, and always spinning perfectly harmoniously. It's a beautiful sight to see that pictures can't really capture. Anyone who is my Facebook friend should take a look at the video I posted awhile ago of them!

Adana's Merkez Camii

These are photos I took while visiting the Merkez Camii (Central Mosque) here in Adana. Though it is newly built (late '80s, I believe), it is esquisitely beautiful and absolutely gigantic. It is one of Adana's best known landmarks, and it's surrounded by a huge and beautiful park. To one side of it is the Taşköprü, or Stone Bridge, which is the oldest bridge still used in the world today.

To go into the mosque, everyone takes off their shoes (or covers them with special plastic, disposable shoe covers in the winter), and women must cover their heads with a scarf. This is the only mosque in the city that tourists really go to; in any other mosque (and there are a lot) it would be strange for tourists to enter, as they are usually filled with old men, especially at prayer times.

Every day, five times a day, the call to prayer sounds out from the minarets of every mosque. I've grown quite fond of the sound. In smaller towns, many shops close at prayer time, though here in Adana, at least in the areas I frequent, that doesn't appear to happen.

Starting Back!

The first day of Lent is as good a day as any to begin something new...therefore I begin blogging again, and hopefully this time it will stick (inşallah!). I am going to approach my blog from a different point of view, which should make it easier for me to motivate myself to write; I'll treat it almost as an online journal of whatever I feel like putting up, without fretting too much about how my readers find it (sorry!) or editing it a lot. This should make it easier for me to post more often, so I'll try it!

I returned yesterday from my third trip to Cappadocia. I don't know how it ends up that I have been there so many times already, but I am not complaining. What an interesting area! Each time I have been I have seen different things. This trip was for an AFS camp, so I spent most of my time actually in the hotel we were staying at (which was 5 stars and quite wonderful) having sessions with the other AFS girls and the volunteers who planned everything. That was fine, though, because the sessions were really great; we talked about a lot of different subjects revolving around our experiences here: language, culture, host family, etc. It was a good chance to evaluate my progress so far and see what I need to work on throughout my last 4 1/2 months here in Turkey.

Speaking of how much time I have left...it seems like so little! Especially when I think that my hardest months have already passed, the months of adjustment to the language and culture and my host family. Now I am at a decent level of Turkish, have a thorough understanding of Turkish culture, and have a great relationship with my host family. Plus, in a month my real family will be here to visit! I can't wait for that!

Tomorrow I go back to school after almost a month of being away (2 weeks of winter break and a week and a half for this AFS camp). As I pulled out my uniform plaid skirt and polo earlier this evening, the same "back-to-school" anxiety hit me as it always has, ever since first grade. I do, however, feel renewed after this break, like I will be ready to go back and understand more, push myself more, and hopefully bond with my schoolmates better.

I am going to try to post some pictures on this blog tomorrow night! I'm also going to put them on Facebook, so if you are my Facebook friend, feel free to browse through the album that I will (potentially) put up tomorrow night.