Alright, nothing really worth talking about has happened lately, aside from the trip to Kapadokya, but I've already been there and we didn't do much that I didn't do last summer. The salt lake was full on the way, which was different. We walked out a little peninsula thing and I got water on my shoes, and I didn't wash it off fast enough so it ate through the leather - not enough to make them unwearable, but it's definitely not a good thing. We did go to "Turkish night" where we danced and watched traditional dances and stuff. Lots of stuff was in caves, like last summer. I dunno, I don't really want to replay everything. Underground cities, fairy towers, cave churches, pottery, carpets, onyx, Haci Bektash, blah blah, all the touristy things. 

This weekend we're going to Ephesus - I'm leaving tonight, and coming back Monday night/Tuesday morning. We kinda made our director mad by planning on skipping a lecture. I don't really care. It's one lecture. I'm excited!

I guess I'll post something I wrote last night while I should have been sleeping. I realized I haven't really written in years, and doing this felt good. Yay. Okay, here you go!

Yesterday I found myself in an almost involuntary search for a bathing suit. I spent an hour and a half looking all over in the small part I know of Ankara, the capitol city of a predominantly Muslim (although progressive) country, for the one thing I am probably least likely to find. The search was productive, although I ended up still swimsuit-less in the end. I realized two things while I was out, digging my hands deep into my pockets to fight the oncoming cold front.

The first - and this is the reason for my search - was that I really miss swimming. Lately, my substitute has been the gym, with my IPod to combat the monotony of the machines. Before that, in Austin, I ran. Running almost satisfies me sometimes, but the jarring of my feet against the pavement, the passing cars, and the ever-present thought of my route never really allow me to think. I miss the rare grace I have when I swim -- the feeling of my hands slicing the surface, the bubbling of water across my ears, my muscles knotting against each other and pulling against the water, the propulsion I get from so little work, it seems. Its not even something I'm really proud of; pride in something implies effort to master it. It's just something that feels right. 

When I'm moving through the water, I can think with lucidity. A little burst of adrenaline hits when I replay a conversation in which I misspoke or misunderstood, my arms pull harder against the water, I kick off a little quicker from the wall. I smile at a funny phrase or the memory of a happy moment, and taste cold chlorine through my teeth. In the water, God speaks and I truly listen. Sometimes we fight, but in the water it's the fight of a daughter against her loving father, not of a lonely girl against some invisible idea of a God. Things become as clear as what I'm gliding through. 

The second realization was that some of my most meaningful moments in Turkish have been when I was alone. I love my friends and family here, don't misunderstand. We have some funny moments and some awe-inspiring ones, and probably the times when I am happiest are spent with them. But as I stood in the grand courtyard of Kocatepe Mosque, in this country whose language still feels like molasses in my mouth, a few drops of rain began to fall on my face. The setting sun still shone, unobscured by the black rain clouds on the horizon - my favorite kind of weather. I stood, despite the beginning rain, just staring at the two giants - the mosque and the thunderstorm - and was blown away by the world's vastness. When I'm around people, I focus on them, and I miss experiences like this. I guess both ways I'm gaining something. Why worry about how to better spend my time, when I've got all my life to both connect with people and to be alone? 

Sometimes while I've been here, I feel like I've been sliding backwards, wiping out the progress I've made in the last year. But I realized that no matter what I'm doing, I'm learning. When I'm walking alone through the streets of Turkey, comforting a hurting soul or being comforted, climbing a mountain, in a cave, on the minibus, in a plane, talking to an old friend, laughing, planning, remembering, I'm still learning, working my way through things. So maybe in order to move forwards, I have to fall back. 

So, second post. I've been wanting to do this one for a while. 

Things I miss about America:

Friends/family

Hot water from the tap

Drinkable water from the tap

Sushi

Cajun food

Mexican food

My comfy bed

Bathtubs, although I hardly ever take baths

Effortless communication with people I need things from

It NOT taking an hour to get anywhere

Being able to go see a good movie at the cinema easily

Large bodies of water inside/right next to the city

The abundance of trees

Things I love about Turkey, and will miss when I go home:

EVERYTHING ELSE, especially

My host family

Visne suyu/recel

ekmek

baklava

that sesame dessert my family buys me cuz they know I love it

hearing the language every day

the niceness of the people in general

wearing slippers at home

cay

making/hearing funny language mistakes

the ability to go to the hamam

traveling almost every weekend

my little room

cheap, abundant fruit

...and plenty of other things that I can't think of right now.

Ahh, sorry it's been a while, it's kinda been busy/I've been lazy. 

So, last weekend Dan, Sina, Claire, Austin, and I went to Amasra, which is this little city on the Black Sea. It was sooo beautiful, and so nice to see the sea again after Ankara. I miss large bodies of water! Anyway, we were given a lot of advice of what to do while we were there, but the piece we heard the most was "eat fish!" 

We decided to go on Wednesday, got our tickets on Thursday, and left on Friday. We took the bus, and instead of it taking us straight to Amasra like we thought, it dropped us off in this little town thirty minutes away from Amasra, and then we had to take a series of dolmuses to the town itself at 12:30 in the morning. It was interesting. We found one of the pansiyons I had researched and talked the guy down from 25 YTL to 20 a night. The pansiyon was so cute - very brightly colored, and from the girls' room we had a view of the sea. It was also attached to a patisserie - so we had really good baklava both days. Also, it was about 20 feet from a mosque. I remember being woken up by the muezzin before dawn. 

The next morning we woke up at 7:30 to go explore. The town is deserted at this time of the year, so we had it all to ourselves, but we also got stared at a lot. We met a woman who spoke no English but almost fluent German, and Sina just happens to be German and so she got us breakfast. We explored the kale area, climbed things we probably shouldn't have climbed, and went into holes we probably shouldn't have gone into. No one got hurt, though, so it's all good. Then, Claire decided she really wanted to climb the island that half of the city is built on. So we climbed to the top of the cliff and played around and relaxed for a while. Then we played around/bouldered/went swimming in the Black Sea, which is actually unpleasantly cold this time of year, and probably always. Then, lunch time! We had mezgit - probably the most amazing fish I've ever had. They were small and fried and we ate them whole, because the crispy outside made you not notice the bones. Then we walked around some more, just basically enjoying the relaxed feel of the place, and the sea, and the baklava. Then, some narghile, manti, gozleme, a beer, some exchanging of life stories and further bonding, and sleep. 

We had been told that we would get bored in Amasra and so we should go visit Safranbolu. So, the next morning we hopped on a "bus" - a mini-dolmus, really - for the 1 1/2 hour ride to Safranbolu. This town is known for its well preserved Ottoman architecture, and the saffron which gives the city its name. And that's pretty much all it was. We walked around, visited the pazar, did some shopping, had some cay, and then we were like, okay, not much to do here. It was really cute and I'm glad we went, and I bought some cool stuff at the pazar, but seriously, I think you'd get bored more easily in Safranbolu than in Amasra. So, we got on the bus back home. 

So, that was my weekend, and this week has mostly just been school and the gym and relaxing with my family, until last night. We went to If - this music venue - to see this clarinet player that Claire said was amazing and she'd heard in the states. He was amazing, and it was really fun, but the concert started at 12:30 and didn't end til 3:15, so we crashed at Austin's host family's house (they were SO nice), and then today I was really tired for the 7 HOURS OF CLASS that makes up my Thursdays. Then I took a one hour nap that lasted for 5 hours, and now I'm up, and my sleep schedule is probably screwed again for a while. 

Tomorrow, we leave for KAPADOKYA! My favorite place ever. We're not staying in a cave hotel, so I'm a little bummed about that. But I really want to go back, so maybe next time. Yay! Okay done!

Alright

Tonight was fun. The electricity goes off at twelve, while Gozde is in the shower. So the house goes dark and the TV goes off and both me and my host mom start laughing and asking Gozde if she's alright, who comes out all wet with soap still in her hair. We try to flip the breakers, using my computer as a flashlight, since they don't have one and mine's in my suitcase somewhere. Flipping the breakers doesn't do anything, so they decide it's something to do with some device on the wall out in the hall. We call the neighbors, because one of them might know what to do. She brings some copper wire, and fiddles around with the little device, while I dance around in the hallway so the motion detecting lights don't go off. But something doesn't reach, so they ask me if I have any American copper money. I go to my suitcase and take out a penny, the neighbor plops the penny into the device, then screws the device back into the wall, we flip the breakers, and Let There Be Light!

Moral: Always keep your laptop charged, and a penny on hand. Oh, and don't be afraid to dance even when there's no music. 

So, mostly culturally uneventful week, except two things, really. 

First, yesterday, Claire, Teresa, John, Austin, Dan and I went to a hamam. We were given directions by our friends who had been there last week, and told to be prepared to get naked. The directions were as good as they could be considering the hamam was on a "shady" back street in Ulus, the old, awesome but confusing part of town. Finally, after being stared at a lot and asking for two or three sets of directions, we found it. It wasn't a touristy hamam, so the boys and girls went our separate ways. We went in to the outer room where we stood around looking confused for a while before they directed us to our changing room, and then gave us these sweet wooden geisha sandals and directed into the inside part. Inside everything was grey marble, with faucets pouring into marble basins for us to do some preliminary washing. The ceiling was vaulted with domes that had maybe eight or ten skylights shaped like six- or seven-pointed stars - so beautiful. At some of the basins were other women, some our age and size but most magnificently large, mostly naked women - they were beautiful in such a natural way. They reminded me of the little mother goddess statues at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. 

Then, we hung out in the sauna for a little while before the woman called for us. She scrubbed so much with this exfoliating glove that the top layer of my skin pilled up and formed little rolls. Then, a quick massage and rinsing and soap and I was done. Afterwards, my skin was so smooth that when I sat down and tried to rest my elbows on my knees, they kept sliding off. Afterwards, we were all so relaxed that we all hardly talked while eating lunch - at a kebap place called Kebabistan. 

Then, today I went to church with Joseph and John. On the way in, they swiped us with metal detectors - not something I'm used to when going to a church. After that though, everything was so familiar, I almost forgot I was in Turkey - except that we sang some of the songs in Turkish, and some in a mix of Turkish and English. Prayer was in all different languages - Turkish, Persian, English, Korean... So cool! Kids were running around everywhere, and nowhere have I seen so many gorgeous children in one place. I went out to lunch with the lady who runs the child care, and hung out with her four-year-old daughter, who kept asking if I was going to come to her house afterwards :).  The woman said if I was going to be here in a few weekends, she'd love to have some help. In the end, I'm going to be helping out with the kids on a substitute basis when I'm in town. So quick!

Anyway, now I'm home and we're gonna go eat pudding at the neighbors in a minute. I was supposed to hang out with Ufuk and Co. tonight, but Ufuk woke up with a cold she caught from little Hande, so that's put off until later. I hope she feels better.  Today was a gross day - being sick right now would really suck. 

One thing I'm kinda bummed about is that my Turkish hasn't gotten that much better in the last week, partially because we haven't learned anything in class. Most of it's my fault, though. I haven't really been trying. 

Well, I think I'm going to Adana this weekend, so more after that probably!