So I'm finally relaxing after a whirlwind of a weekend, only to pick right back up for another busy week. Life in Ankara is surprisingly full.
Thursday my friend Cat arrived in town, for Fulbright Thanksgiving later in the weekend, so I headed over to where she was staying and had a little Seker Bayram adventurers' reunion with her and Corey to start off the weekend. Friday, I got up in time for my Turkish lesson before heading to the 5M Migros to stock up on Thanksgiving ingredients, attempt to find vanilla extract (fruitless, there is apparently no vanilla extract in Turkey), and buy an immersion blender for Cat. I got back in time to get all gussied up for the St. Andrews Ball, put on by the British Embassy.
The St. Andrews Ball was an interesting experience. It was much smaller than the Marine Corps Ball, but was held at the same location, the Swisshotel. I got there Friday night to find media and television crews everywhere. Apparently, I walked in right behind the Fenerbahce football team. They were still in the lobby when I came in. For my American readers, this is roughly equivalent to going to a hotel in New England that the Patriots just checked into (or, if you're a Doffing, the Twins, in Boston ;) ). I got a few photos, but really don't know which player is which. It was exciting though. I met up with Cat, Corey, and Corey's boyfriend in the lobby, and we headed down to the ballroom and chatted for a bit with the rest of our tablemates. I knew just over half of the folks at our table, but everyrone was really nice, and I ended up sitting next to a New Zealander that I'd had dinner with before and a Japanese diplomat who spoke fluent Turkish and not-so-fluent English, and who I ended up spending most of the meal chatting with in Turkish. I was able to hold my own in discussing why Turkey shouldn't join the EU, and Turkish cinema, and my research, but my brain hurt afterward.
The ball was a celebration of Scotland, so everything was Scottish. Every table had a bottle of Scottish whiskey on it. The meal started out with a ceremonial cutting of the haggis. The owner of my favorite Ankaran Indian restaurant got up and gave a speech in a fantastic Scottish brogue (I understood one word, "knife") before flourishing a huge knife and spearing the haggis. It was pretty fun. We were then served haggis, which was interesting and actually not half bad. Dinner was not so Scottish: prime rib and other normal and delicious food. The menu was entirely in Scottish though, so I'm not sure exactly what all else we had.
The after-dinner entertainment was entirely Scottish dancing: highland social dances, reels and the like. It started out kind of interesting, and I did dance with my Japanese diplomat friend, but after awhile it got to be a little much: every song had a new dance that had to be taught to everyone, and we kept waiting for a DJ to come in, or for some more contemporary dancing. In the end, we left I think just before midnight and headed over to a French friend of Corey's' place. I got in pretty late, and was pretty exhausted the next morning when I had to get up to let in my houseguests.
Saturday morning, bright and early at 9:30, Tracey, Deirdre, and Alissa arrived at my place from the otogar. These 3 are Fulbright English teaching assistants out towards the coast in the West, and had taken an overnight bus from Izmir to be in Ankara for Fulbright Thanksgiving, which was later that day. Luckily for me, they were also exhausted, so we all went back to sleep until a much more decent hour. I finally had to get up to get started making my dishes for Fulbright Thanksgiving: I was bringing mashed potatoes, hummus, and wild rice (so, an absurd amount of starch). My houseguests brought an apple pie with them from Izmir and make a chocolate pie at my place, before we all headed over to Corey's. There was a really great mix of people at Corey's: all but two of the Ankara Fulbrighters, and my 3 houseguests and Cat; I think we were 15 altogether. One of the Ankarali Fulbrighters brought her 4-year-old daughter, who was absolutely adorable and precocious. Given the age range of the Fulbrighters (we go up to at least the mid-60s), it felt like we had a whole family spread there.
Fulbright Thanksgiving was delicious. We were able to get a turkey from the US Embassy (they fly them in for the Embassy community, so it was a Butterball and everything), and figured out how to make it, even though I think only one of us had ever made one before. Everyone brought a dish or several, so we ended up with broccoli-cheddar-bacon salad (Joan hoarded bacon bits from the States just for it), carrot-lentil salad, cacik, hummus, vegetable spreads, stuffing, gravy, homemade breads, 3 kinds of potatoes, wild rice, and I think more that I can't remember. It was oh so very American. After the dinner, we sat around in food comas and caught up on everyone's life and projects, and played a little Turkish Scrabble (the rules are a little different: you have to play with verb stems instead of the whole verb, and plurals aren't allowed, nor are any suffixes). Once we'd recovered from dinner a bit, we had dessert, with the pies, several kinds of cookies, and a wonderful, wonderful fruit salad (pomegranates are a good good thing) before settling down for more chatting and a nice game of UNO (it's so much easier to play when the 4-year-old will tell the whole table what cards she can see in peoples' hands...). It was just such a great day, and so nice to have that familiar Thanksgiving experience. I hadn't seen some of the Fulbrighters since orientation, so it was great to catch up, and we all got to do a little bragging and venting about living in Turkey.
After those few crazy days, I've taken it easy so far today. My houseguests left this morning, and now I've got to make and get through my to-do list before heading out for Thanksgiving part II, ex-Bay State Road edition.
Before I go, I thought I'd leave you all with this: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/domestic/10419495.asp?scr=1
which I find really amusing. It's even more amusing when you realize that a second court order has been enacted to ban YouTube, which does absolutely nothing more than the first one and thus is entirely superfluous. I love this crazy country...
kib,
-R
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Some Nemrut Pics
These are the statues on the West face of Nemrut Dagi, before sunset
Sunset from Nemrut Dagi. I don't remember the last time I was so cold. It was gorgeous, though.
Me and one of the statues on the East side
Real life, Ankara-style
My last few posts have been primarily about my Seker Bayram trip, but now that I've finally got all my photos of that online, I figured at this point I'll just post more detailed captions on Flickr and move on here to more recent events. Finally.
Life just gets busier and busier here. I'm currently taking one class at ODTU, and have two different Turkish tutors. Last week, I started volunteering as a substitute English teacher for refugees through the Ankara Refugee Support Group and Meryem Ana, the church at the Vatican Embassy; those classes are twice a week. My first day there was quite a fun challenge; the refugees speak pretty much no Turkish, and I speak neither Arabic nor Farsi, so I got to put my acting skills, such as they are, to good practice. I'm not sure how often I'll actually have the opportunity to teach, but I hope to be able to return relatively often.
Last weekend was pretty darn busy for me as well. On Friday, I had my Turkish lesson (luckily, the closer one, not the 1.5-hours-away one), and then skedaddled over to Ulus to go to a hamam with 3 of my fellow Fulbrighters. It was fantastic; we went to Tarihi Merkez Hamami, which is an 18th century hamam and still very much a neighborhood institution. It was also, compared to Istanbul hamams, wonderfully cheap: 20 lira for the works, compared to up to 60 in Istanbul's main hamams. We got scrubbed within an inch of our lives and then wandered back to Cankaya, where we met up with a few more Fulbrighters for dinner. On Saturday, I met up with my friend Jen for lunch before we got mani/pedis, which we'd won at the ARIT open house. When we got to the salon for our 1pm appointment, we were told that the person who did the mani/pedis on our certificates wasn't in til 4. So we left, and I ran a few errands, before meeting back up at 4. We didn't get out of the salon until after 6, which was kind of an issue, as we were both going to the Marine Corps Ball that night, which started at 6:30. After a mad scramble back home, into my dress, into makeup/accessories, and up to the Swisshotel, I arrived fashionably late just after 7, just in time for the presentation of colors and the speeches. The ball was really fun; a wide section of the diplomatic community was there, as well as 4 or 5 of us Fulbrighters, and a sizeable contingent from the USO (including the Ying Yang Twins, which was kind of cool), who were on their way through Ankara on a whirlwind tour. After the speeches, they served dinner, which was followed by a live band and later a DJ. It was a great chance to catch up with folks I don't see as often as I should (for all we live in the same city...), and I kept running into people I knew (for a city of 5 million people, Ankara is really a small town, where everybody knows everybody). After dancing with friends and other folks, I cut out just after midnight, a la Cinderella. This weekend, I've got another ball to go to, this one hosted by the Brits, which should also be a lot of fun, as Fulbrighters from out of town are in Ankara for the weekend and coming along.
Speaking of this coming weekend, it looks to be fun and a half: we're celebrating Fulbright Thanksgiving this Saturday, with most of the out-of-town Fulbrighters coming in for the weekend. We have a real turkey (surprisingly less than easy to find in a country with the same name), cranberry sauce, and are potlucking everything else. Most of the outlying Fulbrighters I've not seen since orientation, so it'll be great to catch up on everything.
Other than that, life continues to be steadily busy, and I continue to learn more and more Turkish, and more about Turkish foreign policy every day. Next week, I'll be taking off for Thanksgiving for a little ex-RA expat reunion, Madrid-style. Stay tuned for pics.
kib,
-R
Life just gets busier and busier here. I'm currently taking one class at ODTU, and have two different Turkish tutors. Last week, I started volunteering as a substitute English teacher for refugees through the Ankara Refugee Support Group and Meryem Ana, the church at the Vatican Embassy; those classes are twice a week. My first day there was quite a fun challenge; the refugees speak pretty much no Turkish, and I speak neither Arabic nor Farsi, so I got to put my acting skills, such as they are, to good practice. I'm not sure how often I'll actually have the opportunity to teach, but I hope to be able to return relatively often.
Last weekend was pretty darn busy for me as well. On Friday, I had my Turkish lesson (luckily, the closer one, not the 1.5-hours-away one), and then skedaddled over to Ulus to go to a hamam with 3 of my fellow Fulbrighters. It was fantastic; we went to Tarihi Merkez Hamami, which is an 18th century hamam and still very much a neighborhood institution. It was also, compared to Istanbul hamams, wonderfully cheap: 20 lira for the works, compared to up to 60 in Istanbul's main hamams. We got scrubbed within an inch of our lives and then wandered back to Cankaya, where we met up with a few more Fulbrighters for dinner. On Saturday, I met up with my friend Jen for lunch before we got mani/pedis, which we'd won at the ARIT open house. When we got to the salon for our 1pm appointment, we were told that the person who did the mani/pedis on our certificates wasn't in til 4. So we left, and I ran a few errands, before meeting back up at 4. We didn't get out of the salon until after 6, which was kind of an issue, as we were both going to the Marine Corps Ball that night, which started at 6:30. After a mad scramble back home, into my dress, into makeup/accessories, and up to the Swisshotel, I arrived fashionably late just after 7, just in time for the presentation of colors and the speeches. The ball was really fun; a wide section of the diplomatic community was there, as well as 4 or 5 of us Fulbrighters, and a sizeable contingent from the USO (including the Ying Yang Twins, which was kind of cool), who were on their way through Ankara on a whirlwind tour. After the speeches, they served dinner, which was followed by a live band and later a DJ. It was a great chance to catch up with folks I don't see as often as I should (for all we live in the same city...), and I kept running into people I knew (for a city of 5 million people, Ankara is really a small town, where everybody knows everybody). After dancing with friends and other folks, I cut out just after midnight, a la Cinderella. This weekend, I've got another ball to go to, this one hosted by the Brits, which should also be a lot of fun, as Fulbrighters from out of town are in Ankara for the weekend and coming along.
Speaking of this coming weekend, it looks to be fun and a half: we're celebrating Fulbright Thanksgiving this Saturday, with most of the out-of-town Fulbrighters coming in for the weekend. We have a real turkey (surprisingly less than easy to find in a country with the same name), cranberry sauce, and are potlucking everything else. Most of the outlying Fulbrighters I've not seen since orientation, so it'll be great to catch up on everything.
Other than that, life continues to be steadily busy, and I continue to learn more and more Turkish, and more about Turkish foreign policy every day. Next week, I'll be taking off for Thanksgiving for a little ex-RA expat reunion, Madrid-style. Stay tuned for pics.
kib,
-R
Saturday, November 08, 2008
The Rest of Bayram: Sanliurfa
In my quest to finally get up-to-date on this so I can write more on current happenings in my Ankaran life, I'm going to try and get the rest of my Bayram trip posted all at once here...
We got into Sanliurfa (also known as just plain Urfa) after dark on Tuesday night of the Seker Bayram holiday. We grabbed a taxi to take from the bus station to our hotel (we'd called ahead and reserved a room from Diyarbakir; one of the perks of knowing decent amounts of Turkish).
When we got in the cab, we immediately noticed that it had no meter. The driver was attempting to leave the parking lot of the bus station when we asked him how much it was going to be to take us to our hotel; it’s a good thing we asked, because he quoted us 10 lira, for a trip that we knew had to be much cheaper. When we told him that there was absolutely no way we ere going to pay that, he tried to argue that we were getting a really cheap rate, and tried to drive off with us in the cab, at which point I opened my door to keep us at the bus station til our money situation was resolved. We finally all agreed on 5 lira, which was still too much but at least not exorbitant. The cab was sketchy as heck, too; one of my travel companions was more than a little freaked out by the whole situation, but we got to our hotel with no additional fuss. When we got there and checked in, it was clear we were getting out of The East: the front desk had a wireless router, had we schlepped our laptops along we could’ve had wireless internet. Next time...
Our hotel was pretty nice; our room had an enclosed balcony and breakfast was included in the price. In the morning, we had bread, olives, tomatoes, and cheese in the ambitiously air-conditioned breakfast room before setting out to the tourist center of Urfa. Urfa is really handy for tourists in that pretty much everything one would want to see in the city abuts one central park/public space. It’s brilliant, as you can see everything, and you know where absolutely everything is. It also works well for Urfa’s guide program: the city has a program set up where high school students interested in careers in the tourism industry guide visitors around for free, to practice their English (or other foreign language of choice) and their tourist demeanor. Longtime readers of this blog might remember Le Xuan and my adventures with our incredibly overeager tour guide, Cebrail, last time I was in Urfa. Luckily, we must have looked like we knew what we were doing this time, as we attracted no would-be guides (or perhaps they were all at home for Bayram, but either way it worked out great for us). We got to the complex of mosques that mostly mark major events in the life of Abraham (he was born/lived in the city), and explored/took pictures for a bit. After a half hour or so, Corey and I left Cat to meticulously photograph everything interesting and headed downtown to find a travel agency for our Nemrut plans. We’d both been through Urfa before, so this ended up working out great. We set off through the (largely closed) bazaar, and ended up taking an unexpected scenic route through a really old neighborhood on our way back to the city center. Once we got to the main business street, we found that the tour company we’d hoped to use was closed for the holiday. We stopped by another agency, which catered predominantly to Turks, and were a bit discouraged to hear that they only had a tour planned that Friday or Saturday for Nemrut (in order to get over to Antep, and then back to Ankara on time, we pretty much had to go up Nemrut that day, Wednesday, or the next). With the promise of a phone call to see what our options would be for getting a tour organized for the next day, we headed out and decided to stop by our hotel to see if they could help us find an open tour operator. They luckily had the cell phone number of the company we’d originally tried to stop by, and the owner of the company headed straight over to our hotel to meet us. We had a good long chat over the logistics and options of doing a tour to Nemrut, debating back and forth over whether to see both the sunrise and the sunset, or one or the other, whether we could squeeze into a car, or whether he thought he could find more people and make a minibus a better idea (2 of our friends from Gaziantep were joining us in Urfa for the Nemrut part of our trip, making us 5, which would have been a squeeze in a car with a driver). We ended up bargaining down the price and deciding on the two-day trip option, leaving the next morning, seeing both sunset and sunrise on the mountain, and the being dropped off in Adiyaman the next day to catch a bus to Gaziantep.
After settling all the details of our Nemrut tour, Corey and I met up with Alexandra and Erin, the English Teaching Assistant and English Language Fellow living in Gaziantep. We all met up with Cat for lunch at Halil Ibrahim Sofrasi. We’d been at a restaurant of the same name in Van and it was amazing, so we were hoping for the same experience in Sanliurfa. It wasn’t quite as fabulous, but it did have great patlican kebap and overlooked the main tourist park area. After lunch, we strolled through one of the mosques and around the sacred carp stream before heading up to the fortress (I’ve explained what the various parts of Sanliurfa’s mosques and such are in my posts about Sanliurfa 3 years ago, if you’re interested, check out my April entries from 2006). We spent the afternoon on the fortress, strolling, chatting, and taking some really fun photos. While we were on the fortress, we met a teacher who had been a Fulbright Teacher Exchange participant last year; she taught science in the Bronx, but is back in Istanbul this year teaching. She and two of her friends were also on vacation in Sanliurfa, and thinking of going up Nemrut the next day. After chatting with the 3 of them for a bit, we climbed down from the citadel and struck off to find dinner. Sanliurfa is known for its “Turkish Night” dinners, in restaurants in old Ottoman mansions. We headed to one, only to find it completely booked for the night. Luckily, with our mad Turkish skillz we were able to talk to the host, and he called around to other restaurants, found one with open places, and had them send a guy over to bring us to the right place. Bizarrely, we bumped into Juliya (the former Fulbright teacher) and her friends, and had dinner with them. Dinner was really good; they had a set menu, with 2 different soups, mezes, and a communal kebap platter with chicken, kofte, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. The real fun part, though, was the music: they had a traditional Ottoman/Turkish band, which played folk songs for literally hours. There was a Turkish package tour group there, and they all got up and danced around the dinner tables, more enthusiastically than skillfully. I got some video shots of the music and dancing, which are mostly up on Flickr. After a bit more dancing, we headed back to our hotel, because we had to be up eeeearly for our trip up Nemrut.
And, as this is already ridiculously long, I think I’ll leave Nemrut to another post. Photos of Sanliurfa are finally up on my Flickr account though!
-R
We got into Sanliurfa (also known as just plain Urfa) after dark on Tuesday night of the Seker Bayram holiday. We grabbed a taxi to take from the bus station to our hotel (we'd called ahead and reserved a room from Diyarbakir; one of the perks of knowing decent amounts of Turkish).
When we got in the cab, we immediately noticed that it had no meter. The driver was attempting to leave the parking lot of the bus station when we asked him how much it was going to be to take us to our hotel; it’s a good thing we asked, because he quoted us 10 lira, for a trip that we knew had to be much cheaper. When we told him that there was absolutely no way we ere going to pay that, he tried to argue that we were getting a really cheap rate, and tried to drive off with us in the cab, at which point I opened my door to keep us at the bus station til our money situation was resolved. We finally all agreed on 5 lira, which was still too much but at least not exorbitant. The cab was sketchy as heck, too; one of my travel companions was more than a little freaked out by the whole situation, but we got to our hotel with no additional fuss. When we got there and checked in, it was clear we were getting out of The East: the front desk had a wireless router, had we schlepped our laptops along we could’ve had wireless internet. Next time...
Our hotel was pretty nice; our room had an enclosed balcony and breakfast was included in the price. In the morning, we had bread, olives, tomatoes, and cheese in the ambitiously air-conditioned breakfast room before setting out to the tourist center of Urfa. Urfa is really handy for tourists in that pretty much everything one would want to see in the city abuts one central park/public space. It’s brilliant, as you can see everything, and you know where absolutely everything is. It also works well for Urfa’s guide program: the city has a program set up where high school students interested in careers in the tourism industry guide visitors around for free, to practice their English (or other foreign language of choice) and their tourist demeanor. Longtime readers of this blog might remember Le Xuan and my adventures with our incredibly overeager tour guide, Cebrail, last time I was in Urfa. Luckily, we must have looked like we knew what we were doing this time, as we attracted no would-be guides (or perhaps they were all at home for Bayram, but either way it worked out great for us). We got to the complex of mosques that mostly mark major events in the life of Abraham (he was born/lived in the city), and explored/took pictures for a bit. After a half hour or so, Corey and I left Cat to meticulously photograph everything interesting and headed downtown to find a travel agency for our Nemrut plans. We’d both been through Urfa before, so this ended up working out great. We set off through the (largely closed) bazaar, and ended up taking an unexpected scenic route through a really old neighborhood on our way back to the city center. Once we got to the main business street, we found that the tour company we’d hoped to use was closed for the holiday. We stopped by another agency, which catered predominantly to Turks, and were a bit discouraged to hear that they only had a tour planned that Friday or Saturday for Nemrut (in order to get over to Antep, and then back to Ankara on time, we pretty much had to go up Nemrut that day, Wednesday, or the next). With the promise of a phone call to see what our options would be for getting a tour organized for the next day, we headed out and decided to stop by our hotel to see if they could help us find an open tour operator. They luckily had the cell phone number of the company we’d originally tried to stop by, and the owner of the company headed straight over to our hotel to meet us. We had a good long chat over the logistics and options of doing a tour to Nemrut, debating back and forth over whether to see both the sunrise and the sunset, or one or the other, whether we could squeeze into a car, or whether he thought he could find more people and make a minibus a better idea (2 of our friends from Gaziantep were joining us in Urfa for the Nemrut part of our trip, making us 5, which would have been a squeeze in a car with a driver). We ended up bargaining down the price and deciding on the two-day trip option, leaving the next morning, seeing both sunset and sunrise on the mountain, and the being dropped off in Adiyaman the next day to catch a bus to Gaziantep.
After settling all the details of our Nemrut tour, Corey and I met up with Alexandra and Erin, the English Teaching Assistant and English Language Fellow living in Gaziantep. We all met up with Cat for lunch at Halil Ibrahim Sofrasi. We’d been at a restaurant of the same name in Van and it was amazing, so we were hoping for the same experience in Sanliurfa. It wasn’t quite as fabulous, but it did have great patlican kebap and overlooked the main tourist park area. After lunch, we strolled through one of the mosques and around the sacred carp stream before heading up to the fortress (I’ve explained what the various parts of Sanliurfa’s mosques and such are in my posts about Sanliurfa 3 years ago, if you’re interested, check out my April entries from 2006). We spent the afternoon on the fortress, strolling, chatting, and taking some really fun photos. While we were on the fortress, we met a teacher who had been a Fulbright Teacher Exchange participant last year; she taught science in the Bronx, but is back in Istanbul this year teaching. She and two of her friends were also on vacation in Sanliurfa, and thinking of going up Nemrut the next day. After chatting with the 3 of them for a bit, we climbed down from the citadel and struck off to find dinner. Sanliurfa is known for its “Turkish Night” dinners, in restaurants in old Ottoman mansions. We headed to one, only to find it completely booked for the night. Luckily, with our mad Turkish skillz we were able to talk to the host, and he called around to other restaurants, found one with open places, and had them send a guy over to bring us to the right place. Bizarrely, we bumped into Juliya (the former Fulbright teacher) and her friends, and had dinner with them. Dinner was really good; they had a set menu, with 2 different soups, mezes, and a communal kebap platter with chicken, kofte, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. The real fun part, though, was the music: they had a traditional Ottoman/Turkish band, which played folk songs for literally hours. There was a Turkish package tour group there, and they all got up and danced around the dinner tables, more enthusiastically than skillfully. I got some video shots of the music and dancing, which are mostly up on Flickr. After a bit more dancing, we headed back to our hotel, because we had to be up eeeearly for our trip up Nemrut.
And, as this is already ridiculously long, I think I’ll leave Nemrut to another post. Photos of Sanliurfa are finally up on my Flickr account though!
-R
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