The Second Trip, Part II

Tuesday started out with a short stop at another mosaic museum.

I was particularly fond of the information they gave you about each piece. You could give a test with these! Read the sign and try to draw what they describe:

If your picture looked like this, congratulations! If not, better luck with the next one.Next we found ourselves in Urfa. The city has had many names over the years, and I don't plan to list them all in hopes of someone recognizing one. However if you're wondering what there is to visit in this city by the Euphrates, you could start with the fish pools.


As you can see above, there was a section of the pools that had boats. At 50 kuruş (about 36 cents Canadian) a person, all the exchange students hopped aboard for a turn around the fountain.
Next we were off to visit a cave. But not just any cave, this is the claimed birthplace of the Prophet Abraham. To enter, women had to cover up. This was the first time I have been asked (read: required) to cover my head durning my stay here. Luckily for all of us, we had run into a charismatic scarf-seller by the boats and were well-prepared.After the cave, it was on to the bazaar. It was a bazaar like most bazaars, though with more fabric and metalware stalls than usual. We were given an hour to wander around before we met back at the bus to visit a traditional village.It was here that I remembered my friends back home and how we watched the second Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie right before I left. This is totally the area Bridget would have been.

If you can see those houses in the distance, you're looking at a village officially in Syria. Wave hello, everyone!

I suppose I'll end it there, even though that was only one day. Its getting kind of long and adding pictures is not enjoyable. Tomorrow should pull us through to Cappadocia, which will warrant it's own entry on Thursday.

Thanks for reading!
-Maeghan

The Second Trip, Part I

Oha. There's lots to say, so I'll be telling you about the trip over a couple of entries.

We left Istanbul at 8 pm on Friday night. Our bus turned out to have just enough room for all of us, though our stuff was piled to the ceiling in the back! We drove all night and arrived in Konya the next day.

Konya is famous for the whirling dervishes who originated there. We visited the Mevlana Museum (pictured) and then checked into the hotel.

Day two started bright and early with long drive to Antakya (which you might know as Antioch). We arrived mid-afternoon. It is important to note that Antakya used to belong to Syria. Many years ago it became independant for a short time before joining Turkey. Syria does not recognise this union, and so if you asked a Syrian, I have been to Syria. Check out the lisence plate!

First we visited a mosaic museum. There were mosaics over ten feet tall! They depicted garden scenes and gods and fish and geometric paterns and writing.

After that it was off to the first Christian church, the Church of St. Peter. It was a cave in the hillside with a brick front and only an altar inside. I got dripped on taking this photo! Here's the view from outside the church:Then the guide offered to take us somewhere not on the itenerary. We visited what was once an iron gate. It required a bit of hiking to get to, but there were goats!

This is where I called my Mom from on Mothers' Day!

We checked into our hotel on the edge of town, and settled down for a quiet evening... that was interrupted when a baby bird fell out of its nest on our balcony and chased Garet through our open door into the hotel!

Multiple rescue attempts were made with the chick, and around 10 pm that night, it was back in the nest thanks to us! Although our chaperon had told us it would just get pushed out again, it was still in the nest come morning. We even watched the mother feed it! Hooray!

Monday was Gaziantep. On our way we passed a huge field of poppies and begged the driver to stop for photos.

The special thing about this field is that it's a farm. In Turkey growing poppies for medicinal purposes is legal. Who knew?

Gaziantep had the old market as part of our tour. We checked into the hotel early, and our chaperone was upset to find that Carly's and my room was larger than his. He would leave only to stomp in again several minutes later, look around, glare at us, and stomp back out. Carly took to saying things like "it's still bigger!" when he came in. It became a running joke throughout the trip. From that night on he was able to find something better about our room. Better wifi, bigger bathroom, softer beds, nicer view out the window..

So I suppose I'll stop there for today. It's looking like I'll split the trip into three large entries, although if you thought this one was too big, I can make smaller ones. Just tell me what you want!

-Maeghan

One Step Closer to A Dream

Anyone who had to sit through Biology with me knows that it's one of my life goals to do the voice-over for an educational film. Today I got closer to this goal than I think I ever will again. Rewind to Friday afternoon.

My host family is of the strange belief that Mexican food cannot be made at home. So I called Carly. A sleepover was set at her house for Saturday night, with us as the chefs.

Saturday Carly, Blase, and Garet are sent by Rotary to a recording studio. I met up with Carly afterward and we created beautiful fajitas together before staying up half the night trading theater stories. Her family loved our food, and the boys actually talked. Amazing!

Sunday morning Carly has to crawl out of bed bright and early to head back to the recording studio. Since nine am seemed a little early to be going home, I tagged along. This turned out to be a good thing, since Amanda was ill and had to cancel. Suddenly I had a rather major part in the recording.

What is this recording, you ask? English listening exam CDs! Mwahahahahaha!
Admittedly I was reading things like "The boy is walking with the dog" and "Henry had to tie his shoe" but I was still over the moon happy.

I promise, promise, promise that I will blog about the trip tomorrow!
-Maeghan

Star Trek

My family has no internet. I'm sitting in Starbucks with a terribly unaffordable drink. I just saw Star Trek. It was AMAZING. I will tell you all about the trip when we get internet again.

If you have the time and interest to read something completely pointless but brilliant, Carly wrote a lovely story about me during out bus ride home from Antalya. The link is here.

Love,
Maeghan

PS. Did I mention that I loved Star Trek?! Really.

Ooor.. not.

The internet hates me. I keep trying to upload photos (last three hotels) and it keeps dying. I haven't forgotten you all, I promise!

Let's see. Highlights from this trip in no particular order:

1. I made cookies! A double batch that barely fit in the bowl by the time I added all the flour.
2. Carly, Juliana, and I ate in a segregated restaurant.
3. We skipped stones in the Euphrates River.
4. A guy gave me three free scoops of ice cream at the birthtown of dondurma (turkish ice cream).
5. We watched the sunset on Mount Nemrut, and I met some Canadians there!
6. I spent a night at a sketch hotel conveniently located beside the hospital.
7. I covered my head to visit the birthplace of the prophet Abraham.
8. We took a row boat around a famous lake of fish.
9. We nearly died a slow death at the hands of GIANT FREAKING ANTS.
10. I ate at a Pizza Pizza! (Once he was the King of Spain.)
11. I saw the Syrian border from the top of a hill.
12. I got dripped on in the first church of Christianity.
13. I took an epic adventure through Turkish hoodoos and found doors in the cliff wall.
14. Oh! And this all happened on a minibus.

So as you can see, the trip was wonderful. The places we're visiting aren't used to a lot of foreign tourists, so we get a lot of stares, but overall it's been warm welcomes all the way across the country. And everyone loves our cute Istanbul accents! Hehe. Tomorrow we drive to Antalya for the district conference, but first I'm taking a ride in a hot air balloon!

More will follow.
-Maeghan

Hidrellez Festival

Yesterday night I went to the Hidrellez Festival. I don't really feel like paraphrasing what the whole thing is about, so you can click here for full info. In fact, I don't really feel like talking at all, so we'll do this with lots of pictures.

We met near the Blue Mosque and walked down to a park on the coast where the festival was taking place. There were these handy signs everywhere to guide us in the right direction!

The festival is all about wishes! There were many spots and ways in which you could wish for things at the park, and this is the first and most traditional. Each rag or piece of cloth tied to the tree represents someone's wish. Some people wrote on their rags, some people didn't. At the beginning of the festival, it was just this area covered in wishes, but by the end of the night all the trees in the park had stuff hanging off of them.

There were these nets of cloth hanging between trees too, and those were for people to take. You were allowed to rip a section of the fabric off to use on one of the trees. It was rather entertaining, since no one had scissors. I used my keys.

Here I am tying my wish to the tree. Isn't it funny that I'm wearing a scarf to a festival about summer? I can't be Canadian...Here you can see the sunset and the people and the stuff hanging from the trees. There were activities all around based on the idea of making wishes. I spun a wheel of fortune and fed a huge painted pelican. We threw notes in a wishing well and tied cloth to things. After all that we listened to some turkish music and danced and ate really good food. The photos after the sun set are kind of dark, and I was kind of doing a lomo thing minus the part where the photos are cool. I got home around 2 am and still got up in time to get to school. Go me!

Love

Maeghan

Ps. Second trip starts on Friday night. Hilights include Cappadocia and the first church (near Syria!!). It's directly followed by the district conference in Antalya. Weather forcasts for some of the places we're visiting include 55 degree Celcius days. Yes, I'm going to DIE. But at least my icecream will die with me.
I'll be bringing a seperate bag just for sunscreen.

Picnic!

Today was a national holiday, so my family and three others went on a picnic!

We drove out of town to this little place where we barbecued a whole lot of meat that we bought at one of the malls. Carrefour (the store we went to) is very much like Superstore. It just has the same feel. Sells the same stuff. You know. But! When a guy passed me on roller skates (yes, skates not blades) I was like "Okay, this is the Real Turkish Superstore" and went off giggling to myself for no apparent reason (yet again.) That's where I found this:
Haha. Have you ever seen Clearly Canadian before? Because to any Canadian it clearly isn't. I mean, where's the French? Pfft. Anyway. The picnic-

There were dogs at this place we went to. Two puppies running around and a huge german shepherd who was tied up in the back. Above you see me and the white pup. I think she was the runt. She's smaller than the other one. Everyone loved her.

Here I am with the slightly larger, unloved pup. All the kids were scared of her. Goodness knows why, since she's pretty much harmless. We were playfighting and she'd bite me like she thinks she's a lion but all that it would accomplish was to tickle my hand. It was my job (me being the only one who really liked the dogs) to keep the black puppy away from our group.

So we ate barbecue, played football (soccer), and took photos. All in all it was a good day. We arrived home just before a huge rainstorm, so we managed to stay dry despite the weather predictions. May Day went off without any problems on my end, although there were injuries in the protests in Taksim. I don't think anyone died this year though.

Now my sister and I are trading photographs. Hers are way better than mine, not that that's a surprise. I can't wait for summer holiday when we get to hang out like this every day!

Love, Maeghan