See that guy up top? That's me. Or it's Fatih Sultan Mehmet.

Hey folk(s).

Sorry for the delay. I have been busy and the internet has been busy being a bitch. Monday was pretty low-key. We listened to Orhan Gencebay's "Batsın bu Dünya" in lab, which I had been listening to the night before while doing work, so that was fun. It's a great song. Yesterday was a bit more exciting. After class we went to the 1453 Panorama Museum. This is a museum in the sense that it has posters on the walls that contain facts. Other than that, it is basically a monument to the conquest of Constantinople by Fatih Sultan Mehmet (Mehmet the Conqueror) in 1453. Hear me out. It was awesome. The structure of the museum is basically this: a large antechamber that features a kickass video about the battle, replete with Turkish nationalist imagery and intense music and CG effects, and the main chamber is an 80ft-diameter dome that is a really, really good painting of the battle at one of the city's old gates. The city used to be surrounded by really badass walls (some of which still stand today), and so the Ottomans had to shoot the walls with enormous bombard cannon. This is painted. Also pictured are crazy-eyed Turks on horseback wearing cheetah furs. 

The experience was interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the fact that a great percentage of the people there (outside our group) were women wearing headscarves or their husbands. I saw one man praying while admiring the painting and the military music. It was weird. There were sound effects in the massive chamber, too. I took a bunch of pictures, but I think maybe a video will better demonstrate what I am talking about. The painting itself was incredibly well done, they nailed the perspective. I was really, really impressed. 

Also impressive was the gift shop, where I got three things, awesome things, for 13,50TL, or under $10. One of them is a poster. The museum is a testament to the resurgence of this concept of Ottomanism being the ideal. It's pretty silly for the most part. Some Turks really like to play up the tolerance aspect of things, while others enjoy it more as a means of displaying the glories of Islam and Turks generally. 

Dinner after we got back consisted of "ev yemeği," or "home cooked food," except this stuff was at a restaurant. Well, restaurant that consisted of a woman in what was, essentially, a home kitchen, but with a lot more tables. She makes different stuff every day, and yesterday I had some sarma (dolmas) and some patlican böreği (eggplant börek). It was easily the best börek I have ever had, and it will definitely find its way back to my stomach again soon. Incredible. We watched the news while we were there. More floods up on the Black Sea coast. The news here really likes to exaggerate stuff that doesn't need exaggerating, like car crashes, explosions, and floods. Last week in lab we watched a news report on flooding, and it had a clip of a house collapsing. Last night, in their report on the new flooding, they used that same clip without saying it was from last week. Senseless stuff. It is almost as frustrating as watching the American news. Almost. 

Today I gave my reading teacher some allergy medicines. She got excited thinking they were from America, and then was disappointed but still grateful when I told her I got them at the eczane down the road. Then later in class she referred to Ankara as "the countryside." It was hilarious. She is a born and raised Istanbullite, and they tend to hate Ankara. 

Oh! We watched a movie on Monday called "Korkuyorum, Anne," or "Mom, I am scared!" It was by the same director as "Hayat Var," that depressing movie I complained about last time. But this one was hilarious and great! There was a whole plot line about a kid hiding from his circumcision. HA! I will try and find it and bring it back to screen. In the meantime, though, I will have to watch "Casino" and "Shoot 'Em Up," (Turkish title: SHOOT EVERYONE) which I bought last night at the bootleg store. While there, two Turkish men were looking for movies from America with subtitles or dubbing, and I helped them pick some out. It was really funny, because they would ask me what certain movies were about, especially those with two women on the cover. I think they were hoping for porn. One of them turned out to be about lesbians, but when I said it was a love story, they became less interested. After I paid and was leaving, one of them said "come here" and showed me some of the bootleg perfume they sell there. He sprayed it on my hand and I jokingly said "nice." Then he sprayed my chest with it FIVE TIMES. I walked home smelling like a cheap Turkish whore. Fantastic. 

I have to email an assignment to my teacher now, so I will rap at y'all later. 

Beşiktaş! Okyanus! Yunus! Devrim!

It's been a long weekend. 

Friday night was incredibly fun. We all took cabs down to the Bebek Pier and took a ferry across the Bosphorus to Kandilli, where my friend's boyfriend was waiting in his car to take us over to his house for the night for a barbeque. We managed to fit 8 people in his tiny coupe, seatbelts on. I was in the passenger seat with my blonde friend sitting on my lap. She had to stick her head out the window because the car's roof was so low. It was hysterical. The area around Kandilli is a bit more conservative than our neighborhood, and so the mere fact that a girl was on my lap is scandalous enough, not to mention the fact that I have fiery red hair and hers is intensely blonde. When we were driving away, a group of older guys were sitting nearby and had been watching us all climb in, so I flashed them a huge smile and a thumbs up as we passed with my friend on my lap, and they all laughed and waved. When we arrived, the driver started to roll up the windows and my friend was like "Aaaaah!" Her head was getting caught. It was hilarious. She said "That would be the lamest decapitation ever." 

The house was incredible. Four stories, furnished like a fancy hotel, with an elevator, a backyard, and a huge TV, not to mention the rooftop balcony. Pictures will come later. We basically spent the entire night drinking beer, eating BBQ (köfte, sucuk, eggplant, etc.), and chips. Lays has a chip here called "A La Turca," and it basically combines the best qualities of Cool Ranch and Nacho Cheese Doritos on a slightly thicker corn chip. Incredible. The setup was great, with beanbag chairs and nice weather, and the view from the house was of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, and of the castle right next to our campus. Fantastic. The best part, though, was the fact that a lot of the people at the party were Turkish, which meant I got to practice Turkish the entire night. I learned some great slang, like the quicker way to say "I'll fuck your c-word" and the equivalent of "dropping a deuce." These are the slang words you won't get in Lonely Planet, much less from the top linguists in Turkey, who teach us.

Saturday morning, we had planned on going to the Old City to meet up with our program-organized tour group. We arranged with the director to meet up around 11:00am, but our friend had to drive his brother to SAT prep-class (yeah, SAT) so we couldn't get there until around 12:00. So we called them to find out where they would be so we could meet up, and she said to just not come, and not worry about it. We asked "are you sure?" But she said to just not come. We felt bad, but she insisted. So instead we got a huge börek breakfast feast and then caught some cabs home. The plan was to regroup, shower, and then go see Harry Potter at 7:00 at Kanyon.

Before that, though, Jessica suggest that it was an "Alo Servis" kind of Saturday, which I totally agreed with. Poor Nihan spent 9 minutes on Skype with the McDonald's people trying to place our orders. The idiot man asked for my name 3 times, since it was my cell number. She had to spell it out using "K as in Kanyon, E as in Evet," blah blah blah. Three times. It was hilarious. So my name was turned into a pretty badass string of Turkish words:

"Beşiktaş Ocean Dolphin Revolution!"

After enjoying McDonald's and "Ocean's 11," we managed to take the bus toward the theater, but missed our stop and ended up walking for 15th minutes the wrong way (well, the right direction but wrong road). Instead of the mall, we found a go-cart park and a dead end. We then caught a cab and the driver was explaining to us that he was very happy because he was going to a wedding that night, and that there would be a kemençe there, the Black Sea fiddle, of sorts, and that he loved those very much. He definitely took us the longer way, but it was worth it to see the back streets of the area, really narrow, dark, and dirty. It's hard to imagine (but here very easy to find) that such a crass monument to wealth as Kanyon can exist next to such poverty, but it does. 

Harry Potter was, as expected, entertaining and well put together. I really enjoyed the way they designed the dream sequences, that was very cool. I haven't read past the third book, and hadn't seen the last movie since it came out, so I was asking Sydney every couple of minutes who some people were and what was going on, but I got the gist of it. I have to say, the scene in the cave was genuinely creepy. Naturally, there was a smoking break. There was also a commercial for spreadable cheese that featured a talking puppet brain with one eye asking small children why they liked the cheese. Let me see if I can find a picture of it...OR A VIDEO.

So there you have it, the brain shouts at children.

Right after the movie we took the subway to Taksim to hang out and go dancing. The subway stations here are absolutely enormous and unnecessarily so. You have to walk five minutes to get to the exits. And once we did, for some reason I was getting pissed off at everyone on Istiklal. Not sure why. Maybe I am getting ready to come back to the states, and that was just a flash of homesickness. Maybe it was because I felt pressure to pick a place to eat and also wanted to make sure none of us got stabbed. Add to that the assholes who stand outside of their restaurants speaking English to every gringo that walks by, and you've got a headache. We eventually settled on a place called "Otentik," which means, you guessed it, authentic. It featured (I found out after we sat down) an old woman in the window making bread and gözleme, what I have deemed Turkish quesadillas. That's what I ate, and it was great. Thin bread stuffed with goodies like olives, cheese, or meats. The place was furnished with fake rocks, fake plants, and a little waterfall thing. It was pleasant, if only because it got us off the street. In case you can't tell, I probably wasn't in the mood for Istiklal last night. 

We wandered down toward Tünel to the cheaper bars, and there were no tables available for us, so we walked all the way back to the old standby, 7. Kat Teras. We ran into someone from our program there, who is Turkish and whose sister lives here. She was surprised we knew about it. We had a few beers there for cheap, and then headed to a place called "Jolly Joker," which we had heard would have live music. We got in free (because there were four cute American girls and me in our group), and there indeed was a real live Turkish cover band. They sang American top 40 songs and Turkish top 40 songs. They were actually really good, but the place was a bit too much like America for me to get totally into it. 

But actually, it was also a bit too Turkish at the same time, because there was no shortage of creepy, sad men trying to manage to sneak up behind the girls and dance on them. I got tired of playing surrogate boyfriend and they got tired of having to pay attention to where they were dancing, so we left. One of the guys was following us, until we lost him in a crowd by the exit. Afterwards, we went to Araf, that Balkan dance club that ex-pats just adore. The vibe there is always great, but last night it smelled like a woodland creature's vagina. We stayed about 30 minutes and then finally made the trek back home. Our cab driver, shockingly, admitted he didn't know how to get there, but I told him I would show him and he agreed to give us the daytime rate. We arrived at Superdorm at around 3:45am. I was supposed to drink tea with Hakan, the gatekeeper, when we got back, but he was at the other entrance (to the parking garage). I slept until 2:00pm today, because we didn't get much sleep Friday night. 

I showered and got a text from Sydney saying she and Michael were down in Sultanahmet and wanted to meet up to go see Küçük Aya Sofya, one of the places we really wanted to see on the tour we missed. So I hustled down to meet them. Had to take a bus, transfer buses in Beşiktaş, hop on the tram at Kabataş, and then walk down the hill in Sultanahmet to find them. Asked directions once, and the guy gave them accurately, but I passed a really old, formerly Byzantine-looking mosque and thought that might be it, so I stopped by and asked a guy there if it was Küçük Aya Sofya. He said yes, so I called Sydney and asked where they were. Turns out, that guy was an idiot. I continued down the hill for another 200 feet and found them and the mosque. It was beautiful, and is in the process of being restored, like every other mosque here, in preparation for Istanbul being the cultural capital of Europe next year. I love that, if not for the fact that it probably is one of the cultural capitals, then for the fact that Europeans are probably so pissed about it.

We drank some tea and read through a newspaper we found there for a bit. Apparently some Turkish girl found out her boyfriend of 2 years had been cheating on her with her best friend, so she posted a photo of him jokingly wearing women's clothes on Facebook and sold a bunch of his stuff online for 1 TL, including a soccer ball signed by the Turkish national team. Note to self: Turkish women do not fuck around. We got lunch at Doy Doy, the great restaurant near the Blue Mosque that I went to with Emmie and Kent and Cole three years ago. We got to hear the call to prayer from the Blue Mosque, which is one of my favorites. After we ate, we walked to the mosque and had a look around inside. It's huge and beautiful, but not my favorite. Süleymaniye still is. Now it's time for homework and maybe some hookah later. This week is "yoğun" and "meşgül," or dense and busy with school business. Excitement abounds. 

Take care, have a great Sunday! 

Quickie Poo

Hey!

So it's Friday, and I am getting ready to head to Asia for a Big Lebowski house party with my friend's boyfriend. This week has been busy with school stuff. Our reading teacher is the sweetest lady ever, but she gives us an ungodly amount of homework. But she also wears linen pants and gives me lots of snacks in class, so it is impossible to dislike her. Also, she has invited us all over to her house next week for a drinking session. She is in her 70s and wears velcro shoes. She is awesome. She confused the English word "cub" with "pub," and said "lion pub," and then said quickly "well, you can see what I'm thinking of." Hilarious. She also told us that the plastic wares sellers on the streets nowadays sell inflatable sex dolls. 

It is really fucking hot today, and I forgot to baste myself in sunscreen this morning. I can tell a difference, even if I don't burn. At the same time, though I kind of like tempting the sun to catch me. It always does, though, the bastard. Today was so hot we were all cursing the window in our classroom that some industrious janitor or maintenance guy had locked shut by screwing two screws into the window frame above the window. It would, in all likelihood, let a fierce sea breeze in, and would probably be comfortable to the point of distraction. This, as they say, cannot be. Olmaz! Olmaaaz! 

Yesterday we had another lecture (my first in two weeks due to illness), this time about public-private relations in Turkey. It was really interesting, the professor has just finished an 8-year study of attitudes throughout the country. Let me grab my notes so I can share the more interesting findings with you, the curious reader...

Okay. More than a thousand respondents in 1999,2004, and 2008. The most recent batch of people were asked to rank their concerns. Out of a list of 20, the number one concern is unemployment, followed by the GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS, inflation, education, and "other." At the very bottom of the list, interestingly enough (or not), was Cyprus. In terms of levels of trust felt toward certain institutions/people: #1 Armed Forces, #3 Police, #5 Universities, and then way down at the bottom were newspapers/journalists, TV news, politicians. It looks like Turkey's got its own military-industrial-academic complex. 

6.1% said that a politician should be an exemplary Muslim, and 3.0% said they must be a man.

Since 1999, there has been a general improvement in the conception of institutional fairness. It was interesting that at no point did the speaker or the research mention the fact that the huge changes since 1999 seem to coincide with the rise of the AK Parti. I wonder if there is any connection apart from coincidence. 

Okay, boring stuff aside, we learned two awesome words: titiz (pronounced titties), which means meticulous, and karşılıklılık, which means reciprocity. I like writing that one a lot. Karşılıklılık. Fuck, these construction workers outside are loud. They start working at 7am and don't stop until 7pm. The courtyard I overlook is basically an echo chamber. The acoustics are so great that seagulls come from all over Turkey to scream at my window in the morning. I swear to God, they sound like howler monkeys. 

I am probably going to nap for a bit in my linen pants before taking the boat to Asia, so I will holler at you all tomorrow night. We have a gezi that will likely last all fucking day. OLD CITY, HERE I COME.

Oh, so I'm listening to "Bim Bam Baby" by Sinatra. He's kind of an asshole in this song, commanding his significant other to clean up the house. "Grab a mip map mop and a brim bram broom and clim clam clean up the rim ram room because your bim bam baby is coming home tonight." If I were in their shoes, I'd tell him to go fick fack fuck himself.

What? Scorpions? Here? No. You're kidding. Really?

I just got back from a party at my TA, Asuman's, apartment near campus. It was on the top floor of her building, and her view is probably the best view of the city that I've seen yet. For those of you familiar with the layout of the area (Michelle), her building is right behind the mosque, and just past the North Campus. Basically right behind the photocopy place. Of course I forgot my camera, because I am a fucking idiot. She cancelled our conversation hour today so that she and Didem, the TA for the other Advanced class, could make food for all of us. And boy, was there food. We're talking real delicious homemade Turkish cuisine. Mercimek köftesi, melons, potato salad (imagine a healthy version), etsiz çiğ köfte, watermelon, chips, and cheeses. Tons of it. Everyone brought something to drink, too, so there was plenty of beer, wine, and rakı. There were about 18 people there at the party's peak, all on her incredibly comfortable and spacious balcony overlooking the European side of the city, with a view stretching from the first bridge all the way north to Şişli and beyond. 

As we approached her building, down a narrow alley, there were some younger girls hanging out in front of the door. I was carrying what must have been a 20 pound watermelon in one hand and a bag full of beer in the other, and lifted the watermelon up to ring the doorbell. They heard me speak Turkish and started laughing uncontrollably. Can't blame them, it's fucking absurd. 

I really like hanging out with the people in my class and the other advanced class. Everyone is really interesting and has a lot to contribute. This, of course, was made even more incredible by the presence of rugs on the patio, along with pillows and a hookah and a beautiful sunset. Asuman even brought out her reed flute and played a bit for us. I practiced my Japanese skills with Shiho and Tokiko, and of course the Turkish was everywhere. It was a really great evening. Murat also told me about this Iranian folk hero who represents strength because during the martyrdom of Ali, he had an arm cut off while carrying something heavy, so he switched the heavy thing he was carrying to his other arm. They cut that off, so he put it on his head, and then they cut his head off. This really upset the guy's kid, and lots of stuff ensued, but önemli olarak bir tartışma mı olacak? Biz henuz bilmiyorduk. 

Evet. 

However, upon leaving, Asuman told me that the doorway to the attic, located just above the front door to her place (which is like a palace compared to mine, and probably half the price), is "where we put akrepler." They have found 6 akrepler this summer so far. "Akrep ne demek?" I asked, like an idiot. It means scorpion. Yeah, she has scorpions in her building. Unless she is joking, which for some reason I doubt, she said the last one they found was on her bed and was three and a half inches long. They have the equivalent of mothballs for scorpions in their landings. I about shit. I spent the weekend in Cappadochia and saw no scorpions whatsoever. Now I find out they were all waiting here for me. WTF. No. If I see one, it is dead. Dead with a pocket knife in its back. I don't care where it is or when. Stab. Fuck that. No patience for the wicked.

Interestingly enough, the hands of a clock are called "scorpions," possibly because they look like its tail. I have mentioned my feelings of scorpions before, but in case you missed it, they are awful. Just awful. No thank you. 

Now I have to sleep in my shitty dorm with paper thin walls and hope to God a scorpion doesn't land on me. 

Next time we do it, everyone will bring food and drink. Homumuza gitti. Tamam o zaman öbür tarafa gideceksiniz. Iyi Şanslar! Daha iyi olacak. 

It is clearly bedtime, so I bid you all adieu. Goodnight! 

Cappadocia: It('s) Fucking Rocks, OR How I Lost Three Pounds in One Day!

Hey everybody, I am back! Back from the Anatolian heartland. And back with a nasty case of the pukes and the shits, or as I like to call it, the "Mondays." I must have eaten something bad on Friday or Saturday, because since then I've been in and out of the bathroom. But enough about my gastrointestinal problems, let's talk about Cappadocia! It('s) fucking rocks! 

We left Thursday night after our midterm for Cappadocia, the region of badass rocks and alien invasions made famous(er) by the shitty Turkish film "Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam," which I have mentioned earlier. Before we left, though, I managed to meet up with Leslie, who was visiting the city for the weekend with the Ankara CLS group. We hit up 7. Kat Teras again and then smoked some hookah off of Istiklal before I headed with Sydney to catch our bus in a very sketchy parking lot near a wedding party place. We met up with the others and to our surprise our bus arrived, as stated on the internet. 

The Turks take their buses very seriously, I gather, and have assigned seats like an airplane, and snack and meal service. Our guide's name was Murat, a twenty-something with a degree in tourism and soccer player hair. Our assistant, the guy who brought us tea and snacks, was Fırat. The driver, Sinan. Sinan, judging by his voice, used to smoke 3 packs a day, and has seem some shit. He has a tightly curled white Jewfro and a thick black mustache. He looked like the Turkish Einstein, and was just as wise. Over the course of the weekend, he took a shine to me and started calling me "Havuç Bey," or Mr. Carrot. This I allowed only after expressing my preference for carrot over "red." 

The drive out there was pretty rough. I can't really sleep well on moving vehicles, despite the seat next to me being empty. This was exacerbated by the music videos and AtlasJet ads that were looped on the TV screens. I need to find out who sang one of the songs, though, because I think I am going to marry her. Not sure yet, I need to ask her dad. I managed to sleep fitfully in 20-30 minute increments, starting at 4:00am. I woke up at one point to see a massive white body of water outside the bus. It was Turkey's second largest lake! The Salt Lake (Tuz Gölü). I was geeking out because I am reading a book called "Salt," and it was actually on my lap at the time. We stopped twice on the trip, once after being on the road for only 2 hours. It was a creepy, creepy rest stop that looked like a sadder version of a Cracker Barrel gift shop, except with more dried nuts and berries. The highlight of this particular stop was the fact that the bathroom attendant guy who collects your fifty cents when you come out actually fucked up his only task: he gave me a lira back after I gave him a lira. WIN! 

Our final stop before getting to our region was at a fancy rest stop near the Salt Lake that featured, among other things, overpriced tea. It was after this stop that we really started getting into the trip's cool bits. The area that Cappadocia occupies is really hilly/mountainous and pretty dry. The land was once full of active volcanoes, and that is why the surface is covered in volcanic rock, which is in turn why the crazy rock formations appeared: pumice is very soft, and is eroded easily by wind and rain. The landscape makes it easy for a surprise to appear around a bend in the road, which is exactly what happened as we approached our first stop, the Ihlara Valley. We rounded a bend and saw a huge rock face jutting out of the earth with dwellings carved into it. Whaaaat? Yeah, the people who used to live here carved holes in cliffs all over the place and lived in them. They were early Christians with a lot to be scared of, apparently, because they built their homes like fifty feet off the ground in the cliffs. I have no idea how they got to the. I didn't see any steps. Maybe they rode dragons. Friendly ones.

The Ihlara Valley was incredible, a 14km long canyon, essentially, full of ancient churches and dwellings. We walked just a bit of it, because to see it all would take all day, but what we did see was awesome. I can't think of a better place to hide your churches than there, except maybe for our third stop: the Underground City! This place was 8 levels of rooms and tunnels...UNDER THE GROUND. Apparently there are as many as six cities like this around there, and in total they housed as many as 20,000+ people. NUTS. You can't tell where it is! All the shit around it was built recently, back in the day it was just a hole, literally, in the middle of a field. There was lots of crouching going on there. It leads me to believe that early Christians were a small, nocturnal species with enormous eyes, well suited to cave dwelling. 

The second stop, which I shall describe out of order to keep you on your toes, was the Crater Lake. It was an enormous lake in a crater that I think was formed by an extinct volcano (as the region is full of them). It's surface area was probably .75 sq mi. It was gorgeous. GORGEOUS. We wandered further up and over the hill overlooking it and took pictures of the landscape on the other side. The place seriously looks like Rohan from LOTR. Seriously. It was there that our tour guide, Murat, came up to me and said "I think you know some Turkish." It might have been because I was laughing at his jokes and nodding in understanding at everything he said. He asked me if I or anyone else with me would prefer English (he speaks some) to Turkish explanations, and I told him that we were here to learn Turkish and didn't want to inconvenience the Turks on the trip. So that was settled.

We stopped at a winery in Nevşehir to talk with the owner about local wines, and try some. The red wine was the suck, but the white wine was great. So we got three bottles and enjoyed them later on the balcony of Sydney's hotel room, which had a great view of downtown Ürgüp and a crag with caves on it. For lunch, the lunch that I believe was the start of my troubles, we had a delicious pot roast with eggplant, beef, potatoes, and other stuff that makes me shit. It was really, really good, and the restaurant was gorgeous. The arrangement was like a hamam, sort of, with a central dome and chambers radiating off of it. They had live music in the middle, playing old Ottoman songs. Songs that enchant the bowels. Friday night, the six of us (from my program) wandered the streets of Ürgüp, and found our way to the top of "Wish Hill," which had one of the most incredible, if not the most incredible view I have ever seen. You can see for probably 25 miles in every direction. And we were there as the sun was setting, and casting incredible light and shadows over the mountains and cliffs in the distance. It's the kind of stuff I wish I could share with you all in person. I took a video and some pictures, but they don't do it justice. We could see the top of a mountain off in the distance, behind other mountains, that was covered in snow. We're talking a serious mountain. Mount Erciyes. It is a 12,000ft tall extinct volcano that according to one Roman historian provides a view from the top of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. It was certainly the tallest thing I have ever seen from the ground, and I was 70km away from it. 

Saturday morning we started the day off right with some sweet panoramic views, I bought some linen pants to wear at home, and was given a nice little Nazar bead by one of the shopkeeps for speaking Turkish with him. Then we headed down toward the Fairy Chimneys, proper. Peribacaları are what the Turks call the stone formations caused by the erosion of the metamorphic rock that covers the region. They have a few main shapes, which you can see in my pictures eventually. We wandered as far into this particular site as we could given the time we had, and managed to get away from everybody else and explore. I also managed to pee in the Anatolian wilderness! An Eagle Scout's dream. The whole place was nuts. People carved houses out of the Fairy Chimneys hundreds, if not a thousand years ago, and many people still live in them today. Some of them even have satellite dishes. I was warned that there were scorpions around, but I luckily didn't see one. If I had, that sonofabitch would have been dead quicker than he could have said "Merhaba." I hate spiders, and scorpions are like the Megazord of the arachnid family. There is absolutely no need for pincers and a stinging tail. None. That is just excessive, like a laser sight on a shotgun. 

I have to say, the weather was incredible. I got some sun, naturally, but on Friday it didn't get higher than 72 degrees or so because it was cloudy. Saturday it might have been 80, and Sunday too, but it wasn't humid at all. That was especially handy at the first canyon we visited, where there were probably 300 steps to get in and out. So many steps, in fact, that the Turks all took a cigarette break before attempting them. Everywhere we went involving rocks and the outdoors had variable amounts of climbing, depending on how much fun you wanted to have. It was a bit more manageable for me, with my fear of heights, because instead of sheer rock faces they were sloped steeply instead. It makes a difference, for some reason. After checking out the Fairy Chimneys near Üçhisar, we headed to a halı, or Turkish rug, studio. This place was fancy. Today most of the rugs for sale in Istanbul are made in factories in China, but when they aren't, they are usually made by young girls and women. They usually develop arthritis and eye problems at an early age due to the meticulous detail and knot typing required. This studio, probably one of the more expensive in Turkey, was staffed by women between 20-40 years old. Each had in front of them a loom and a patter to work off of. The owner gave us a presentation on the particularities of Turkish halı rugs versus the Chinese ripoffs and everyone else. It's all about the knot you use, the material you use, and the material that the rug's "skeleton" is made out of. Also, knots per square centimeter are crucial. Their rugs have 400 knots of silk per square centimeter. That means for a rug with the area of 1 square meter, you have 4 million knots. To complete that, it takes one woman working every day an entire YEAR. Their rugs, accordingly cost a shit ton of money. The smallest ones were anywhere between 6,000-10,000 TL. The big ones, fuck. He showed us some in his showroom (after plying us with free wine) that were 100,000+ TL. They were gorgeous, but the highlight of the display were his rug hauling henchmen, each dressed in matching denim shirts and jeans, and each six and a half feet tall and built like Abe Lincoln. We joked that he probably made them himself and calls them "The Twins." While people were looking at the rugs and contemplating not buying them, this gorgeous woman who worked at the studio as a sales rep came over and started talking to me in Turkish, and then when she asked if it was a hard language, I told her German was harder, and then we started speaking German. And then we got married. 

Saturday night was the night of violent illness, but despite that I still went to the Türk Gecesi, or Turk night, with the group, and paid 30 TL for an open bar and unlimited appetizers, of which I had none. No drinks, no food. I just watched the dancing and fought back the onslaught of lord knows what. One of the dancers was hotter than hot, she was hot Hot HOT! Anyway, I could write like 10 different papers about that event. It was the epitome of Orientalism (excluding perhaps outright colonization). It was completely objectifying, especially the belly dancing that came later. Granted, I appreciate the belly dancing for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the bellies. Their muscle control is enviable from a martial arts standpoint, too. Anyway, I married the hottest of the dancers. Outside of the restaurant (where I went to get some air) I could see hundreds of stars. It wasn't the thousands I was hoping for, but it was certainly an improvement over Istanbul. All the Turkish women in our group expressed concern that I wasn't enjoying myself at the Türk Gecesi, but I explained that I was ill. They all were really nice about it. I guess it's not taboo to say diarrhea here, because they were all asking me about it. Hell, maybe they LIKE talking about it. Wouldn't that be fucked up? After we got back, I spent the night in the bathroom, listening to Turkish pop songs on the music video network. One of the songs was a really offensive song about a woman who decided that she wanted to make this guy's food for him and wipe the sweat off his brow and pamper him and obey him. Maybe that's what made me sicker. That and some bad meat.

Sunday I felt a lot better, but refrained from eating much of anything besides some French Fries. We went to the Göreme Open Air Museum, which is kind of the über-touristy spot in the region, but also a fascinating place full of old churches and dwellings. There are pigeon dwellings carved into the cliffs all over the region, and at Göreme, Murat told us that one reason was that the pigeon eggs were used to make the paint for the frescos in the old churches. Most of the paintings were actually really bad, like a five year-old did them, but some were fantastic. The fantastic ones were not done in simple red paint. I mean, the bad ones were REALLY bad. But think about it, the people who carved houses on cliffs out of solid rock were probably not the most graceful people on earth, and certainly could be expected to be a bit rough-handed. While we were there we paid homage to "Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam" by taking some pictures holding up rocks and punching Michael. When people walked past we explained what was going on, and they laughed. Everybody knows the movie here. Before Göreme, though, we hit up a pottery plant. Same deal as the rug place. Give us tea and try and get us to buy shit. We watched a guy make a pot. It was really cool, actually. One of the salesmen sounded like that guy in "Casablanca" that gets arrested. He was creepy as fuck. He kept bugging me and saying he'd give me half-price on anything in the store. His eyes were bloodshot and I wanted to leave. 

After Göreme, we hit the road back to Istanbul. Along the way, we stopped at the Tuz Gölü and got a chance to walk in it, etc. It was hot there, because the whole beach was salt crystals reflecting the sun at me. I chatted with Murat and Fırat about movies involving the earth being destroyed. It was pleasant. On the ride back, we watched a movie called "Ottoman Republic," which operated on the premise that Atatürk died as a boy, and Turkey never happened. It started off funny, but like many Turkish movies, it became serious and nationalistic. The plot involved the Ottoman Empire remaining an American mandate, and the Sultan being the puppet of the Americans, who were the villains. At one point, one of the Princes Islands was going to be given to Greece (a very clear appeal to current nationalist sentiments, because there is a Greek Orthodox monastery there that Turkey needs to re-open if they want into the EU). At another point, the Sultan gives his support to the resistance movement and is promptly forced to abdicate. The movie ends sadly, and with the Sultan saying "If only there could have been a strong leader, a hero to liberate us from the beginning." Then it cuts back to Salonica in 1888, as it did at the beginning, and showed little boy Atatürk getting back up (he fell out of a tree at the beginning). Some of the Turks on the bus were actually crying. WTF. It was so stupid. I asked one of the guys my age what he thought, and he called it a lot of nonsense. Of course, he later told me he doesn't drink and that he lives in Eyüp, which is a really conservative religious neighborhood near Fatih. So maybe he doesn't like the Atatürkism that was prevalent in the film. 

But to be fair, the second movie was NATIONAL TREASURE DUBBED INTO TURKISH. Yes! It's so good. It provided a nice counterpoint to the Turkish nationalism, but did so with a plot and special effects. Very nice! It ended just as we reached Istanbul. The trip back lasted a lot longer than the trip there, since it was during the day. We left at 2:00pm and got back at midnight. We walked from where the bus dropped us to Taksim and caught two cabs. I told the drivers very specifically how I wanted to go back to campus, and he started to disobey me and I was like "Didn't I say to go from Beşiktaş?" And he was like "Beşiktaş?" As if he was going to go a quicker way. My ass. I know exactly where he was going to take us. Fucker. Anyway, we got back without being screwed, and now I begin the long process of adding photos to Flickr. I highly recommend anyone who ever comes to Turkey comes to Cappadocia. It was the perfect weekend trip. Gorgeous, interesting, full of history. Just don't eat bad meat.

Be Back Monday

I am going to Cappadocia tonight, will be back Monday with stories. Have a nice weekend, folks!

For a 1000 space years!

Sorry for the delay, I have been pretty busy with work during what has otherwise been an uneventful week. After Sunday's Rape Forest Adventures the week became incredibly densely packed with Turkish delights, otherwise known as a shitstorm of reading and grammar homework. The movie we watched on Monday was called "Hayat Var," and is a play on words meaning both "There is life," and "Hayat is here/exists," as the main character is a 13 year old girl named Hayat. This movie, apparently like all other Turkish movies, involves your standard plot: No plot, a rape, sadness, illness in the family, a street boy love interest, prostitutes, a parentless household, and animal abuse. Also boats and a dysfunctional education system, and a baby being threatened. I don't understand why there isn't an audience for this stuff in the States. 

Fortunately, while doing homework, Sydney and I decided to watch the Bourne Trilogy this week. One film a night. We just finished it up. They are so fun. Tonight I decided that at some point in my life I want to take stunt driving classes. Last night we watched "Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam," probably one of the worst movies ever made. It came out in 1982 after the military coup and subsequent military government (led by Evren and later Özal) made getting Western movies exceedingly difficult. It tells the story of a wizard alien who tries to destroy the earth so he can suck the blood out of everyone, but is foiled by earth's protective shell formed by concentrated brain molecules. He needs to get a brain to destroy the earth. And he will stop at nothing. NOTHING. He sends all his henchmen: zombies, mummies, guys in furry costumes...everyone. Too bad for them that Cuneyt is there to kick their asses with karate and the BRAIN SWORD, a sword that looks like an 8th grader's wood shop project spray-painted gold. The version of the movie that we had featured some of the worst English subtitles I've ever seen, on par with the Chinese Episode III copy that has been floating around online recently. I think the whole movie is on Youtube, and it's totally worth checking out. It features a score that essentially consists of the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark repeated over and over, and outright steals entire sequences from Star Wars IV: A New Hope. They don't even bother using Empire Strikes Back. We think, but aren't sure, that the earth is a Death Star. At one point a wise man tells our hero that in the past (the film is set way in the future) the monotheists banded together after being inspired by the Bektaşi Sufi Muslim order, built underground cities, and fought the aliens under the leadership of, you guessed it, Jesus Christ. You have to watch this movie.

Today walking home from class I heard someone shout my name, looked up, and saw Dave's friend Mert walking toward me. I didn't realize he was in the city! It was awesome. Will definitely have to hang out with him soon. We had conversation hour today in the Urfa Kebab place while it rained cats and dogs outside. In Turkish, I think the saying is that it is raining broken shards of plates, or something. Terrifying. I went to Metrocity Mall, next to Kanyon, to look for a cheap linen shirt to wear in Cappadocia this weekend. Instead I got a long-sleeved t-shirt for $6. Is blue! Is nice! Tomorrow night I take a night bus with 5 of my friends to Cappadocia for the weekend. It has underground cities, cave churches, and all kinds of crazy natural rock formations. It's geographically unique in the world. And I'm going to take pictures and debase myself there for 72 hours. My goal, honestly, is to take a cab out of town into the desert so I can look at the stars and listen to some music on my iPod. This month is the best month, allegedly, for stargazing, or as the Turks call it "Dream Founding." I fucking love Turkish. They call comets "Stars with Tails." It's like that word decided, like the kid in the Tin Drum, that it would never change with the times. Anyway, I am pumped to get out of the city and into the Milky Way. Too bad the bus ride lasts 13 hours each way. Can you say Benadryl? I can. 

I love this city. It is so fucking insane. I realized today, as I was walking back from the mall, that the reason the curbs here are almost a foot high is probably just to keep cars from using the sidewalks as lanes. Drivers here don't give a fuck about anything. They treat their cars' enginges and brakes like shit. But no matter how crazy it is now, I am SURE that it was even crazier 30 years ago. We had to read an article by Orhan Pamuk yesterday describing all the old street vendors who would wander the neighborhoods back when he was growing up. The place sounds like a fucking circus. The knife sharpener guy just sharpens shit on the street, and children would come hang out with him and play in or watch his sparks. The brass cleaner would light fires in the middle of the street to clean the brass. There were people wandering from door to door screaming at the top of their lungs trying to attract customers. Imagine 10 grown men on your street screaming things like "KNIFE SHARPENER!" "MILK! MILK!" "TOMATOES!!!" "THRIFT STORE MAN MAN!!" or, my favorite, "BEAR TAMER!"

Yeah, that's right. The ayıcı, or bearman, is a man who would, until it was RECENTLY banned, walk around with a fucking BEAR on a LEASH in the city and force the bear to do tricks. Yeah, BEARS ON LEASHES. Sparks flying everywhere, sharp knives, fires, old milk, and creepy guys who sell women's dresses do not make a wholesome environment for children. Imagine the street: bears shitting and fighting on the corner while latchkey kids play in the sparks of the knife sharpener and a crazy man shouts "tomatoes" into his truck-mounted microphone. 

My reading teacher told us about how she has called the cops twice on this blind man who walks down her street playing an organ into a loudspeaker. WTF. She is hilarious. Well, I need some sleep before my midterm and trip tomorrow, so I will leave it at that, and will be back Monday to write about the weekend! 

Remember: THE PEACE IS IN THE FUTURE!