Being Annie: Capadoccia

On October 18^th, I took the bus to Izmir in order to meet up with the other exchange students and go on our first trip together to Capadoccia! It was the first time I rode the bus to alone, and everything went pretty well, so I was very happy about that. Once I made it to Izmir, I went to the Rotary Long Term Inbound Chair's house and had dinner. It was so good! She made a salad; I really miss salads. I then just hung out at her house until about 10:45, when I went to go meet up with the other exchange students and start our trip!

It was really nice to see all of the other students. Because I live in Bursa with only one other exchange student, we don't get to see the Izmir kids nearly as much as they see each other. For the first hour or two of the bus ride (it was about a 10 hour drive, so we drove it mostly all through the night) we were all loud and noisy, but then we were able to settle down and all go to sleep after that. We actually stopped at a random bus stop in the middle of the highway (we don't really have these in the United States, it's more than just a rest stop because there are usually restrooms, a small shop and a cafeteria-style restaurant) and found a group of like 10 other AFS exchange students staying in Turkey; it was 12:30AM. Told ya it's a small world.

We arrived in Capadoccia around nine or ten the next morning, and it was unlike anything I've ever seen before. We all joked that we felt like we were in a Star Wars movie, and then we actually saw a sign that part of Star Wars was filmed there! Our first stop was the Ihlara Valley. It was so beautiful. There were trees, and a river. We felt like we were in a fairy tale and we all decided that millions of years ago unicorns and nice dinosaurs inhabited the area. In this museum we were able to visit an early church. The church was filled with frescoes (a style of painting). It was painted by a monk over 1,500 years ago when Christianity was still being developed and the monks had to stay in hiding because of persecution. We got a nice history lesson from the travel guide, I can fill you in on some of it as I write.

After the Ihlara Valley we got back on to our little bus and traveled to two different underground cities. These cities were carved out of the rocks by people and as many as 20,000 people lived in one of the underground cities about 1,700 years ago. It was really crazy to think people actually lived there. The ceilings were so short and we had to squat down to walk through the little tunnels between the rooms. Also, there was no electricity or sewage system. (That's a deal breaker.) I'm glad I didn't experience those aspects. Eeeekkk!

In one of the museums we found a pitch black tunnel with a sign that said “Grave” next to it, so what does a group of 11 foreign kids do? We say “COOL!” and we push one person in first and all follow. The 30 seconds in that tunnel were some of the scariest 30 seconds in my life. It was terrifying. We were all screaming, and the person in front of me wouldn't “run” fast enough(we were awkwardly making ourselves three feet tall and trying to go as quickly as possible)! The grave room was lit, and one person did lay in the grave and two others tried to go through another dark tunnel where they put all of the dead bodies. It was quite an adventure.

Additionally, at the entrance to one of the museums, there was a group of Americans speaking with insanely southern accents, and my friend looks at me and says, “Five bucks they're from Texas.” And I, being a friendly person who wants five bucks, said to one of the men in the group, “Hi! Where are you from?!” “We're from Amurica.” I was like, “Yeah... Where in America?” And he said.... “Mississippi!” I looked through the corner of my eye at my friend and the disappointment on his face. I told the nice man it was nice to meet him and that I'm an exchange student from Ohio. I had to hurry though because the rest of the exchange students were entering the underground city and I was just talking to some man for the purpose of getting a few lira. I'm sorry man from Mississippi, I talked to you out of greed.

After all of the museums, we arrived to our hotel and hung out for a couple hours then went to dinner as a group. After dinner, we all washed up and then nearly everyone gathered in one of the rooms, where we talked and made stupid jokes until about midnight. It was such a good day!

On Saturday we were up early to visit the Open Air Museum. This museum was filled with old churches from over 1500 years ago. We were able to visit a few of the churches and other rooms in the caves AND meet a couple groups of Americans. (YAY AMERICANS!) The Frescoes in this museum were preserved really well, and in many of the churches, the eyes of all of the angels and disciples were scratched out because people tried to destroy them when they were first found. None of the people in the paintings had smiles on their faces because it was a really hard, sad time for early Christians. All of the information from our tour guide was actually quite interesting.

We spent a lot of time on the bus on Saturday, driving across Capadoccia to our different stops and making various photo stops along the way. We even encountered a Rotarian from the states at one of our photo stops! It was so cool! We also went to the ruins of a castle on top of a mountain, where we saw some of the best views of Capadoccia. We were able to see a turkey (IN TURKEY!) and many more beautiful Capadoccian scenes. I'll post a lot of pictures, there aren't many stories about them, I have background stories on my Flickr photos though as the captions. My camera died at this point in the night, so I have a lot fewer pictures, but I'll steal a few from my friends so you can see how everything went.

In the evening we went to a Capadoccian pottery store and workshop. They told us they get all of the red clay from Capadoccia itself, then they showed us how they use the wheel to throw the clay into bowls and vases and whatnot. The wheel wasn't electric like all of the wheels I have used, but you had to kick the bottom of it with your foot to make it start spinning and continue spinning as it slowed down. Max, a student from Mexico, was able to throw a vase on the wheel. It was really fun, he was so excited. The man at the store gave us half off everything in the store, which was really nice, but everything was over priced so we would have bought (as what I see as) the same same product for the half off price in Bursa or basically anywhere else with a Bazaar.

After our stop at the pottery store, we stopped at a random touristic city because we needed to kill half an hour before dinner. We were walking around, and we came upon this huge bridge, so all eleven of us and our tour guide were walking along the bridge, laughing and learning Brazilian games in Portuguese. After the bridge became empty and we were over the part of the bridge over the land (I still don't know why a third of the bridge was over land), we were having a lot of fun singing and jumping around and some angry Turkish man comes up to us and yells at us. Our tour guide thought he was being ridiculous and assured us we didn't actually do anything wrong. I think the man was just angry because he wasn't having nearly as much fun as we were. :P

After this little incident, we were off to dinner and a show! The restaurant was part of the cave-like atmosphere, and we got a traditional Turkish meal, with many appetizers and bread, and then (I don't remember, but there must have been soup in here somewhere, there's always soup) we had lamb and rice for dinner. It was all pretty good. All of the tables were surrounding a circular stage for the dancers and we were all finished eating when the show began. There were many traditional Turkish dances, and they even let all of the people in the restaurant dance while the dancers took a break. The night ended with belly dancers, and then we returned to our hotel for a much needed rest and time to just hang out with our friends. Two exchange students, from Mexico and Brazil, came into the room Bess (from Chicago) and I were sharing and we ended up staying awake until about 2am, laughing and being silly, it was a lot of fun.

We were up bright and early on Sunday! I don't really know if I can call it “bright” because we were up at 5am, about an hour and a half before the sunrise. It was too early. TOO EARLY. Anyways, only 5 of us got up this early because we went to take a hot air balloon ride though Capadoccia! It was so beautiful. The hot air balloon itself was absolutely HUGE and the basket fit 20 people. In pictures it looks really small, but it's actually not! I took like 200-300 pictures within the hour, and there wasn't much of a story with this, it was just really pretty. I have a bunch of photos on Flickr, and a few of them do have little stories as the captions, so you can check those out! There was one point in the flight that we were about 5 feet from a rock and the man in charge jokingly said “I like to call my balloon Titanic.” He wasn't able to “direct” the balloon, it just went wherever the wind wanted it to go, he just controlled the basket by spinning it so we could all get a good view and he controlled the amount of fire that went into the balloon, causing it to either rise or fall.

After the balloon trip, we returned to the hotel and were off to Izmir around 8:30 or 9. We stopped in Konya in the early afternoon to visit a museum and have lunch. It was a really good lunch. It was 3 huge courses plus bread, all for about 8 USD. I love Turkey and it's cheap food. I'm getting fat because of it, but that's okay. The bus ride was pretty fun, we didn't sleep but we played games. We found a machine that you can stand on, then it vigorously vibrated your feet for a minute. It was so strange, but a group of about five us of found it extremely amusing. Anyways, after 10 long hours in the car, we arrived back to Izmir and I got to return to the Rotarian's house and SLEEP.

I took the morning bus back to Bursa on Monday and returned to Bursa in the early evening. The Rotarians keep my bus tickets for record I guess, so I was on the bus, and the man was asking me in Turkish for my ticket, and I was like “uhhmmmm.....” I don't really have the ability to say, “I'm an exchange student and the lady in charge of me kept my ticket.” So I was upset when the man started to speak English to me, because I did understand what he said. Whatever. I got off the bus, and was waiting for my host mom when I realized I left my jacket on the bus. I was like “OH MY GOSH. OH MY GOSH. OH MY GOSH.” And I then frantically ran through the bus station looking for my bus, and hoping it didn't leave. Thankfully it didn't and I was able to tell the man, “My, my, my jacket!!!” in Turkish and point on the bus to show that my jacket was still on the bus. I got my jacket and returned to finding my host mom, and at that point I realized that I know how to say “My jacket is on the bus,” but during Annie Freak Out Time, I can't really get any of my feelings out, even in English.

Anyways, I found my host mom and we walked though Ikea for awhile then we returned home. I got Wifi for the first time in 4 or 5 days, and had like 15 messages from two of my friends, oh, the world barely was able to cope with me gone for half a week... sigh... :P It was so nice to spend a few days with the other exchange students and see another beautiful part of Turkey. One of the exchange students who came about 9 months ago said that you would never guess from all of the places we go to on our exchange that it'll all be the same country, and I definitely believe that! I'm not sure when our next trip will be, but I'm looking forward to it, whatever it is. :)