Rearview mirror

The week here has been filled with taking care of everyday things which I will write about in another post with pictures but I haven't taken the pictures of all of those little things yet.
And I wanted to show a little bit of my journey from Victoria to Ankara as it has been a journey with many stops.

Before driving from Victoria to Denver, my Dad and I went kayaking in Brentwood Bay - I love the purple starfish there. In my mind leisure time in Victoria will always be synonymous with purple starfish (and homemade wine!).

The place to rent a kayak from there is Brentwood Bay Lodge. Then paddle out to see the starfish!

Along the drive to Colorado, my Dad and I happened to stay in a town called Cascade Locks along the Hood River. It was a great little town and had a bar on the main drag called the Salmon Row Pub - they had the most excellent smoked salmon appetizer there. I would like to spend more time in that area sometime - it looked like a beautiful place to explore.

Then it was back to sunny Colorado for a spell. Below is a picture of the Yucca in bloom

I had one marvelous adventure in Boulder while I was there...Peter gave me a gift of a glider flight for my birthday! That is me below in the glider just after I have landed. The glider was towed up to about 5,000 feet and then the pilot flew over the Flatirons in search of thermals - we climbed to about 10,000 feet! I was allowed to take control of the glider three times. The first time was the scariest as I made the nose dip...I did a bit better after that just going straight and not changing the level of the plane at all. It was very beautiful and quiet in the glider and I had never seen Boulder or Colorado from that perspective! It was lovely!

After some time in Colorado we visited some family in Ohio and Michigan. Here are some fish in my Aunt's pond.

We also dropped off Chama-cat there. This was very sad but I thought it was best for her to stay stateside. Here she is on the balcony over the grape arbor at here new digs.

So there is a look in the rearview mirror of this sojourn in Ankara!

Ulus

Saturday was spent in the old part of Ankara called Ulus where many markets are. Below is a picture from the food market with fresh fruits and veggies, cheese stands, meat stands, grain shops and bakeries. We picked up a kilo of strawberries, a kilo of small bell pepper, a kilo of cherries, two bouquets of dill and a kilo of long grain rice for about 10YTL. I made strawberry lemonade yesterday but the fate of the other goods it still undetermined... we'll be eating bell peppers for days! The food market was our last stop. Before doing our shopping we had a lovely meal up the road form this bead store. The area is just below the castle and next to a museum (I do not know which one exactly). Across from the museum and just next door to the textile shop shown a few pictures down, is a lamp store. And at the back of the lamp store is an open kitchen. Stairs at the back of the lamp store lead up to a fantastic little place to have a meal and beer. It's just like a scene out of the Anthropologie catalogue as it has a great balcony overlooking the city, with flowers and chic antiques and a very unpretentious but hip-vintage feel about it. As we walked up the stairs this time we were greeted by the scent of drying mint. And sure enough at the top of the stairs were two tables covered with the stuff. For lunch I had a cheese omelet which came with a side salad of mint and tomatoes and baby bell peppers. Peter had a plate of tomatoes (they taste like the true garden variety here somehow! not at all hydroponic tasting!). And of course, cherry juice (visne sul, I think is how its spelled). Peter has been there several times and this was my second. The location, atmosphere and food are perfect but the servers are sort of bitter and not very friendly. Oh well.
I stopped in this bead store and now want to design some jewelry as they had all the findings for some very fun pieces. Below are minaret tops from one of the copper shops in the area. For some reason, I thought minaret tops would be special order pieces but apparently they are not (I am not sure these are actually minaret tops or are modeled to look like such because the shops do have much larger versions of these which might be the real tops and these are something else?) A picture of a man stamping copper is further down.
Here is the textile store. The motifs on these are from the Hittite culture (I think - the tree-like symbol seen on the pink cloth is on a lot of packaging here on things here like certain brands of crackers and there is a deer sculpture in Ankara using these motifs). For more on the Hittites see these pages:

http://www.crystalinks.com/hittites.html

http://www.asor.org/HITTITE/HittiteHP.html

Ulus is filled with many, many people. These pictures do not depict the claustrophobic nature of so many people accurately. But, I had a much easier time this time round in Ulus with all of the people than I did when I visited in December. I think it has a lot to do with the mentality that this is a place called "home" by so many people, including me now, and I have to find a way to be comfortable in spaces that are really challenging to me since they now hold more than just the intrigue and spectacle of a tourist destination but are instead filled with the possibilities of a place to think of as a home.

I know I am in Turkey when...

At the grocery store, there is cherry-apple juice, the produce is fantastic and fresh, there are twenty kinds of nutella-like spreads but only two kinds of peanut butter spread (and Nutella is 1.65 YTL not 4.50 USD! which makes sense since Turkey is famous for its hazlenuts) and there is no ground coffee of the latin american variety to be had.

Cherries were plentiful and cheap so we bought butchuk or yarim (?) kilo. Which is supposed to be half of a kilo but ended up being more like 2/3 kilo.

We start hour long Turkish lessons 4 days a week next week. This will be useful as I only know about 10 words right now (including the word for beer which is biere) and cannot understand anything spoken to me except the simplest greetings.

As can be seen above, we have a lovely balcony that Peter has been lovingly tending and it is our favorite part of the apartment.

Below is a view of the Odeon theater on campus and some of the faculty housing on campus.

As I said, there isn't any latin american coffee readily available in either Real (the local big supermarket) or the Mertaksen (the local grocery on campus that stocks foreign favorites like lays potato chips, Heinze kethchup, mayonnaise, soy sauce, sesame oil and cheerios) so I had to do something very very bad... I had to go into the Starbucks! I know! The hypocrisy of it all! But I did try to adapt to the situation here by just filtering the Turkish coffee through a very fine sieve but it just wasn't quite right. And while I am willing to forego bacon and ham and the like (it is available here but VERY expensive), I need coffee. Coffee, that tastes like coffee to me.

So we went to the Starbucks. And yes, it looks JUST like any other Starbucks. The decor, the drinks, are all the same. Even the barista spoke perfect English. So I bought a french press and some beans and had them ground on site. And I felt better just carrying the familiar smell around with me for the rest of our time at the shops. There was an omen though. A reminder of my hypocrsiy and what it means - in Real (supermarket), a guy was wearing a tshirt that said "Starsucks: We'll break your legs if you don't drink our coffee." I am going to find out if there is somewhere in Ankara where I can get Latin American beans that are NOT from Starbucks. I just needed a supply ASAP. Oh addictions.

Below is the reservoir on campus which is about a 5 minute walk from our apartment. It's really lovely although there is quite a bit of litter around its shores on one side. But even that cannot detract from all of the wildflowers and the frogs singing their swan songs.

The long and short of it is, we are here and settling in and the adventures have begun! Check back to hear more about how I succumb to all western temptations but only after eating Peter's take on a mint salad he had in Amasra and drinking the local red wine! (The mint salad is really good - just make a salad as usual but use mint as the greens instead of lettuce). Goodnyden! (Phonetically for a North American, that is goodmorning in Turkish :)