Cappa Cappa Docia

This past weekend we took our last trip of our seven week study abroad to Cappadocia, Turkey. Cappadocia means ‘land of the beautiful horses’ of which we saw none. However, we did see four camels! They weren’t wild or anything and were used for tourist attractions to make money, but still, we were all told there are ‘No Camels in Turkey.’ Overall, it was a nice trip and we saw many different geological formations, cave dwellings, and traditional Turkish terracotta making, stone carving, and dancing.

Early Saturday morning we met our tour guide in Cappadocia at the sight of some fairy chimneys, formed from millions of years of erosion and volcanic activity, and old monk dwellings. Again this time the guide was better than the one from Istanbul. Ironically, we saw the guide from Istanbul at our first site. It was a little awkward since when we left him in Istanbul he pretty much said he hoped to never see us again. I guess I can’t blame him since we were falling asleep when he was talking and acting very disinterested (in our defense it was hot, we were tired, he talked very slowly and constantly repeated himself), but I digress. Unfortunately, all of the places we went to in Cappadocia have blended together and I can’t recall the chronological order of when and where we went, but we did visit many places including: Göreme Open Air Museum, pigeon valley, Üçhisar Castle, Turasan Wine Factory, Pot & Carpet Atelier, Onyx Plant, Kaymaklı Underground City, and Ihlara Valley among others. In all of the places we went there were many pigeon holes carved into the rocks that are used to harvest the pigeon droppings used as a fertilizer for the grape vines. Our guide was telling us that it sells for $12-15 per kilo! Time to invest!

One of the more interesting things we did was visiting the Onyx factory where we were given a demonstration on how they carve onyx into different figures, pots, and jewelry. Another was visiting a traditional Turkish pottery place where they mold, stencil, and paint terracotta pottery all done by hand. We were given a demonstration about how they make the pottery and Sean and Qianqian got to try it out. We also got to see some traditional Turkish dancing on Saturday night. During the belly dancing performance, the dancer brought some people from the audience on stage to ‘teach’ them how to belly dance but much to her surprise there was one Asian guy who was able to do the splits and every other acrobatic move that she did. It was pretty impressive to say the least and very funny. We also visited the Kaymakli Underground City in Cappadocia that is seven floors deep, although we were only allowed to go down to the fourth floor due to the risk of collapse in the lower floors. I guess there are over 200 of these cities in Cappadocia and it is thought that they were used by the Christians and other people to escape persecution from incoming civilizations. Our guide told us that they could live underground for up to three months!

Here are some pictures of where we went and what we saw:

One of the four REAL camels we saw (it's tied up).

Some fairy chimneys, kind of cool how they were formed.

Vince destroying nature, not really, but seriously, the rocks were very soft and you could easily carve them with your fingernail.

This place was called imagination valley. Can you see the camel?

They start out doing this...

...and end up making these.

Some dwellings carved into the rocks.

Traditional Turkish dancing.

A mosque (it was next to a chapel, crazy how Muslims and Christians can get along).

Some more dwelling places.

Mike taking a picture of me taking a picture of him in the underground city of Kaymakli (this was one of the bigger tunnels).

Ihlara Valley, the Grand Canyon on anti-steroids.

In other news, to catch everyone up to speed on what has happened over the past week or so:

• Last Thursday, Alex, Caroline, Qianqian, and I were interviewed about our study abroad experience. They asked us typical questions like “why did you choose to come to Turkey and Anadolu University,” “what do you like/dislike about the city of Eskisehir and Anadolu,” “what are some similarities between MSU and Anadolu,” etc. The cool part is that I guess our interview is going to be broadcast on Turkish National Television tonight at 6:45. Hopefully it turned out okay!
• On Friday, a majority of us went to the water park that is on the outskirts of Eskisehir. It was very similar to an American water park, just with slightly less rules.
• This week we all have our final exams. Mine are on Wednesday and Thursday and on Saturday I leave Turkey and will be back in America!