Sibel and Yağmur

Here are some pictures of Sibel and her daughter Yağmur, who are our Turkish neighbors who speak almost no English. That hasn't stopped us from having some fun times with them, though. Sibel's son and husband weren't around when we took these pictures, or we'd have some of them, too. These pictures are kind of old (late September).

And although many Türks are fanatically devoted to Atatürk, footage of him isn't permanently on the television, Big Brother-style. It's just a coincidence that there was a commercial showing him when I snapped the fourth picture. Really.

Sibel and Yağmur

Ephesus

Here are some ancient (pun intended) pictures of Ephesus (Turkish: Efes). Yes, that is the Ephesus that we visited back in roasting-hot August. Somehow our pictures from that trip never made it up here.

Efes

Pictures from US Trip

Taking advantage of our NEW HOME INTERNET ACCESS, I am going to post a backlog of pictures.

Here are some pictures from the day I spent wandering around downtown Chicago while I was waiting for my work visa from the Turkish consulate:

Chicago

And here are some pictures of my family and Barb's family from when I was in GR:

Family

The Greatest Day in the History of the Internet

So, guess where I am right now.

I am sitting on the couch in our apartment. Why is this worthy of a blog post, you ask? Because, as you may have noticed, I am also using the internet. Yes, the long-awaited day has arrived: we now have internet access in our apartment!

So, now I will have to find a different excuse for why I post to the blog so infrequently.

Yay for şarap!!

So this weekend something amazing happened. Chris and I actually left AND returned to Izmir WITHOUT ANYTHING GOING WRONG. whoa. Let me say that again. Nothing went wrong! So those of you who thought you'd read about our latest disastrous trip, sorry, you're SOL. Not only did everything go right, I got wine out of the deal too!

So we kept seeing the name Şirince on wine bottles and hearing the name from Turks who said it was an amazing little wine village. Well, you had me at the word "wine" so we've been trying to arrange to go there for, oh, two months or so. We always wanted to go with people, but it never seemed to work out. So I finally had enough waiting, and laid down the law, which stated we were going this weekend, come hell or high water. (Plus we were down on our wine stockpile.) After quizzing 3 different people about the possible ways to get there (we've learned our lesson- NEVER trust anyone's directions, ALWAYS double-check, and ALWAYS ask multiple people), we decided to take a dolmuş (a mini-bus basically, and super cheap!) from Uçyol (near our apartment) to Gaziemir, and from there another dolmuş to Selçuk, and then a third one to Şirince. Since Chris walked up to Uçyol the night before and checked, we knew we could at least get the first dolmuş. So we did, and wow, it went flawlessly! Lots of waiting (the total trip was 2.5 hours) but we didn't mind, since we didn't have much else planned for the day.

Can I just say that Şirince is beautiful?! Of course, I forgot our camera in my anxiety and misgivings about just what would go wrong this trip ( I don't think I believed that we'd actually get there). So sorry, I only have pictures on my phone, and Chris will have to figure out how to get them onto the computer and then onto the blog, and I'm really not even sure if they're big enough to do that with. Anyways, yes, it's gorgeous. Up in the mountains, with white houses and wooden shutters, stone streets zigzagging throughout the village, and a very intimate feel. Of course, there were a billion tourists, which (going on a tangent for a second), I really felt annoyed by and disgruntled towards. But then again, how can I be disgruntled since (a) I am a tourist as well, (b) I couldn't have gotten there if there weren't tourists and a demand for dolmuş routes there, and (c) it has made it so many villagers speak English, which was nice to hear. But I'm sure you all know how yicky and disappointing it is when you expect to have some space to breathe and end up jostling with tourists and looking at hideous trinkets for sale everywhere. But I digress, sorry

So yes, it was gorgeous, and we tasted and bought bunches of fruit wines, as well as some merlot. We even got some homemade merlot, so this should be interesting :) We were only in the village for a few hours, but we enjoyed our time there, especially the church that has been excavated and restored. Then, later, we found another one, although this one was earlier in the process of restoration, so it was pretty rough. Who knew there'd be room in this tiny village for not just one but TWO churches in antiquity? Cool stuff.

Well, enough for now. This weekend is Pammukale, which I'm sure I'll have more to write about (3 day trip vs 1 afternoon) and some pictures.

Archaeology Museum Pictures

As promised, I am posting the pictures from the Archaeology Museum. I must give credit to Barb for helping out this time. I took most of the pictures and set up the album in Picasa, but she added the captions and did the actual uploading, since she had our laptop at the office, where they have internet, unlike at our apartment, where we still don't. (We're making progress on that front though! Going to get residence permits tomorrow so that we have proof of address, which we can use to get internet service. Woo hoo!)

Archeology Museum

YAY! We DID something over the weekend!

FINALLY, I have something to write about! So, since Chris and I no longer work weekends (have I mentioned how truly wonderful and free I feel since getting back to a 5-day workweek?) we decided to do something this past weekend. There is an archeology museum in Konak, just a short bus ride from our place, and since I pass it every day on the bus, we decided to go there. As is the usual MO, Chris will post pictures at some point in the future. (I'm not promising it will be the near future, but he will post them!) Let me describe some of what we saw. Since there are no pictures, I will use the thousand words instead :D

Part of the museum's collection is actually outside, which I thought unusual but pretty neat. They have a whole garden area with stuff placed in them like a Roman sarcophagus from the 2nd century AD, a HUGE amphora, and (my favorite) a statue of a barbarian!!!! (You all know I LOVED the barbarians in my history classes!) They also had another section that was less garden and more just stuff displayed. These included a row of statues, pillars, relief carvings, and more sarcophagi (wow, I had to look that up, what a weird-sounding word!), which were really neat. We also met a cat who decided she loved us. I've never had a cat who almost knocked me over because she pushed so hard against my legs as she was weaving in and out of them. Eventually, however, the cold got to us (ok, me) and we headed for the entrance.

We didn't make it inside before we made more feline friends. And a dog. Seriously, this place was FULL of really sweet animals, all of who looked well-taken care of, which is unusual here. Chris managed to drag my increasingly-freezing body away, and we explored inside. It was pretty sweet inside, smaller and more delicate items than outside. There were 2 floors, one of which was ceramics (zzzzzzzzzzz: I can only look at so many pots, then I stop caring), the other which was more statues, smaller accessories, and more delicate carvings. There was also a mosaic that they're working on, although we couldn't get close to it and it was covered.

What was probably the coolest thing though was that all of this stuff was SO OLD, when we saw stuff from the 19th century, which would have been amazing in the U.S., we didn't even bother to look; it wasn't old enough. Some of the ceramics were even 2nd millenium BC, which kind of blows my mind. So much of this stuff was worn, but still perfectly recognizable as to what it was. At the risk of sounding hallmarky, it was quite moving. To think that someone who lived thousands of years ago actually touched this, carved this, and although they're long ago dead, I can see their work, appreciate the beauty. Makes one think about the big picture, and how we fit so small into it. So what do we have to show for ourselves that people will look at later on? OK, enough of that. Sorry, I go off on these little random wonderings.

We were thinking about leaving when a crowd of school kids poured in, which quickly made our decision for us. Back out into the cold we went. The two cats we'd met when we came in returned, and one of them almost came home with us. She was pregnant though, and although Chris is more seriously considering giving in to my pleas for a kitty, he also knew getting a pregnant one wouldn't be the best idea. So we're waiting 2 months, and then going back, and this time she WILL come home with us!

So that was our excursion this weekend. It was a good thing we picked Saturday to do it, since Sunday it rained. November is their rainiest month, and it's been proving it so far. Cold and rainy, although it's been a bit warmer today. We're hoping it'll hold off for this weekend long enough to go to Şirince for wine tasting and exploring.

Anyways, sorry to cut this short, but I have a student coming in 15 minutes, and I should probably consider getting ready for them. Start bugging Chris to post pictures, they're much cooler than my talking about them. :)