Kapadokya/Konya part 1 - the "Me Talk Pretty One Day" edition

For a brief summary of my Kapadokya/Konya trip, here is a direct translation of the essay I had to write in Turkish in class today. (Translating it into English was actually kind of useful, as it helped me realize how bad my stylistics are. Still, I'm kind of proud that I could say all this in Turkish. I guess this whole living-in-Turkey thing is working.) I will post something more substantive and with pictures later.

I didn’t know anything about Cappadocia before. So I learned a lot this weekend, because we went to Cappadocia! On Thursday morning we all got on a bus and met Mehmet Ali Bey. Mehmet Ali Bey was our guide. He is an English teacher and he speaks very good English.

First from Ankara we went to the Salt Lake. This lake is very beautiful because its floor is made of salt. The salt is not white, it is pink. We stayed at the Salt Lake for fifteen minutes and then we continued going to Cappadocia.

We had lunch in Cappadocia. The restaurant was in a fairy chimney, in old times it was a monastery. The food was good but I had no appetite because the weather in Cappadocia is very hot!

After lunch we went to an underground city. Cappadocia’s underground cities were built by Hittites and Byzantines. The Byzantines were Christians, and they hid from the Arabs in their underground cities. I really liked the underground city because it was cool inside and very interesting. The one we went in had eight stories.

After that we went to the hotel, and before eating any dinner we went swimming in the pool. After dinner we went to bed and immediately fell asleep because we were all very tired. (There was actually a part that I didn’t write about in my Turkish essay, because it involved drinking a bottle of vodka in someone’s hotel room and I didn’t think my teacher probably wanted to know about that.)

On Friday we went to the Goreme Open Air Museum and saw a lot of Byzantine churches. The churches are special because they aren’t in buildings – they’re in caves! They are more than a thousand years old but the drawings (here the word “fresco” would have been useful) are still colorful and beautiful. After that we went to a pottery works, but I didn’t buy anything because Nilay said there is more beautiful, cheaper pottery in Ankara. In the afternoon we went walking in Pigeon Valley. (I did not describe how the girls wearing skirts and flip flops almost mutinied because we had not been warned that there would be anything resembling a hike on the itinerary.)

After that we went to a caravanserai. I really, really liked the caravanserai because we got there toward evening, so it wasn’t too hot. Also there was a beautiful courtyard. We all rested a little, and then we watched whirling dervishes. Their ritual was very beautiful. Two of the dervishes were younger than I am, and I didn’t expect that at all. I thought all the dervishes would be old men.

On Saturday we went to Konya. Unfortunately, I didn’t like Konya at all. It was very hot and we were all very tired, and our guide was very bad and spoke no English. God willing, I will be able to go back to Konya someday and I will enjoy seeing Rumi’s tomb very much!