Istanbul was once Constantinople

Once in Istanbul, I found my way to my friend’s place, got to see her for a few seconds as I was early enough to catch her on her way to school, and then crashed.  About noon, I woke up and decided to go sightseeing.  I was quite proud of myself for remembering so much of what Istanbul looked like and actually was able to get around fairly easily.  I strolled through the Spice Market, Grand Bazaar, through the Hippodrome, by the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, but quickly realized that I did not sightseeing alone nearly as much.  

Shots of the Spice Market/Egyptian Bazaar

 It was blazing hot, and I was sweating mercilessly, so I decided to add a new cultural twist to my adventure and check out the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art.  Sadly, the air in there was stifling, but I did see some beautiful art, including giant carpets, beautiful books, and some gorgeous furniture meant for holding Korans.  My favorite exhibit was the ethnographic area which recreated the inside of houses of various types from around Turkey.  It highlighted women’s work, like dying and weaving wool while also showing me how a yurt worked.  After that, I decided to take a real break and head to my favorite place for Turkish delight.  Yes, Turkish delight is real and is usually made of nuts (pistachios are the most common) covered in a flavored sugary gummy compound which can then be covered with powdered sugar or coconut.  It’s much better than that description makes it sound, and I have come to the conclusion it is soooo much better fresh than when bought in a sealed tourist box so I limit my enjoyment to when I can get it fresh.  I got a sample and some tea and enjoyed both as I watched a family struggle to make purchases.  They bought a lot, but the boys wanted everything, and the parents took forever to find a box they thought would survive an airplane ride.  I got there after them and still left first.

Tea and Turkish delight

Eventually I wound my way to Taksim to meet my friend.  When we met up, we strolled through the main street of shops, restaurants, and street performers and caught up.  Eventually we decided to find a place for dinner.  One lucky salesman found the magic words of “salad bar 6 lira”; beautiful words to two girls whose colons had suffered from a severe lack of vegetables for months.  We piled our plates high with delicious veggies and then shared a main dish.  We were two bednieri gogos (happy girls).  

SALAD BAR!!!!!!!

The next morning we set out to find an epic Turkish breakfast.  My friend is a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain so when I saw he had a Turkish breakfast recommendation near my friend’s place, we ventured over there.  It was not cheap for breakfast, but we stuffed ourselves with the various kinds of bread, cheese, pepper-covered vegetables, and honey butter while looking out over the water.   They also continually served you fresh Turkish tea, so I had seven.

Our amazing Turkish breakfast

Full of delicious food from the Kale Cafe

After we could eat no more, we walked along the waterfront, seeing all sorts of men fishing, swimming, and lounging.  We only saw one woman daring to go into the water, but we saw more of her than we wanted.  We passed by an old Roman fort and eventually made our way back to the touristy area.  One of my goals for Istanbul was to buy lots of scarves.  By myself in the Grand Bazaar, I easily got overwhelmed, but with a friend, it was easier.  It was still crazy hot, so we frequently tried to cool ourselves off with stops for fresh squeezed juice and even a trip to McDonald’s for the AC.  We met up with another TLG friend that night, went to a more local part of town, took a funicular up a hill, and paid too much for tea and a great view of the Golden Horn.  We wandered around that area a bit and then made our way down through some houses.  The only negative experience of the trip happened then, but it is much better described by my friend here.  I did feel special finally making it into her blog, since her blog was one of the more popular ones in TLG.  I also was unaware we had a certain reputation for misadventures, but, as this blog probably shows, we deserved it.

Getting over the incident, we found a place to eat.  We started talking and it turned into another fabulous Georgian night, where talking to expats whiled away the hours.  Unfortunately, once we stepped out of the restaurant, we were reminded we weren’t in Georgia anymore but in Turkey, where public transportation apparently stops about midnight and taxis are not as cheap or easy to come by.  We split a cab to a more central location, said goodbye to the one friend, and then, thanks to a family, made it on the last tram on the night to Taksim, where we again caught what was probably the last bus to my friend’s neck of the woods.  Once there, I showered and packed.  We did not get to sleep until past 2, but since it was my last night on my adventure, it was worth the short amount of sleep.

Thankfully I made it to the airport just fine the next day. For some reason, there were about 7 layers of security for American flights, but I passed them all.  After an extremely long day with no sleep, I eventually ended up in Springfield.  It took my bags another 3 days to get home, but neither will be leaving America anytime soon. TSA searched my bags but did not touch the chacha.  They did however trade my beautiful red leather belt for a red HTC battery, which I'm not so happy about.

Right now I’m just trying not to turn into a pumpkin at 10pm and trying to make decisions about my life here, so processing has taken a bit of a back seat.  This may be the last blog post, or I might have more reflections or extra stories I never told.  Either way, thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed the ride almost as much as I did.  It’s been an incredible year.

Mountain Adventures Sandwiched by too Much Time at the Tbilisi Airport

The Tbilisi airport is tiny for a national capital, but the even stranger part about it is that it’s busiest when all sane people are asleep.  I flew in at 2 and had a flight to Mestia, the capital of Svaneti at 11, so borrowed the free wifi and then headed to the Astroturf underneath the escalators.  Don’t ask me why there is Astroturf in the airport, but I joined the legions of tired travelers who have napped there.  When I arrived, the airport was bustling; by the time light shined through the skylights, waking me up, it had thinned. By the time I was supposed to be on a flight to Mestia, the place was deserted.  Thankfully, two friends had shown up by then.  Unfortunately, they delayed our flight for two hours before canceling it because there were too many clouds.  We knew that they canceled this flight regularly because of bad weather, but too many clouds?  Really?

Tired and unhappy, we had to go to another part of town to collect my money for the tickets, then get on a marshrutka to Zugdidi, whence we could take a Mestia marshrutka the next morning.  Somehow we won the baby lottery, or lost, more accurately, so we had about 6 screaming toddlers on our marshrutka.  They were pretty good once we got going but one mother decided the best way to calm her screaming child was to soothe her with lullabies. I would have been all for this except her idea of lullabies were Selena Gomez’s ‘I Love You Like a Love Song’ and Maroon 5’s ‘Moves Like Jagger’, both of which are terribly overplayed in Georgia and don’t soothe my nerves, let alone a small child’s.  Regardless, we finally made it to Zugdidi, only to find a storm had killed the power.  I had to scramble to find a place that would let me top up my internet so we could find a place to stay.  A while later, we found a hostel and they said they would call the marshrutka drive to pick us up there the next morning.  Finally, some good news!

I woke the next morning to a text from another friend who was supposed to come to Mestia to meet us.  Georgia was due for 3 days of storms, so he and his friend were putting their trip on hold.  Great.  Storms.

The storms next adversely affected our trip when we spent well over an hour on the marshrutka sitting on the road in the middle of nowhere because a storm had taken a chunk out of the road and sent it rolling down the mountain.  I was getting a sincere feeling Georgia was either mad at me for leaving or mad that I had returned.  Either way, I was getting punished.

Thankfully, when we arrived in Mestia, one of the people from our homestay came to pick us up and took us to the lovely home we would be staying in for the next few days.  2 friends who had arrived the day before soon arrived and then we were treated to a massive meal that exemplified Georgian’s culinary skill.  As the day was still drizzly, we just walked into town to check things out before coming back home.  The 10-year-old, Ananano (Ana) who lived at our homestay, also showed us their adorable kittens and bunnies.  I don’t like cats, but these were pretty cute.  I was quite happy when the bunny just let me hold it, even if it did get my white shirt dirty!  We ate another huge meal and called it a night pretty early.

Even I will admit this tiny kitten is cute.

We got up early the next day to hike to and past the cross, a walk people say is gorgeous.  Unfortunately, while the weather was cooperating enough to keep the rain at bay, the clouds were enveloping all the prettiest mountains.  By the time we made it to the “lake” at the top, the cloud was enveloping us, to the point that if we got separated, we could not see each other.  Still, we somehow managed to spend 9 hours hiking around some deserted and beautiful mountain areas.  We were exhausted by the time we got home so did not make it much past another delicious dinner.

View at the Cross.  Do you notice how the clouds block all the good stuff?

At the lake

 

The next day, one friend left early and the rest of us took it easy and then got a ride to Ushguli, the highest permanent settlement in Europe.  Some people debate that it is the highest settlement and another friend debates whether it is Europe, but regardless, it was pretty epic.  The ride there can only be undertaken in SUVs and other suitable vehicles because at times it is overtaken by water or landslides.  We stopped along the way to take pictures of the beautiful scenery and even got to venture inside a Svan tower at one point.  When we got to Ushguli, it was muddy and dreary, so we walked around a bit and then went to the café, thinking we would explore more once we had a cup of tea in us.   

Svan tower we stopped at on the way

Ushguli

Ushguli, with lots of Svan towers

 The place was deserted except for the two girls who worked there until we decided to order, when a Georgian man brought some tourists in.  Eventually, he started talking to us and we learned that they had a true Soviet collective going on. There was a Russian who lived in the Czech Republic, another one who lived in Moldova, a guy from Baku, and an Armenian (I believe), as well as a Georgian girl, who seemed to be their guide.  The Georgian man was from Tbilisi and, in true Georgian style, bought us wine, chacha (hard alcohol), and food.  They toasted us, and we toasted them.  The experience was delightful, very Georgian, and restored my love of Georgia after the past few rough days.  We spent so long in the café that we had to head home after that, but none of us minded since the café had given us an excellent Georgian experience and we could all feel the chacha. Once we arrived in Mestia, we were greeted by an amazing rainbow.

That night, at dinner, the family just kept bringing out food so our table was full of the supra stack-when you stack plates of food somewhat pyramid-like on top of each other because the table is not big enough for all the dishes, usually something done at supras.  Every meal we ate there was amazing and basically supplied me with all of my favorite Georgian dishes save two, but dinners were extra large.  We only ate 2 meals there and had no idea how anyone could eat 3.

The last full day we tried to go to the ATM but found that it was not working.  We walked around in search of Svan salt, a brownish mixture that I brought home but have yet to try, and Svan gum, pine resin that tastes kind of like furniture and sticks to your molars.  The experience was sweetened by he fact that we could only find the Svan gum at a 'store' that was really a converted van.  Being a small town, there was only one ATM in Mestia so we then headed home.  Thankfully, even after our purchases, we had enough money to get us all home so then went on another hike with little Anano as our guide.  She claimed we were going to see rive and “ice”.  Turns out, we hiked to the glacier friends had talked about.   While the glacier refrained from calving in front of us, it was still awesome to see water rushing out below the blue ice.  

Close-up of the bottom of the glacier

 Even though the hike was much less intense than the one to the lake, we were exhausted since our muscles were still aching from the hike to the lake.  As it was our last night, the host family had set out chacha alongside our immense spread for dinner, so I enjoyed one last night of toasting Georgian style.  We all grudgingly agreed to finish the bottle, since anything else would be silly, and commented on how strong it was since it made all of shudder until a few shots in.   

Dinner for 4

We had to wake up at 4:30am to catch the 5am marshrutka, which, of course, did not leave until after 6am.  It also tore down the twisting mountain roads, giving me one of the few severe bouts of nausea Georgian roads like to provide.  Thankfully I survived and we rolled into Tbilisi in the afternoon.

My last few days in Georgia were spent between Tbilisi and Manglisi.  Rain hampered me from doing too much in either place, but I got to say a few goodbyes, buy a Georgian cookbook, and soak up what was left of my Georgian experience.  At home, I mostly relaxed and spent a bit of time with my host family.  Saying goodbye to them was quite sad, but I got pictures with all of them except my host father, who was not home when I left.  About an hour before I left, my host family and favorite neighbor came in to give me gifts.  My host family gave me a clock, which is certainly designed for babies, that had a sweet message about good friends on it.  That’s why they had bought the clock for me, and I felt quite touched.  My neighbor gave me some apple-shaped toothpicks, and my host brothers gave me some beautiful but incredibly heavy drinking glasses. Somehow everything fit.  My host sisters and a neighbor walked me to the marshrutka.  Of course, it was one I had never seen before and was much nicer looking than most of mine, but the drive drove so fast that I hardly got to appreciate my view for the last time.  I ran a few last-minute errands and had dinner with friends, eating khinkali and drinking Georgian wine one last time.  When I got to the airport, I had to pay quite a bit for excess baggage but made it to Istanbul just fine.

TLG "Graduation"

On Friday we had a “TLG Certificate Ceremony”.  It was done in typical TLG fashion.  Last Saturday, an email invitation was sent out.  I read ‘Sheraton’ and the ability to take a free day off school to hang out with friends and agreed.  Others were much more reluctant, so there was a firestorm by Tuesday when TLG called to demand people’s presence at the suddenly ‘mandatory’ event.  Since it was the 2^nd to last Friday and people had things planned at their schools or travel plans for one of their last weekends, they were not pleased about the ‘mandatory’ nature of the event.  I was mostly curious as to how TLG was going to arrange transport for me as they had promised, since no one really lives near me.  When I saw that they were arranging transport from my regional center, I shrugged and figured I would just take my marshrutka into Tbilisi as usual, since I can easily get there but not to my regional center.  On Wednesday, my regional rep called to tell me that my director had been told she was responsible for getting me to my regional center.  Then, not one but two different teachers came over to tell me what the plan was.  My director does not speak Russian and both of the teachers do, but I have no idea why she sent two emissaries with an easy message.  Since it meant I had to be ready by 7 and my director had to hire a taxi to take us to Tetriskaro, I called my regional rep to ask if I could just get to Tbilisi on my own.  She freaked out a little, so I just agreed to go with TLG.

With two teachers coming to explain what was going on, my family knew I was going to Tbilisi.  My grandmother thought I was going on Thursday, so she woke me up at 6:30, asking me why I wasn’t awake.  I eventually figured out what was going on, told her I still had a day, and fell back asleep.  I woke up on my own at 6:15 on Friday, reluctantly got out of bed, and found that my grandma had gotten everything ready for me to eat breakfast.  She also ordered me to drink tea and not to leave hungry.  Have I mentioned I adore her?  I started eating at 6:45 and heard a car.  I looked to see who it was, afraid that a car this early could only have one purpose.  I was right; the car stopped at our house, so I quickly finished my tea, finished packing, and was out the door within five minutes.  My director tried to chat with me but I only know so much Georgian and was much more content that early to admire the gorgeous scenery.  We arrived at 7:40, 20 minutes early and were let into the regional Educational Resource Center.  After a few minutes, four other volunteers and their directors arrived.  It was interesting to finally meet the people in my region.  They were all male and lived in places I had never heard of, most of whom lived closer to another ‘city’ but were technically in my region.  It was nice to chat with them a bit, which we did until the bus finally showed up at 8:40, instead of at 8.  We then drove to Tbilisi so we could drive to Rustavi, the capital of Kvemo Kartli, and we picked up all the people from Rustavi, which gave me a chance to chat with more friends and people I slightly knew. 

Once at the Sheraton, we took a few minutes to register and then delighted in oversized coffee mugs and Western breakfast treats like croissants and apple pastries.  I caught up with a few more friends until it was time to “rehearse”.  Yes, we had assigned seats and had to rehearse.  This is when we all felt like it was a graduation.  We practiced walking on stage, had a few minutes’ break, and then watched the press pour in as the Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Science entered. They both gave good speeches in English, including the first legitimate total for TLG I have ever heard (over 1500 volunteers have come from over 40 countries), jokes about how the most TLG-Georgian marriages have happened with volunteers placed in Samegrelo, and how the program has succeeded despite a host of skeptics.  The press left with them, so the event became more a way for the TLG staff to thank volunteers than the press stunt we were all assuming it to be.  After a few more speeches, walking on stage for real, and a slideshow the staff had put together against a very fitting and very cheesy song about making a difference (TLG’s motto), we were unleashed into the lobby for more food and wine.  We were all hoping for Western food but got renditions on Georgian favorites that did not last long.

Thus, with a few friends, I went again in search of lobio khinkali.  This time we were successful, and it was delicious, although we agreed it would have been just as delicious as plain lobio or lobiani (lobio means bean so these are all bean dishes).  That night, four of my closest friends from my group and one friend’s girlfriend returned to the Machaxela next to our training hotel.  A long night of appreciating Georgian dancing, toasting with copious amounts of wine, feasting on food we could now order in Georgian, and reminiscing ended like one of the last nights of training: we headed next door to the beer garden.  We did not stay out quite so late as during training, but still managed to get in several more toasts and another khachapuri.  As several of us remembered that someone had requested “My Heart Will Go On” when we were here in August, we asked for the song to be played, the only time I probably ever have and ever will do that.  Thankfully, it now will remind me of Georgia and not merely middle school.

The day was a splendid one, and was a good reminder of all that this year has encompassed: making a difference in my school and community (I hope), making lots of good friends, having a lot of great memories with the people I’ve met here, and (hopefully) having grown a lot as a person.  I know I’ve changed a lot, especially since one friend said she couldn’t imagine me as anything other than a social butterfly, which made me laugh.  No one has ever called me that before.  A horrid experience in an expat bar recently reminded me of why I hate going out in America and made me question if all the boldness, risk-taking, and friendliness will disappear once I return home or if these changes are permanent.  Regardless, they have made for a wonderful year in a fascinating country with great friends.

A Visit from Home Prompts Reflections on the Idea

I was talking with a friend yesterday about leaving Georgia and our futures, and she said that Georgia felt like home.  I have definitely been thinking about that, even if the thoughts have not crystallized thus defined in my brain.  In many ways, my life in Georgia is not as comfortable as life in the West, but there is a comfort in the familiarity of it now.  I knew I could wait until a week before my friend came to visit to ask my host mom for permission for my friend to stay because it would be shocking for a Georgian to refuse a guest (of the same gender in terms of overnight guests).  I can tell by the landscape approximately where I am on my marshrutka rides home from Tbilisi.  I can apparently sing along to a Justin Bieber song, which would never be possible in America.  I can leave my possessions on a marshrutka without fear of them being stolen.  I understand most of the strains of conversation in my family.  Tea with cheese and bread is now extremely comforting and salads of tomatoes and cucumbers seem more normal than Caesar salads.  I have come to understand, at least in the ways I can, in the subtleties of life here.  There are still times when I feel as though I will not understand Georgian culture, but they often stem from not being able to fathom the why behind something or how Georgians endure what they endure, instead of a surface-level shock at customs and practices. 

Now that my days are numbered, I find myself clinging more to this little patch of earth. I feel as though I am clenching my fist around grains of sand, which slip through my fingers even more the stronger I try to hold onto them.

I had a delightful 2-hour impromptu visit to a colleague that shed a lot of light on who she is and how she’s interacted with me this year.  It made me regret not taking more of an interest in her before and also further clarified why my school does not feel as welcoming as other schools.  The teachers are always nice to me, but more and more, I find myself doing my own thing.  This colleague described the “collective” she had experienced at her other schools previously.  The Russian word works much better than the English, but in essence, my school lacks the community that is often present at other schools and other TLGers have described, mostly in that they are included in events.  My school does not have a lot of events or parties or even impromptu gatherings, and I’m more often than not totally clueless about said events when they do occur.  Granted, I am probably gone for most of them, but my school just isn’t that way.  It made me realize that my colleague, seeing that lack, was reaching out in order to be welcoming but also to reach out to someone else whose life existed beyond the small village we both now call home.

I also have realized how much I have come to love Tbilisi. 

This is the door that welcomes new arrivals at the airport.

 No, it lacks the flash of most major capitals, but I love its ancient buildings and run-down bits more than the newly rebuilt sections of town.  I smile when I see its monuments at sundown, take great joy in counting how many Orthodox churches I can see from a rooftop, and love that I can navigate certain parts of the city better than I can almost any stretch of Springfield.  I have realized that Georgia’s beauty to me is in its rundown, undeveloped ruggedness.  When international corporations splash their billboards along roads outside of the big cities, blocking views of unadulterated mountains and valleys, I think I will weep. I see that future in my lifetime, and I hope that Georgia does not lose that untamed quality that has preserved life from another era.  Yes, Georgia must modernize, but I hope that it does not do so at the expense of its history and natural splendor.

Old and new in Tbilisi

Old Town Tbilisi

As I knew it would, having my best friend come visit me gave me fresh eyes to understand how familiar and dear Georgia had become to me.  Before I went to the airport, a friend at my hostel told me she had a friend coming in about the same time.  She had described me to him and described him to me (Asian-North American) and figured we could split a cab, since otherwise he was just going to sleep at the airport until the buses started running.  I was more than happy to oblige, especially since it meant I had someone to talk to while waiting for my friend’s delayed flight.  It also seemed so very Georgian, or totally normal here but something that would never happen at home.  I will miss things like that, when the world feels very small in very good ways.

On the first day, I took her to Mtskheta, the ancient capital, and had my friend there be our tour guide for the day.  We hiked up to Jvari Monastery, since the climb makes the church that much more impressive.  It was easier than I remembered, and the walk down was aided in its loveliness by the kilo of fresh cherries we had bought in Tbilisi.  Then I introduced my friend to lobio and let her taste lobiani in its homeland.  We got to play the ever familiar “hurry to get the 6pm marshrutka home” game I play every week, and then I showered her home.  As we lay in bed, she turned to me and said, ‘I don’t know how you do this’, which I thought was funny since I had just thought about how impressed I was that she was handling everything so well.

The next day, I showed her around Manglisi, which was more a chance to catch up and talk like we always do than much of a tour.  It was a wonderful day nonetheless.  My host mom made mchadi that night, which was a special treat.  We had gone into the kitchen to say hello to my favorite neighbor and her daughter and found the cornmeal cakes sitting there and were told to eat.  I was pleased by this surprise and in general pleased that, although they did not interact a lot and I had to play translator, my host family and friend seemed to be happy with one another.  I then took my friend to school.  I tried to include her a bit in the first lesson and realized that most of my friends probably do every day what she was doing, sitting there (bored) until the teacher includes them in an activity.  It made me thankful that I was able to teach the majority of my lessons.  I also appreciated my friend’s presence because the fifth graders were very well-behaved, which is rare.  Classes were shortened, so I was surprised by the bell, since it was International Defense of Children Day (apparently that’s a holiday here but not enough of one to call off school altogether).  Then, I should have had a break, but instead we went to 2^nd grade, so my friend got to see the chaos that rules the school, and how I have no clue as to how most things will go until they happen.  The 2^nd graders were great as usual and invited us to attend their carnival later that day.  Since we now had extra time and no one ever invites me to anything, I agreed.  We ran home and then came back a bit refreshed.  My 2^nd graders are one of my favorite classes, so I loved watching them play games, dance, and try to make khinkali.   

The girls had to ask the boys to dance for the "White Dance".

The boys had to try to make potato khinkali.

 We snuck out in time for us to pack and eat some tea, bread, and cheese before grabbing the 1pm marshrutka.  I showed my friend the most important cathedral in Georgia, Sameba.  It’s shiny and new, but I still like it.  Then we met up with friends and got our marshrutka to Kazbegi so my friend could get a taste of the Caucasus mountains.  Since Georgia does not mesh well with plans, I had no place for us to stay that night, but even before we had left Tbilisi, we had negotiated a homestay.

Our homestay turned out to be wonderful.  We could see Mt. Kazbek from the house and had plenty of room.  Dinner that night was delicious.  When we told our host that my friend was a tourist and we wanted her to try chacha, her face lit up and she procured for us a half-full bottle of homemade chacha, to which we introduced my friend.  I was also so pleased that she got to see why I have loved Georgia, as we stayed up until almost 2am sitting around the dinner table chatting.

First shot of chacha

We got up early the next morning to climb to Gergeti Trinity church, by far my favorite church in Georgia.  I love it because it seems like a Georgian church ought to.  The light pierces the dark of the church, slicing it from a high window, creating a beam straight to the door, as if God himself was beckoning worshippers to enter.  I would have taken a picture, but the holiness of the church does not allow for cameras, cell phones, pants on women, or any leg at all, just reverence and awe.  The darkness, divine smell of beeswax, unintelligible incantations of the priests, and quiet adoration of devout worshippers give the church a holy presence I have not felt anywhere else in Georgia.  Perhaps the sacrifice made to reach it or the natural beauty surrounding it help. For whatever reason, I was glad to return and pray in a church where my prayers feel like more than just a flickering flame in front of an icon.

Gergeti Sameba Church

By the time we got to the Gergeti church, Mt. Kazbek was shrouded in clouds, but the views were still stunning.  We enjoyed them for a while and decided to keep on trekking, as we had risen early so that we could hike to a nearby glacier if possible.  After another hour and a half, my friend’s feet were killing her, and a few of us were starting to wonder if it was worth it.  When it started to hail, we staged a mutiny, and all but two of us headed back.

The marshrutka back gave us some friendly Georgians and an overly friendly (read aggressive and annoying) Georgian to chat with. We had to decline an invitation for khinkali (dumplings) and pretend to sleep to ward off unwanted attention.  About an hour away from Tbilisi, the annoying Georgian found a new crop of foreigners to talk to, as several newly-minted TLGers got on our marshrutka.  I got to talk to one of them for the rest of the ride.  Her three weeks of Georgian experience made me realize how far my understanding of the culture had matured.

Thus back in Tbilisi, we had time for the baths, the one thing my friend had expressed interest in trying.  We all were also in need of a good cleansing.  So, the three of us girls headed to the baths.  I knew the best baths were closed because construction had ripped up the street in front of them.  I also knew that the public baths were little better than public showers, so we were all willing to shell out a bit more cash to indulge in the luxury of the Royal Baths.  For 50 lari (about $30), we got a private room for an hour.  We paid a bit extra for a scrub or massage, which basically meant an overweight Georgian woman in pajamas took a rough mitt and scraped off my top layer of skin and then rubbed something that frothed with bubbles over me.  My friend tried the massage, and although she described it as being violated in ways she had never been violated before, she enjoyed it, and we all considered the hour a great success.  We then attempted to eat at a restaurant which had lobio (bean) khinkali, which blew the minds of all of us when we heard about it.  Khinkali are usually filled with seasoned meat, but potatoes, mushrooms, and cheese are also possible.  Sadly, the place was packed, so we stuffed ourselves at the Russian place nearby.  Exhausted, we called it a night.

The next day, I had made plans for three of us to go to Gori and Uplistsikhe, an ancient cave town near Gori.  Time and tired feet meant we only made it to the Stalin museum and the Cake House in Gori.  I got to play tour guide, since the actual tour guides were busy with actual tourists.  When I had gone in December, my friends and I made up half the visitors at the museum.  On Sunday, the place was full of tourists, which was rather surprising.  My friend, who does not share my love of things Russian and Soviet, did not seem nearly as intrigued by the museum and Stalin’s private rail car as I was, but I enjoyed taking her nonetheless.  

Finally got my picture on Stalin's toilet!

It seemed like I would be a bad tour guide not to show her this facet of Georgian culture.  I was also quite pleased to notice a banner that stated that the museum, which was full of Soviet glory, is going to be turned into a museum of Stalinism.  The museum, aside from what my friends and I like to refer to as the ‘cupboard of repression’ largely ignores anything but what are seen as glorious deeds of one of the worst slaughterers in the 20^th century.  That will be changing, another sign of positive steps away from Georgia’s dark past.

We ended my friend’s visit basically where my Georgian journey began.  I took her to the restaurant next to my orientation hotel.  We went to say goodbye to a few friends who leave shortly and to eat with others.  We went to that restaurant for sentimental reasons but also because they have a live band that plays Georgian music in an atmosphere of old Georgia.  I’m not sure how much my friend got out of the experience other than Georgians will go to dinner at a restaurant to dance.  I was reminded how much I love these aspects of Georgian culture.  I made her do a Vakhtanguri with real Georgian wine glasses and we introduced her to a bit more of toasting culture. 

 After dinner, we finished the night sitting on the rooftop of another friend’s hostel and admired the view of Old Town Tbilisi before crashing.  I will miss that view a lot.

I have already said goodbye to four good friends and am not looking forward to the many more I will say goodbye to in the next few weeks.  I do like that it means more hugs hello are coming my way, but the closer I get to leaving Georgia, the more I want to return sooner rather than later.

A Multicultural Existence

Oh, where to begin?  Less than five weeks left, the weather is gorgeous, I just spent the last 6 days having a great vacation out west and a bonus day in Tbilisi… 

So, here are a few scattered thoughts…

Wednesday was a holiday, so two friends and I took the rest of the week off to do some adventuring out west.  It was a great trip and showed me that trusting a 23-year old frat boy over my common sense sometimes leads to a great adventure instead of jail or death.  The trip will get its own blog entry later, but since I’m nearing the end, I’ve been doing more thinking and am starting to evaluate my year here, so you’re going to get another one of those blog entries.

One of the nights we were on a beach drinking and talking and I brought up something that had been bothering me since about my last blog entry.  All of my close friends here are expats.  This was also true in Russia, although I made some close Russian friends.  Why do I feel so compelled to travel halfway around the world to a foreign language and culture just to make friends with other people like me?  They told me it was normal. 

It came up a few days later with a friend from South Africa.  She pointed out that being here lets us meet people from other parts of the Western world we never would have met otherwise and would not have made friends with.  She has a good friend she met in Georgia who is from England, so now they both have an impetus to visit a country that previously held no interest for them.  Even the Americans I’m friends with probably would not have become friends, and certainly not good friends, back in America. 

Another friend recently wrote on the Facebook group page frequented by TLGers, asking if people who had eschewed laptops and ereaders had really felt that they had gained more by doing so, since connections with home make it harder to make connections here.  While everyone who answered obviously leads a wired Georgian life, all the responses echoed the sentiment that people got plenty of Georgian culture.  Obviously I’m not the only one who has been wondering about the expat bubble vs. Georgian immersion experience.

While I may not be immersing myself 24/7 in Georgian culture, I’ve gotten a multicultural experience.  I’m slowly learning Australian slang and realizing how wrong they speak English in England.  My knowledge of Singapore has grown exponentially and I’ve realized how different America does certain things from other parts of the West.  It’s made me much prouder to be from America, as I’ve defended certain aspects of American culture that seem strange to my friends but I hold much nearer and dearer than I thought.  Conversations about the Constitution, including incredulity that Britain exists without one and a conversation about the Supreme Court that ended at 5:30am, have made me appreciate the brilliancy of that document and how it has helped shape our national character.  There are plenty of things about America and Americans that drive me crazy, but there’s plenty that we’ve done well as well.

For Cinco de Mayo, my Peace Corps friend, Australian friend, and Singapore friend cooked food for about 20 people to celebrate.  It was a great snapshot of what this year has been.  We had a token American of Mexican descent to add some legitimacy to the event, but mostly we had a bunch of Americans and a few people other nationalities, including a few Georgians and Armenians, enjoying good burritos and stir fry (don’t ask).  I got to make guacamole and we made “sopeli sangria”, as one friend dubbed the village wine sangria we made (sopeli is Georgian for village).  Ten of us ended the night chatting on the rooftop of the hostel, overlooking the city and watching fireworks and paper lanterns float across the skyline while chatting.  It was a night I will remember for a long, long time, and one of the reasons I will miss Georgia so much, getting to spend quality time with so many interesting people with so many different reasons for coming to Georgia and views on life.

After the party, I felt I had to do something related to Georgian culture so finally made my way to the National museum.  Basically there is a floor dedicated to the Soviet Occupation and one dedicated to all the sweet stuff they’ve dug up around Georgia.  The Soviet Occupation museum made me consider for the first time the independent Georgia that existed between 1918 and1921.  While the Red Army had little trouble taking over Georgia, the museum catalogs other heinous deeds of the Soviets: the poets and writers shot, the thousands killed, the struggles to retain Georgian culture and language, the war against religion, and other crimes of the Soviets.  There are letters begging other nations for help, including one from the Khevsurs (a group of people in a remote mountain part of Georgia) pleading with the US government for help as the Soviets were forbidding them from practicing their religion and traditional way of life and vowing that they would fight until the last Khevsur was killed against the Soviets.  I’m sure they got no response.

The basement is a completely different story, filled with gold, silver, and other exquisite treasures dating back centuries.  Ancient Georgia was alive and well, trading with far-flung places in the known world.  It was nice to follow up a sorrowful visit with an appreciation of beauty and human craftsmanship.  The pieces were all amazing, some incredibly detailed, most well preserved.

Speaking of jewelry, I’ve acquired a ring that has become one of my favorite pieces of Georgia.  No, not that kind of ring, although I did get it from a man in my village.  A few weeks ago, I went to wait for my marshrutka to Tbilisi for the weekend.  I started talking to the woman who sold me the ticket and another old man who was waiting.  They figured out who I was, asked me all the usual questions like do I like Georgia and why don’t I get married to a Georgian.  He then told me he wanted to give me a gift.  After so many months in Georgia, this did not make me feel weird or guilty, as I regularly get things like flowers or candy now.  (Yeah, getting lilacs from students and random kids on the street is pretty awesome, in case you wanted to know.)  He then started taking a ring off his key ring and I thought it was going to be some stupid key ring like we have back home.  He told me it was silver and handed me a twisted silver ring that could or could not be real, but it is still something I treasure since he gave it to me simply so that I would think Georgians were hospitable.  Georgians may drive me crazy with a lot of their ideas and ways, but their hospitality is really incredible. 

The old man then told me that the Georgian language was the easiest language in the world to learn.  I tried to suggest that maybe that’s because he was Georgian, but he was adamant that it was an unbiased fact.  I decided not to argue the matter since I knew he was wrong and he knew he was right.  And it reminded me of the double-edged sword that is Georgia.  Of course, I don’t even know if I got his name, but I’ll remember him for sure.

I think I’ve expressed to many of you that I’ll be ready to go home when I go.  I’ve got several amazing adventures left, have loved Georgia, but I’m ready to go home for a while.  Part of it is that I long to cook my own meals made up mostly of veggies, go to the bathroom where the neighbors don’t know that’s what I’m doing, and just be me.  Another part is that the internet can only do such a good job of communicating the joys and sorrows of friends and family back home.  While I’ve had so many wonderful experiences here, there are ones I would have liked to have been a part of back home, for better or worse.  I’ve realized that there has been an emotional and relational cost of my penchant for strange countries.  I’m not saying I’m close to hanging up my hat, but I’m looking forward to sitting tight for a while and hoping for lots of visitors in Bloomington.

While that would be a good place to end this blog, I won’t.  I have to write about how lovely spring has made everything.  I am surrounded by green.  It is lush and lovely, and I am constantly stunned by the beauty of the earth in my little region of the world.  While I don’t love the 90 minute rides on Georgian marshrutkas that take me to Tbilisi every weekend, they give me at least 50 minutes to gaze on absolute loveliness, especially on Sunday evenings as the sun sets over the mountains or the valley is submerged in fog.  I love my Midwestern cornfields, but the sights of the area around Manglisi remind me again and again of the Georgian legend that God had reserved this place for himself.

So while on vacation, I left behind my laptop and found my phone only worked as an alarm (which I needed far too much for a vacation).  The 5 days free of connection to the outside world was a lot easier than I thought it would be.  Granted, I was too busy exploring, but it was a reminder that I need to unplug every once in a while since I am tethered to my computer so much.  When I got back to Tbilisi, too late to go home to the village due to our bus breaking down, I stayed the night at a hostel and used a friends’ internet connection.  I had a lot of unread emails but only a few important ones.  My Facebook account had weathered my absence just fine.  Without my laptop to write down thoughts, I had actually written in my travel journal, which is still not full after 5 years and 3 trips to the former USSR.  That night, having no computer or exhaustion to lull me to sleep, I borrowed a book from the hostel.  Having no real agenda for the next day, I sat on an outdoor couch, sipped tea, and finished the book.  It was an easy read, but the feeling of simply sitting and reading was absolutely delightful, and it had been so long since I had lost myself in a book like that.  Monday as a whole was a mental health day that worked wonders, but the experience also reminded me of what my life was like before it was invaded by the internet.  Of course, today, I’ve been tethered to my computer, so maybe the lesson isn’t quite fully learned.

Also, my workweek is about to get even shorter.  Yes, that is possible.  Apparently the ministry lets the 12^th grade out a few weeks early to study for the big national exam.  That’s understandable and should save my mother from having to yell at my sister each morning to get out of bed.  The ministry also lets the first graders out after this week.  I don’t really know why, and neither did my co-teacher when I asked her, but I think it has been like that for a while.  I can’t say I’m disappointed, as I don’t hate the class, but I also can’t say I’ve been that effective there.  Some of them are super cute, though.  But now I’ll be able to sleep in on Thursdays.  I can see the cute kids when I roam the streets instead.

Oh, and my upper grades are finally getting past the verb “to be” and into action verbs.  I like that a lot.  Taking a page from my high school German teacher’s handbook, I’ve made the kids do motions for the verbs to help them remember it.  I think they like it.  I also get a kick out of making them bark and meow and flap their wings like a bird.  I taught my 6^th graders Simon Says, and they now beg to play the game every class.  It makes me feel like I’ve done something I came here to do-teach them English, give them a slice of American culture, get them to remember something in English, and enjoy it.

Turkey Round 2: Part 7: My Idea of Heaven

In case it wasn't obvious what the focus in Rize was on...

 Even though I spent only a few hours in Rize, it has by far been my favorite place, probably because it is a city built on tea.  Caykur, the big Turkish tea company, is based in Rize, or at the very least is a huge presence in the city.  The soccer team is named after the company, the buses have the logo plastered on them, and there are tea plantations all around.  

Before we could go to tea heaven, however, we wanted to step into an interworld between Turkey and Georgia: Land of the Laz.  The Laz people speak a Caucasian language (Georgian’s language family) and have a distinct culture.  Turkish Laz and Georgian Laz have developed their own cultures, even though both are now only small minorities in their respective countries.  Off the main square in Rize is a Turkish Laz restaurant we knew we had to try.  It might be the coolest restaurant I’ve ever been to, since it was also a mini-ethnographic museum of Laz culture. We ate in the garden and felt as though we truly had stepped away from the city of Rize that buzzed by outside our oasis.  Thankfully they had a picture menu so we decided to split three things.  One was a cheesy fondue version of mchadi, a Georgian cornmeal treat.  Another was a mix of veggies and meat that tasted like a sausage pizza.  The third was cabbage leaves wrapped around meat and rice.  All three were delicious so we ordered two more dishes, one like a liquid omelet and the other like a gritty mchadi omelet crushed into pieces.  I know half of this makes no sense.  Just understand it was all delicious, and we had all enjoyed our Final Feast very much. 

Round 1 of lunch

The amazing Laz Restaurant, Evvel Zeman

We took a taxi up the hill to the Botanical Tea Garden, our second sight in Rize.  It would have been an energetic climb had we not been weighed down with our bags.  Regardless, at the top was not only a place dedicated to tea, but several beautiful flowering trees and spectacular views of Rize.   

Terraced tea plants and other pretty scenery from our tea spot

 We started off with a glass of tea each and then saw people next to us ordering a pot.  The really cool thing is that you get a pot of essence of tea on top of a pot of hot water so you can have several cups adjusted to your desired strength.  If there had been a beach within walking distance, I would have been in heaven and might have refused to ever leave.  Instead, I drank several cups of tea, admired the gorgeous views, and spent most of my remaining money on tea for me and others.

Making myself tea

The 4 of us in our tea oasis, with the tea pot as it came

With a brief stop to enjoy Turkish treats and buy some baklava for gifts (if it lasts past today), we found a bus to the border and eventually started our last bus ride in Turkey, a very bittersweet feeling.

Turkey Round 2: Part 2: Helpful Turks, Lesson 2 and Ancient Ruins, Lesson 1

Written on the bus from Izmir to Selcuk last night

I realized today that I had left out a few details about our first day of the trip and details on Turkey.  Our hotel happened to be right next to a mosque, so about 4am, I got woken up by the call to prayer.  Definitely don’t get that at home.

In Georgia, I sometimes encounter Turkish toilets, so they can be disappointing but I’m used to them.  And they are called Turkish toilets.  Still, from the moment we got to Turkey until we hit our apartment in Izmir, all I saw were Turkish toilets, including our hotel in Trabzon and the airport there.  Beautiful bathrooms with Turkish toilets.  Sigh.

On the plane, I asked one of my friends where in the city we were staying.  He replied he did not know, but it could not be that big of a city.  My other friend and I laughed and told him it was Turkey’s 3^rd largest city, and I whipped out my Lonely Planet to astonish us all with the fact that there are 2.7 million people in Izmir.  We knew that our adventure had just grown a bit more.

When we arrived in Izmir, we tried to find a café with wifi.  Although knowing they have to exist, we had difficulty and were so hungry that we finally sat down at a place with cool chairs (this tends to be the way we pick our fast food joints out of the many that Turkey offers).  Of course, we happened upon a place that served only a few items of food, so we got tea and toast, which was what they offered.  There were two old men sitting next to us, smoking their water pipes, thumbing their worry beads, perhaps the perfect picture of what I assume Turkish old men to be like.  That plus energy from food and tea set us off again, resigned to find an internet café in hopes our couchsurfing host had sent us directions.  She had not, so we told her we would meet her at 8 and set off for more food and again hopes of wifi so I could use Skype to try to call our host.  We wandered into the bazaar and were approached after a while of looking confused by helpful Turk #2 (these are only the ones I’m pointing out, but the majority of people we’ve met have been so helpful and friendly, like in Georgia).  He had lived in Norfolk, which pleased me greatly.  He tried to help us find an internet café (having not understood we wanted wifi, probably because of the age difference more than the language barrier).  He took us through the maze of the bazaar and eventually handed us off to a friend, who plunged us deeper into the maze.  Once he took us to a café that had computers, we explained we really needed to call a friend, so he whipped out his phone for us to use.  Our host confirmed she would meet us at 8pm, we thanked helpful Turk #3, and then decided it was time for more tea.

A note about the tea.  Although people probably think of Turkish coffee when they think of Turkish drinks, the Turks actually grow and consume quite a bit of tea, which more reason I adore this country.  Tea is frequently served in tiny tulip cups, so drinking several cups of tea at a time is just normal.  So far my record is 8 in a day, but that’s because I keep interrupting these tea sessions with traveling and sightseeing.  I’ll do better soon, I promise.

Once filled up with more tea, with more time to kill, we walked along the boardwalk in Izmir.  Now comes the note about Izmir.  Izmir is a big modern city on the Aegean Sea, built around a bay, with development all around.  It has a long and storied history, being the ancient city of Smyrna, home to one of the seven churches in Revelation.  It would be a much bigger player in modern Turkey (as in, a rival to Istanbul for culture) but much of the city was destroyed a little less than a century ago in a terrible fire.  The main draw of Izmir for me was the water, and it has a lovely boardwalk.

We walked along the boardwalk, grabbed our first real kebab and more tea (of course), before meeting our host.  She was a really interesting Turkish woman who spoke excellent English.  She had just come home a month before from studying abroad so had arranged for us to stay with her friends.  Her friends also owned a café, so she took us there where she fed us tea, chatted with us about Turkey and Georgia, and then invited us to play a game similar to mafia with the other patrons, many of whom were also friends.  These people were decidedly not your average Turks, but they were incredibly welcoming.  The long days of travel and chance to hear Turkish while trying to discern by body language who was good and who was bad, while still figuring out the rules to the game meant I did a horrible job playing the game but still had fun.  We then went to the apartment we were staying at and regaled them with more stories of Georgia before crashing much later than we had expected. 

We had a leisurely morning, found delicious pastries and tea for breakfast, and headed off to find the bus station to get to Cesme, a peninsula that had a castle and a beach.  Our host had told us that we could take a ferry to get downtown, where we could take a bus to said bus station, and all of us enjoyed getting to use a ferry as a form of transportation, especially as it was faster than taking the metro around the city.  We got off, took a while to find the bus stop we needed, and then realized the buses did not have all the stops written on them so we were going to have to ask for help.  A group of giggly school girls got off one bus and stood around waiting for another.  They were intrigued by us foreigners and clearly spoke at least a bit of English, so I asked them for which bus to take us to the necessary bus station.  Their English was limited but they not only got us on the right bus, but they got off with us at the bus station and found us the bus we needed (helpful Turk(s) #4.  Our bus left a few minutes later and drove through luscious countryside that would have made my jaw drop coming from Illinois.  Having survived a long winter, the green was a very welcome sight, but as one friend pointed out, the beauty of Georgia had made the beauty of Turkey a little less awe-inspiring. 

Once we got to Cesme, we oriented ourselves and headed for the beach.  I was expecting something with a bit more grandeur than what we found.  Next to the man-made sand beach, there were some beautiful rocks, so we decided to swim there.  Getting into the water was tricky with broken glass, slippery rocks, and cold water making getting in a challenge, but the reward was worth it.  After adjusting to the water, I relished the freedom of swimming.  I swam over to a small cove to investigate and then enjoyed the open, clear water, using my arm muscles more than I had in several months.  I marveled at the scenery around me.  Aside from the Caribbean, it is the most beautiful place I have ever gone swimming, and only my tired muscles and realization my friends were all swum out brought me back to shore.

We found more tea and I ate another kebab, since they’re cheap, tasty, and easy to order.  Then we went to climb on the Genoese castle but were disappointed to find out that it was closed, since the museum inside it was closed on Mondays.  We walked around it and then realized that it was starting to rain, so we headed to the bus station.  We had about half an hour to kill, so got more tea.  I decided to pop into the nearby grocery store for something sweet to go with our second cup of tea.  I quickly found baklava, had no problem ordering three pieces of three different types, and then had to wait for almost ten minutes while they struggled to weigh the pieces and price them accordingly.  I’m pretty sure they did it wrong, but I made it back in time to gulp down my tea, and we enjoyed the baklava on the bus.  At one of the stops, a man from the Air Force got on with his wife and two kids.  Having heard English, I started talking to him, and found out that he worked at the NATO base in Izmir.  It was interesting to get to hear another American’s perspective on the city, especially one with less of a reckless twenty-something’s Georgia-colored idea of the world.

We decided to head back to Izmir’s main bus station, thinking it would be easier to find and easier to get back to the city from there.  It took forever to get there and had no metro, but we did find the bus we needed to get back.  However, half the bus kept staring at us and trying to talk to us for half our ride until they eventually told us to get out and the driver had to walk us to another bus of the same number, helpful Turk #5 (although the whole bus helped).  As the bus station only has one stop for local buses, you have to know which direction you need and which direction that number bus is going.  We had no idea, but the Turks knew what we needed better than we did and graciously got us in the right direction.  When we finally got downtown, we walked around a bit, ate, and headed back across the water to our host.

We actually did a good job finding our apartment, but we had no way to get it.  We spent over an hour trying to find the café from the previous night, thinking our friends might be there.  While we did a good job retracing our steps, especially considering that our host had gotten us a bit lost on the way to her friends’ café since her sense of direction is about as good as mine, we did not find the café.  Instead, we parked ourselves at a café between the main street and our apartment.  While we drank more tea, I finally realized my Lonely Planet had the phrase “Can I borrow your phone?”, so one of the boys asked our waiter, our waiter immediately obliged (helpful Turk #6), and we contacted our host.  I always thought such phrases in phrasebooks were unnecessary.  I stand corrected.  Our host came over a little while later, paid for our tea, and took us into the apartment.  He then said he was staying elsewhere, so we had several hours with the apartment to ourselves to shower, drink, and let Wikipedia decided several of the debates we had had about various subjects since our trip began.

Having stayed up late, we still got up fairly early to hit Sardis.  We searched out another traditional Turkish breakfast and then made our way back to the bus station, where we easily found a bus ready to leave for Sardis.  In addition to the smooth ride and free water, this bus also served us tea, which made me happy. 

A note about Sardis, or Sart, as the current village is called.  Sardis was the capital of the Lydian kingdom several centuries BC.  They, like the Georgians, used fleece to sift gold, and might have invented coinage.  The phrase ‘rich as Croesus’ comes from King Croesus of Lydia.  Sardis was also an important city under Alexander the Great and especially the Romans.  It is another church mentioned in Revelation.  There were some ruins we wanted to see and separate ruins of a Temple of Artemis.  It took us a while to find the right road and we passed the ruins at first, since the only part we could see looked far too new.  We headed down the road toward the Temple with a bit of assistance from helpful Turk #7, since we saw a sign for that, saw a few ruins, and started getting frustrated that we had not seen any ruins.  There were some crumbled walls from some sort of fortification perched precariously on one of the two high hills, so when there was a small sign and a footpath, we could not resist.  One of the boys loves to climb on anything, and we all agreed it was a good idea to head up.  We followed the sheep paths up the hill until eventually one of my friends started laughing.  When we got up to where he was, we saw that we had stopped probably three minutes before we would have hit a very impressive ruined temple and that we had actually past the other ruins.  Thus oriented, we continued up the hill until we reached the ruined fortification.  The height offered a spectacular view, and two of us decided to climb up onto the fortification, which was awesome, except I ripped a hole in my jeans in the process.  A small price to pay for the satisfaction of climbing and the rewarding panoramic view.

We needed to hurry so took the fastest way down, strolled into the ruined temple, and climbed around.  We knew we had to pay for entry into the temple, but the area was not entirely cordoned off, and we had entered through the exit.  Only 2 other men were there, and the guard seemed confused when I paid him as we left through the entrance.  We were pleased to find out that our entrance was also good for the other set of ruins.  Part of these ruins had been reconstructed, hence the fact we thought it was too new.  The reconstruction looked stupid in parts but also made it much easier to imagine the city in its glory days.  There were some Byzantine ruins, including a latrine and row of shops, but my favorite part was the classical synagogue.  The floor still retained several mosaic patterns, which made my classical heart smile.  The ruins were in decent shape, so I could actually understand the structure of the synagogue.  I realized I had never been in a synagogue before as I imagined that some of the very first Christians could have worshiped in that very place almost two thousand years ago.  As I continued to wander through the ruins, toward the part that had been rebuilt, I ran into an English-speaking tour group.  I mostly ignored them, found my friends, and we headed back to catch the bus.  We assumed we needed to be on the opposite side of the street from where we were dropped off, but were greatly helped by this old woman on that side of the street.  She assured us we needed to come and sit on a bench with her if we needed a bus to Izmir.  She then motioned about being cold, so we all put our jackets back on.  She made me laugh since she had about six layers on and must have thought me crazy for my t-shirt and light coat.  With more hand gestures than words, she also asked if I was married to either of my two friends and instructed us all to put on jackets. When the next bus came, she flagged it down for us, serving as helpful Turk #8.

More to come.