Green, Silver, and Yellow

I have officially been in Ankara for over a month now; I have a little less than five more months in Turkey.
I have settled into the duties of the co-op. Teaching the classes is very enjoyable; I learn something new every time I teach. Also, since the classes are all different, I must be adaptable and accommodating on the spot. I’ve also created a couple new jobs for myself. First, I have begun designing an English-language newsletter. I summarize five or six stories from the news and rewrite them in simple English. Second, I’ve started a homework club. The idea is to provide a space where students can study their homework and ask for help if they need. Third, we play some English boardgames, like Scrabble, with the students during free-time. Finally, I am trying to organize a charitable activity for student volunteers to do every week. Aysenur, from the External Relations Department, has already agreed to help me in this effort. I want to create a survey to ask students if they would volunteer once a week or twice a month. I will tell them that, typically, employers in the United States like to see community service on a résumé; hopefully this will pique their interests, since TOBB is a very demanding university and they are already overburdened with classes and homework. Teaching, new duties, and our access to free meals from our meal tickets has really made TOBB quite fun.
We have also been traveling and meeting new people. Two Sundays ago, we traveled with the Poles, the Erasmus club, and the External Relations Department (you know, the usual crowd) on a bus for three hours to Lake Abant, northwest of Ankara. First of all, I just want to say that the Anatolian landscape and climate are nothing like I had imagined. Not only have I had to scratch balmy, sunny weather from my understanding of Turkey, I’ve had to add New Hampshire-esque mountains. Lake Abant is in a mountainous region, with pine forests protruding from a snowy icing. It is surrounded on all sides by low mountains. The frozen Lake was okay; I believe it could have used some aesthetic recreational development, such as clear walking paths, hiking trails, and some pollution control. My friend Hakan and I did go on a hike though; while the others strolled around the two mile perimeter of the Lake, we trudged up a road that wound over a hill and out of the valley. The walk was scenic and peaceful; it was nice to be out of busy, smoky Ankara. At the crest of the road, we gazed into the adjacent valley; the sun was streaming in golden rays through the clouds and illuminating the rolling landscape. It was very picturesque. Hakan and I headed off the main road and tried for the summit; we found an unmarked footpath that ribboned along a ridge, giving us a perfect view of the lake. Then we found a really cool old tree with holes in the trunk that you could stick your head into and look out the other side. We returned to the road after an hour and hitched a ride down the mountain on a school bus full of Istanbul schoolkids and their parents who had just finished sledding for the day. The driver, I think, was a roller coaster operator once because he pushed the bus down the mountain at uncomfortable speeds. We made it back to our bus in time though.
This past weekend, I went to Beypazarı (a small note: the “i” without the dot is a Turkish character; it is pronounced like the “e” in French, or, phonetically, like “uh”). The town is known for its silver, carrot juice, and baklava. Let me tell you, the baklava was delicious! And the carrot juice wasn’t too bad either, though it was only carrots ground up into liquid. Though fun, this trip was more mundane than the Abant adventure, though it did show yet another side of Turkey. The village is incredibly old (it was on the Silk Road) and has the quintessential narrow, cobblestoned streets and architecture of an old town. Here again though, like in Ankara Castle, the houses farther from the center were old, decrepit, had collapsed roofs, and clearly belonged to the impoverished. During the ride to Beypazarı, we passed many houses in shambles, despite the clear modernity of the road we were traveling on. This just further demonstrates the uniqueness of Ankara from the rest of Turkey, as well as highlights the appeal of urban centers to the rural poor.

This past weekend, we met several international students and young interns, like ourselves. On Friday we made traditional Dutch pancakes with a group of Turkish-Dutch (TurDutchen, as I refer to them) interns working in various social service and political fields in Ankara. We also got to meet a fellow American (Dwayne Warren Nelson); it was nice to speak easily with a countryman. Then on Saturday, we went to an Erasmus party, which hosted students and interns from no less than nine different countries, all speaking with varying degrees of proficiency in English.
I do have two pieces of good news: next weekend, I am going to visit Emily in sandy Cairo, Egypt for a week. Secondly, I just learned that I am going to Ghana for the month of July to do a Northeastern study-abroad program called “Dialogue of Civilizations” in order to study globalization in a developing, post-colonial country. This is going to be quite the summer!

P.S.-- all my photos are available on Facebook, with inspired titles such as Turkey1, Turkey2, Turkey3, and Turkey4.