de muchas y otras cosas

regresando del valle

Estoy en un bus con musica en árabe a todo volumen, la gente fumando por todos lados. Estoy siguiendo un camino de cabras, visitando monasterios antiguos en el valle sagrado – Qadisha. Estoy comiendo falafel con menta; zatar con tomates y olivas. Estoy de bar en bar, todos chiquitos y con mucha personalidad. Estoy en hamamsabandonados hace cientos de años. Estoy en ruinas increiblemente preservadas, de todas formas y tamaños. Estoy entre cedros nevados. Estoy caminando a la par del mar. Estoy oliendo jabones hechos a mano, de mil esencias, sus tinturas pintandome la mano.

pan bolsa?

Estoy compartiendo musica, dulces y otros sabores con muchas personas de muchos lugares. Estoy en cuevas más grandes de lo que jamás hubiera imaginado. Estoy perdiendome en souqs de todos colores, en lenguas extrañas. Estoy en Beirut. Estoy en Líbano.

una tarde en la playa

el mar

 

 

 

 

 

la vista desde las montañas, el mar a lo lejos

Traveling with a group of six girls is a bit of a hassle and a lot of fun: way too many unwanted attentions and just the right amount of gossip to have a blast in another three-day-weekend adventure.

This time we flew south to the land where St. Paul, the Virgin Mary, Marc Anthony and Cleopatra all lived in at one point in history.

We visited Mary’s house, which is surrounded by beautiful olive trees, and even though I am not religious it was impossible to not appreciate people’s faith as they came from all around the world to touch the holy water from the fountain and write a wish to entrust the virgin with.

The Ephesus library

That same day we walked for hours in Ephesus, simply amazed by how people so many years ago could build such monuments. It’s all very well preserved, but only 15% of it has been uncovered until now. The library (which is the best known building of the site) was all that it promised to be: tall and standing -as always. My favorite part? the public bathrooms, the 24-thousand-person theater and having a well deserved Efes (the most popular Turkish beer) in Ephesus.

After a beautiful sunset at the beach we were met at the hostel by one of the best turkish dishes I’ve had so far -which of course included eggplant- a fire, a pool table and backgammon.

Cotton Castle

The next day we visited a unique geological formation, Pamukkale (literally Cotton Castle in Turkish). Also called ‘White Shelves,’ this place is a natural wonder of calcium deposits and about 50 other minerals that have covered the mountainside in a white-ish rock that could easily be confused with snow if it wasn’t surrounded by palm trees. A city of about 100,000 people developed around this area in the greco-roman times and the pools of warm spring water were believed to have curative qualities -which meant that a lot of old rich people moved there and that today there are a lot of beautifully carved sarcophagus(es?). This was also the city where Cleopatra had a very special venom developed to kill her sister Arsinoe so that, ironically, she wouldn’t suffer in the process. Today we call it arsenic.

The last standing column - with what must be a very fertile family of birds living on it

On Sunday morning we visited one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the one remaining column of the Temple of Artemis, goddess of war and fertility (hoping that we wouldn’t be blessed by either of her qualities!) and in the afternoon we headed to Izmir. Izmir is the third largest city in Turkey but it was cloudy and windy when we got there and it didn’t seem very impressive compared to Istanbul. Even so, we had a very relaxing afternoon drinking çay by the sea and having a small backgammon tournament which, yes, I did win.

Finally, we took an early flight on Monday, took a cab back to Europe and made it just in time for our 12.30 class!

Google Map... It

As nice as the Koc campus is, we can all get a little lazy when it comes to taking two buses and a metro to be in Taksim (downtown). So this weekend three other girls and I decided to find a hostel and stay in the city centre.

We stayed at a really nice hostel called Neverland, full of bright paintings on the wall and signs saying social justice slogans like “It’s just asylum, give it away.” I loved it. The neighborhood was really nice too, we found a nice little place to eat nearby and it was definitely walking distance from Istiklal, the main street.

Istiklal is something wroth seeing. It’s huge and always crowded, kind of like Vancouver during the olympics – except every day. At any time. I mean 4 in the morning and still crowded. It’s like you’re in a school of fish and if you try to walk on the wrong side people will hit you from all sides and not even realize it. It’s also always decorated with lights like it’s Christmas, which I find very funny because Christmas is not even celebrated here!

All around Istiklal there are little streets that brach out and become dead-end labyrinths, and exploring them is basically what we did all weekend. We found an amazing area with tons of vintage clothes stores, had delicious minty lemonade and walked into a homemade turkish vegetarian food place!!! it was AMAZING.

On Thursday we (they) had fish by the Bosphorus, on Friday we got lost in second-hand stores, on Saturday we saw the most amazing view of the city at night from the Galata Tower (the oldest tower still open in the world!). We danced all night every night- and even found a latin club that will be seeing lots of me from now on!

Last weekend we went to Cappadocia and saw crazy rock formations with houses built into them, next weekend we’re heading to Izmir to see one of the best preserved ancient greek-roman cities, Ephesus. In November I’m spending 10 days in Lebanon. Classes are good, even my Turkish is slowly improving. Go Global, I love you.

Rock houses in Cappadocia

Rock formations in Cappadocia

View from the Galata Tower at night

I'm a fish in Istiklal

This is where we eat

It’s my third day of class and I ‘m already behind on my readings. I’m sorry 80-pages-of-turkish-history-due-tomorrow, you’ll have to wait until I write a blog post.

Classes have been as good as can be expected so far, except for the fact that I had to figure out how to work the library all over again. There’s one class that I’m not really a fan of – Research  Methods in the Social Sciences, but I have to take it for a geography requirement, so I guess I should try to stay positive about it :) Apart from that one I really like all my other classes, especially one called Islamic Cities (for which I also have a lot of readings!!)

We’ve been doing some serious tourism in the old part of Istanbul and it is just beautiful. Also, I swear that everyone parties as if it was New Year’s every night here (or maybe it’s an exchange student thing?).. I’m not sure, but yesterday I couldn’t do it anymore and I slept for 15 hours non-stop, it was awesome.

I got an email today from my RA and thanks to google translate I could get the overall message. I think it’s a good example of how Turkish grammar is different from English/Spanish/any language I know a bit of…

“Welcome to the West to the Fatherland [West Campus]. Peaceful, quiet geçirmemizi [?] I wish the fall semester. Building A6, and the remaining 148 people for 4 months of each other’s neighbor, and friend, we will be.
A6 building, 2 RA (Resident Assistant) has been working student.
Gülsen Living - A6 108
Pamela Karatas - A6 308
You’ll want to help our students in any respect from me and the RA.”

In all seriousness though, I’ve started to really really like the sound of Turkish. I especially like the way they say my name, making a long e, like “valeeeentina.”

I’ve got my first Turkish class tomorrow and I can’t wait!

Buyurun is an all-purpose turkish word. According to my pocket-sized dictionary it means ‘Please!’ My Turkish Survival Guide says that it can also mean any of the following words and phrases: ‘welcome’, ‘please come in’, ‘sit down’, ‘there you are’, ‘how can I help you’, and ‘would you like anything else.’

I’m sure that it has more meanings and it is definitely the all-time favorite turkish word. Unfortunately I still don’t feel confident enough in turkish to use Buyurunn, but hopefully I will soon!

Here’s a taste of this amazingly beautiful city, I will post more soon :)

Hello from Turkey.

After a 20 hour bus ride from Corfu -on the fanciest bus I’ve ever been in – I arrived to Koç early Friday morning and happily proceeded to sleep all day. I’ve settled into my dorm room and fortunately my roommate is not here yet, as (of course) most of my things are still on the floor.

I haven’t seen the city centre yet, but Koç has a very nice campus. Everything is very planned. It’s all new and it all matches and everything seems to be in the perfect spot. The dorms are definitely much nicer (and cheaper) than the ones in UBC – if Marine Drive had dorms they would look like this. We even get a mini fridge!

Until now I haven’t really felt like I’m in a university… It’s more like a very fancy resort with ocean view. Every time you walk into the campus (or take the bus) your ID is checked, and they have cameras and security agents everywhere (I’m not quite sure of how I feel about this yet). There’s a pool that is nothing like the Aquatic Centre at UBC but totally amazing – it has beach chairs and umbrellas and such a vacationy feel about it that I find it hard to believe that in a few days I’ll be taking classes here.

Orientation starts tomorrow and exchange students have been arriving at all times for the last two days. They’re easily spotted as the somewhat awkward circles of english-speaking people. I’ve been meeting lots of people, mostly from Europe and the US. I also met a girl who says ‘eh?’ at the end of every other sentence !! Guess where she’s from :).

Luckily I’ve met some other vegetarians, so we’ve been navigating our way through the food options, slowly figuring out the turkish words for food we don’t eat. On that note, my turkish sucks. I clearly remember writing a to-do-list for the summer that had ‘learn turkish’ as item number one. What a fail.

And so life is good and now I have to get ready for dinner – we’re going down to Sariyer, the closest town (city?) to Koç. I promise to post some pictures soon!