It's been a whopping 3 days since I've posted something and a bunch of stuff has gone on since! I'll just go in chronological order more or less :)
Friday, July 6th - My Birthday
Our new favorite restaurant is Cafe Late and most of us found a new favorite breakfast item there. I had Sucukly Kacarli Melemen which was kind of like a really cheesey omelet with seasoning kind of similar to taco seasoning. I really liked it and I'm sure I'll have it again sometime soon. Later Aianaian and I went shopping in some of the shops in Eskisehir and I got a whole new outfit for my birthday from new shoes to new earrings. The first store we went to I found some sweet patterned pants that I really liked but I didn't know what shirt to wear with them so one of the girls working at the store helped me pick out what to wear. I later had to get shoes of course to match everything and another set of girls helped me pick out new shoes. Qianaian and I then went to get some earrings wehich she bought for me as a birthday. Everyone was super helpful but unfortunately I didn't realize until after my birthday that I never got a picture of the entire outfit.
I then had to get to class and boy was that a hot mess. We were working on our transportation projects where we had a topographic map and were trying to make a path for a highway but we kept learning more and more rules and exceptions as our Turkish friends found out about them. I wish we could give our tuition money to them instead of our professor but oh well. We then got out of there as soon as we could and I had to figure out some phone stuff (even though I still haven't gotten them to work), ate some dinner and I was super sleepy so I had to take a nap while the guys were pregaming for festivities.
I soon woke up, quickly got ready, had a drink that Agne gave me named after the capitol of Lithuania, and went to chill in one of the guy's room when all of the sudden the lights went off and a cake with candles came in. Everyone sang happy birthday to me and it was very unexpected! Our friend from our hydrology class, Baris, actually came up with the idea to make a cake and had his neighbor help make the cake. We pretty much don't have any silverware though so we served it in cups and had to eat it with spoons but it was still very delicious!
We then headed out to this place called Kafe Pi where some of the guys ordered flaming Absinthe shots of some sort which started out the night in an interesting way. I had one of those as well as some other free flaming birthday shot and they were pretty interesting. I'm not sure how but another birthday cake got ordered for me and it was also very tasty! A friend from our transportation class, Metehan, gave me a book, Tears of Love, which was a best-seller in Turkey in 2010. I also got some candies from Mehmet and was surrounded by some great people all night :)
The party eventually had to move to Del Mundo where we had more fun to say the least. Somehow our hydrology professor and his friend even joined us which was fun. We made one last move to the bar called "Up n down" but I couldn't really last that long there so I eventually made it home safely with mostly everyone.
Saturday, July 7th
I slept for a very long time the next day while most of the other people went out to the giant pool/man-made beach called Kent Park I believe. I guess I didn't miss too much because there were some kids pestering them pretty much the whole time. They were first asking questions about where they're from but then they were asking for money and wanting them to go in the pool so they could go through their stuff.
During the early evening five of went to the nearby park and tried to play Uno but it was too windy. So we kind of read and just talked while drinking Turkish tea and relaxing followed by some Turkish ice cream. The majority of us then headed out to see the new Spider Man movie which we liked. We had to reserve our seats when we bought our tickets and there was an intermission in the middle of the movie but other than that it was just like watching movies in America.
We had a bit of down time but then we headed out to play football (soccer) with some of our Turkish friends. I was the photographer/just watched because I would've been terrible on the field but it was still fun watching! They had the field from 1 a.m. till 2 a.m. and it was funny because I guess 20 minutes into the game the Turkish guys were saying how the Americans were better than they thought and were moving faster than they expected (they were probably tired because all of them are pretty much chain smokers over here). But it was a ton of fun and I believe the score was 3-1 :)
Sunday, July 8th - Seyitgazi Tomb and Mosque, Gerdekkaya Tomb, and Yazilikaya
We had to climb a bunch of stairs to get to the first place where there was a Mosque/worship area, an area for preparing and serving food, classrooms, and another place that use to be a Byzantium church that was later reformed. Within the worship area was the tomb of a very important person in Islam. From what I understand he stood up for Islamic beliefs and eventually died because of it. His body was then sent back to his place and I believe people found his tomb and decided to build this whole Mosque thing after...but I could be wrong about that last part. His tomb was next to his wife which was three times the size of his wife's tomb.
Gerdekkaya Tomb was interesting to see because it pretty much seemed like a random place carved out for some tombs. But there weren't any tombs in it because people in the 50's or so went through a ton of tombs trying to find gold I guess. We then decided to climb above the tomb because we wanted a better view of the area. Climbing it was kind of challenging but I would say it was worth it.
The best part of the day was going to Yazilikaya. It's known as Midas City I guess because at some point Midas was written somewhere so they assumed King Midas must have been there. There was also a place where a statue of Kybele, a goddess of nature, use to be with a bunch of inscribed stuff around it but we couldn't see it that well because they were in the process of restoring it more. But we got to climb this really cool part of Yazilikaya and took a bunch of pictures. It was crazy cool and the view was amazing!
We then walked around more and looked at more scenic stuff, ruins/outcrops, went into a small cave area, and just took in the beauty of the area. It's hard to describe in words and the pictures of course don't do it justice so if you guys ever get a chance to go to Yazilikaya and like to climb things I would recommend it!
Mehmet then had a nice lunch for us and then we headed back. It was probably only a 1.5 hour or so ride back and then we were all eager to post our pics to facebook. So to see all the sweet pics from today please check out my Facebook page! Oh, and we also came back to find that the cleaning lady came and she not only swept the floors (which was the biggest problem) she made our beds, organized the stuff on our tables and went above and beyond. We will have to thank her later.
That was obnoxiously long but I'm having a great time and I didn't want to leave any of the stuff that I mentioned out. Looking forward to another week in Turkey and then we head to Istanbul this Friday at 3 a.m.!
p.s. I don't know why there's that random part highlighted. I tried to fix it but then I was tired of trying to fix it...
No comments:
Post a Comment