Monday, July 09, 2007

Summer in Moldova

Jason wrestling with my host brother and old host brother. They love that he is here because now they have an "older brother".
A fun sequence of Jason jumping of a wall at Orheiul Vech.







Maybe you are curious what I have been up to lately. And maybe not. But I am going to tell you. So for starters, the weather has been 80-90 degrees and sunny everyday since May. Therefore I have been outside doing something every chance I get. I have been spending almost every weekend travelling around Moldova visiting other volunteers and seeing the sights. Moldova is so beautiful right now!!!! The fields are full of wheat, sunflowers, and corn. Though we have all been loving the sun and heat the main topic of conversation is the horrible drought we are having. The Moldovans are not happy that their fields aren't growing and the strawberry season came and went in a week providing only small green things. The price of peppers has skyrocketed to an all time high of 100 lei ($8) a kilo. All of the produce available has been going up in price every week. We have been getting thundershowers on a somewhat regular basis but it only rains for 20 minutes or so before the sun comes back out to dry it all up.


The Sunflowers!!!! Me, Jason, and Annie

Me, Annie, and Jeff at Orehiul Vech
Me, Jason, and Jeff

Jason, Annie, and Jeff at Orheiul Vech
Well, on a positive note, my organization just won a big grant to build a fitness center! We are all very excited and it should keep me very busy keeping an eye on the renovations and money spending. Other than this life has just been normal here. I have been teaching English 3 days a week and I have art and knitting class.


The 4th of July was a blast, the 3 different times I celebrated it. On June 30th the American Chamber of Commerce organized a big party for all the Americans in the country. We got together in Chisinau and hung outside all day. The food selection kind of sucked, I got one bite of pork chop and then only got veggies. But there was plenty of beer and wine! They ran out of water half way through the 8 hour party in the hot sun. Then on the real 4th I had a BBQ at my house. My host family was out of town and I invited all the volunteers who live around me over to grill and have fun. Then on the 5th I was invited to the Ambasador's house for a party there. Only 8 of us volunteers were invited to go eat wonderful food ans shmooze with the embassy staff and big wig Moldovans. It was a bit intimidating I have to admit.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Cappadoccia

This was my ultimate favorite place!!!!! I am tired with writting this blog and will finish explaining later, maybe.


















Kas

After our relaxing time in Selemiye we bused it to the amazing town of Kaş. We are finally on the Medetrannien (spelling is wrong, I know, but the version of Blogger I am using is Romanian and it won't spell check in english) coast. We spent three days and three nights here. One day we explored surrounding towns, one day we sat in the suna nd swam all day, and i don't really remember what else we did. Probably a lot more relaxing and exploring.

There were tons of sail boats in the harbour from all over the world.



Our hotel is on the left side of the picture. It is yellowwitha turquoise stripe. Our room was the upper right hand corner. We had an awesome view from our balcony. In kas there were no sandy beaches, just rock. So they built these platform things that you see in front with latters coming out of the water. It was fun jumping of the rocks but the water was a little cold.


On our day that we went exploring we randomly found old ruins on the side of the rode. They were just there. Nobody protecting them or anything. Turkey is so cool!!!


An old sarcophagus in someone's backyard. I mean honestly. That's cool, right? This stuff was just everywhere. I wonder if the people living here appreciate the history that is arround them.

Selemiye

Our trip to Selemiye was a lot more pleasant tha our previous bus ride. It was about four hours in the middle of the day. We stayed here for two and a half days and two nights. We did absolutely nothing. We swam, relaxed, and ate.
Oh and we hiked. We saw a huge hill nearby and just scrambled up it. There was no trail. But there was the bigest spider alive that made me want to jump off the hill.

The beautiful blue water.

Jason fishing right outside our hotel. We were the only people who stayed there and the water was ten steps from our door.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Selcuk

SO after a long 10 hour bus ride over night we arrived in the small town of Selcuk (the "c" is supposed to have a tail thing on it to make a "ch" sound, but I don't know how to do it). He of course where immediatley approached by pushy hotel and pension owners tryign to get us to stay at their place. It is really annoying and overwhelming when this happens but at the same time can be nice when you have no idea where you were going to stay. So we picked the cheapest there and were on our way.

After checking into our small quaint and especially quiet pension we got ourselves a nice Turkish breakfast. Everywhere we stayed on our trip we got free breakfast included and it was always a Turkish breakfast. What is a Turkish breakfast you ask. Well, it consists of 4-5 salty, salty olives, 4-5 slices of cuccumber, 4-5 slices of tomato, an amazing salty, crumbly cheese, a hard boiled egg, bread, jam, honey, and butter. I think that is it. Every once in a while we got a slice of orange or watermelon. And of course there was tea and coffee, neither of which I drink. The Turks didn't know what to do with me when I told them this. At first the wold assume that I didn't drink certain types of tea but where completely astounded when I said I didn't like tea at all. I think this brought down my credibility in their eyes a couple notches.

So anyways. That first day we were EXHAUSTED from our wonderfully confomfortable 10 hour bus ride that got us exactly zero hours of sleep. But because I am me and was already awake I was ready to hit the beach. But of course Jason likes his sleep a little more than I do. So we layed down for an hour or so before I got too restless and made him get up. Why sleep in a hotel room when you can sleep on the beach????

Big mistake! We slept on the beach alright. But do you know what happens in the begining of summer in the hot Adriatic sun to people who's skin had been hiding under winter clothes for the past 8 months? It burns. We used the sunscreen! I swear! But since I can be a restless person when it comes to inactivity I kept turning over and read most of the time. Jason however, laid down on his back with his fingers laced together resting on his stomach. And you know what? Even now you can see every finger perfectly suntanned onto his stomach. Amazing!!! I have never seen a better tan. At the time he didn't think it was too funny and it was pretty painful for him for almost a whole week. I have an amazing picture of it but he has refused to let me post it, sorry folks. After our first day of playing on the beach and swimming in the Adriatic Sea we decided to keep ourselves covered and just do some sightseeing. Above is Jason at the infamous Ephesus. A large area of ruins. If you can look closely he has a scared look on his face because of the approaching Japanese tourists.
I found the bathroom. But din't worry I am only posing for the camera, if you couldn't tell by pants still up around my waist. There were about 15 or so of these holes made out of a nice marble or something for using the bathroom (Moldovans should learn from the Greeks on how to do an outhouse right).

So this is an amazing looking building with a lot of annoying tourists ruining the picture. This was probably the only shady spot in the entire area to escape the blazing 90 degree sun. There were so many tourists though. It was crazy. I couldn't believe how many of them were on packaged tour things either. HMM, not my ideal way to travel.

The huge theater. It was big.

This is now at St. John's Basilica. More ruins.

Same place

Me and Jason one night climbed up the side of St. John's Basilica to watch the sunset and eat our dessert (though at the time we had no idea what we were climbing up the side of). We got into a bad habbit of eating lots of dessert. One night we went out for icecream and ended up with a fourteen scoop bowl with chocolate, coconut, and nuts on top. And yeah, we ate it all. Or we would go get a pastry and end up ordering almost one of everything (remember Delhi Clayton?).

This is the ould aquaduct that ran through the city. At the top of the pillars there were huge stork nests.
We stayed in Selcuk for 2 days before moving on down the coast to Selemiye.

ISTANBUL

Ok, so I know I have been back from vacation for almost a month now and am just finally posting about it. I have been busy. Really. Ok, well kind of. The real story is that the internet connection is really slow at work and I hate uploading pictures there and haven't either had the time while in Chisinau to do it or I forget my camera at home. So finally here you go.


So our trip started May 27th in Instanbul, Turkey. I met the wonderful Jason there around 9pm. I thought it would be weird to see him after 9 months but no. It was awesome! No weird akwardness. Hurray! We ended up spending two very full days in Istanbul trying to get as much in as possible before heading down the coast to smaller towns. Here is a corn cart where I got at least one corn a day. The food was amazing. I am sure you have heard of the famous doner kabobs. One meal a day we would go to the kebab stand where they had chicken packed onto a skewer roasting and waiting for customers. When you ordered your kabob they would thinly slice the meat off and put it into a flatbread/tortilla shell with veggies, chilli powder, ketchup, etc. We wold get one of those and a cob of corn and devoure them in the park or down nex to the water.

I love markets!!!! Istanbul has the huge Grand Baazar and the Spice Market. The Grand Baazar is HUGE! We wandered around it for a couple hours lost unsure if each place we passed we had been to before. Every vendor wanted to sell us something whether it was a rug, a leather jacket, a diamond ring, or a cermaic bowl. I can't believe how many people wanted to sell us rugs. What would I do with a rug? Honestly.

This is just a cool picture with the Turkey flag and the Blue Mosque in the background. Istanbul was such a cool place to walk around. There were mosques everywhere. And 5 times a day there was the call to prayers that each mosque projected very loudly across the city, which started at 5 am. The architecture in Instanbul was very interesting. Walking down the street you would see a very new modern building right next to a very old stone building or wall. And the people were all so different. You would see modern day teenagers dressed in their punk clothes walkign next to a woman totally covered in black with only her eyes showing. And then there was a mixture of the two with young teenage girls in long skirts and head scarfs but with rock t-shirts over them.


This is inside the Aya Sofia. It is a huge old mosque that has been turned into a museum. It began as a christian church and then was later changed to Islamic. Now when walking around you can see the plaster crumbling away to reveal the mosaics of the christian style church that the islamics covered up. Very cool.

Hanging out with Jason. It was HOT in Istanbul and we were able to find some shade and grass that we ould actually sit on the have a mid-day nap.

The Blue Mosque from far away.

Inside the Blue Mosque.

The Aya Sofia on the outside.
After our two days of sightseeing and craziness in Istanbul we hopped in a ten hour bus ride down the coast to Selcuk, the home of Ephesus.