BREAKING BLOG POST

BREAKING NEWS!
RAIN IN IBRAHIMPASA!!

TODAY FOR THE FIRST TIME ON OUR TRIP IT RAINED AND THUNDERED

WE GOT A PHONE CALL FROM WILLEMIJN WARNING US OF THE IMPENDING STORM AND ASKING US TO CLOSE ALL UMBRELLAS AND WINDOWS.  NOT A MINUTE LATER A DOWNPOUR (SORT OF) ENSUED.

LOOK HERE YOU CAN SEE RAIN ON DORION'S SHIRT.

 DARK RAIN CLOUDS.

 RAIN CLOUDS AND IN THE DISTANCE NICE WEATHER.

It has been so darn hot I was very excited and pleased at the weather today.  Of course I don't want it to rain every day, but once in a while is pretty nice.

Exploring!

Yesterday and the day before we rented a car and traveled around.  This is how we got to the Ihlara Valley and the Red Church. For our second day of adventure Dorion and I decided to just go driving.  The car we rented was a stick shift.  Neither Dorion nor I have ever driven a standard car before.  Thank goodness for Mary-Ellen, who helped us learn on the first day trip.  The second day I was the one to drive.  It is very hard.  So really a day of driving is extremely exhausting and stressful.  We drove out to a mountain because we thought it would be pretty and we also were tired of all the heat.  After almost stalling on a set of train tracks, five minutes after which we heard a train come barreling by, we went through a tiny village , and after getting a little lost found the road up the mountain.  The road up the mountain actually goes over other little mountains on the way to the big one.  The road also is made of dirt and is windy and scary especially on your second day of knowing how to operate a very temperamental vehical.  We made it this far before we decided we would like to live and turned around.  Next time we will rent a tougher car that is also automatic.
Here you can see our car.

 This was how far we still had to go...

TURKISH DELIGHT

So another food post.

I went to the local shop today to grab some small things and I noticed the man who owns the shop, Kuş Mehmet (Dorion and I have become friends with him), was giggling with another man in the store.  The men around here do not giggle.  I also noticed their hands were covered in a white powder.  What was going on?  When I walked further into the shop I saw that the were pulling apart a sticky powdery substance that looked sort of like honey.  They both looked up, a little sheepishly at being caught so giddy, and greeted me.  Kuş Mehmet beckoned me over and asked if I wanted to try some of what they were having.  He held up the long stick, as thick as a stick of butter, and told me to rip off a piece.  I grabbed the end of the powdery golden bar and pulled.  It came apart like silly putty and tasted like the child of Japanese rice candy and honey, dressed up in lots of powdered sugar.  It was so good.

I smiled wide and the men laughed at me a bit because I was just as pleased as they were (I also had powdered sugar all down my shirt).  As soon as I could speak, Turkish Delight is very sticky, I asked to buy the rest of the stick.  I brought it back to the cave for Dorion and me to enjoy.

I really really liked it.

Dorion did not like it as much.

There is a small back story on why I am sooo excited about getting to try Turkish Delight.

I don't know at exactly what age, but when I was little, one of my relatives got our family the BBC version of the Chronicles of Narnia VHS set.  I loved The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I loved it the most of all the movies in the series.  I could watch that version over and over again.  No real special effects.  No talking animals made with CGI, the beavers in this rendition were just people in giant beaver outfits.  My favorite part of the movie is when Edmund gets lured by the White Witch with something warm to drink and whatever type of delicious food he could want.  What food does Edmund choose?  Why Turkish Delight of course!  In the movie the Turkish Delight looked amazing.  They were these cubes of whitish stuff in a bright silver box.  I have dreamt of trying Turkish Delight from the first viewing of that great adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and today I finally lived my dream.

Also today, we hand washed a lot of laundry.  I have hand washed a few things before, delicate items, but never this much.  My arms hurt.  

Turkish Hot Dogs

Turks do not do hot dogs.  As 4th of July just passed I wanted to mention something about a craving both Dorion and I have had.  Last week, in anticipation of Independance Day, we picked up some coca-cola and also what was advertised as hot dogs at a grocery store in Urgup.  They are not hot dogs.  They never will be hot dogs.  After we tried them we certainly did not shout "Hot dog!".  We tried to cook them but they just turn into some sort of hot dog mummy.  

 This is so sad.

Do not get me wrong, I love Turkish food, but we are not eating very much of it because we usually cook for ourselves in our cave.  I would kill for a real NYC hot dog right now, or better yet, for a Hebrew National hot dog.

Another full day!

Had a very long day today.  Dorion, Mary-Ellen (another artist here at the residency), and I rented a car and we went on a little road trip to the Ihlara Valley.  We started just before 8:30 am and pulled into the village square here at  9:00 pm-ish.  On the way over we passed a Turkish prison and a lot of farm land.  Stunning drive.  In the valley it was very hot, and we did a lot of hiking.  Ihlara Valley is a valley full of cave churches.  Some of the church paintings are really well preserved and some you can't tell what the heck they are because they've been destroyed.  When we got back to our cave I ate a third of a watermelon.  I don't know if that is healthy, but I don't care.  V tired.
Great things about today:
Beautiful valley
Amazing frescoes
Learned to drive a stick shift (sort of)

Dorion is no longer sick! I didn't want to mention this earlier but for the past three days Dorion has had some sort of Montezuma's Revenge but Turkish Style, and been unable to do very much.  Happily, he is all better now. 

Here's just a few of the three hundred pictures I took on our adventure.

This is Ihlara Valley and Dorion

One of the destroyed churches that we climbed around...

 I am very tired from so much hiking.

 I got a Turkish popsicle to cool off and it was sooo good!  It looks ridiculous but it was delicious, strawberry and melon outside and orange inside.

 After the valley we stopped at a mosque that had once been a church but been converted, and a more recent greek church ruin both in a town called Güzelyurt.  They were ok.  What I liked a lot more was where we stopped last.  We went to the Red Church (Kızıl Kilise in Turksih), which is a very famous ruin, you can see it in in all the guide books.  It is really beautiful, totally open, surrounded on all sides by farm fields and wild flowers.

Eeesh...here's two of the scary Turkish prison.

What are these?!

These are Dorion and my new favorite snack!  No, though they look like it, they are not poop.  They are dried apricots with the pit still in them.  They are delicious.
We picked these babies up at the big weekly market in Urgup.
The market really amazing.  They have everything you could need.  Food, clothes, household items, farm tools.  I took a few pictures of the food section, it's not polite to photograph the people here and the market is not a tourist place.

Lala the Spider

We have a very big spider living right outside our cave.  The web is giant, foot and a half diameter.  There are a lot of cats here, also scary dogs (see yesterday).  Both Dorion and I are very allergic to animals with fur, and not huge fans of cats in general, so we have decided to think of this spider as our pet.  It's name is Lala.
Here are some glamour shots of Lala.