Weekend recap

Merhaba!

After a very labor-intensive week of projects here in Taskesti, we were all looking forward to a relaxing trip to the Black Sea. Sadly though, our bus driver's grandfather died this past weekend, with the funeral being Sunday morning, thus we last-minute changed our plans and went on a closer, afternoon-length trip to Lake Abant. Lake Abant is a place I'd heard of before, but not actually known where it is. It's fairly close to Taskesti, about an hour's drive due to the mountain roads, but fairly close as the crow flies. It's a mix of ritzy, high-end stuff and gypsy village, basically. Lake Abant itself is beautiful, it's up in the mountains (great views on the drive up, lots of cars pulled off the road for pictures). Unfortunately, swimming in the lake is not permitted. I also noticed that there was no boating, sailing, jet-skiing, etc. on the lake, so I'm guessing that the lake is protected by a nature organization to keep it looking nice and being a good eco-community. We all wandered down to the lake and waded in up to our ankles to cool off a bit. Here's a picture of a few of us on our aquatic adventure:

We were all pretty hungry when we arrived, so we stopped at the restaurant on the pier for lunch (very $$$). The menu had some pretty amusing translations, Andrea and I split the "trout on pan" aka pan-fried trout. The flavor was pretty good, but the fish still had its head and fins. I had to cover up the head with a lettuce leaf so it would stop staring at me. Creepy! Here's a picture of our meal:

On the opposite side of the lake, there were tall, fancy buildings that we interpreted to be expensive hotels. Some of the girls walked around to that side and reported that there were a few very pricey shops. The other extreme though, was that on the side of the lake with the restaurant, it looked like a gypsy caravan had set up camp. Lots of Turks brought their entire families to the lake, packed cooking supplies, and were cooking their lunches in the shade of the trees several tens of feet back from the lakeshore. Very much a family atmosphere.

In Muslim culture, Friday is the holy day of the week, the equivalent of the Sabbath. All other Muslim countries have Sunday - Thursday as the work week, with Friday and Saturday as the weekend. While Turks celebrate the holy day on Friday, they work a Western work week, Monday - Friday. This is one of the many ways Ataturk Western-ized/secularized the country.

On the way home, we took an off-the-beaten-path road and stopped at a nearby fish farm. Several of my fellow campers tried their luck at catching fish with their bare hands. I don't think any of them were successful...

The past two days have been very busy! We're mapping the rocks in/around the neighboring village of Yeniceseyhler (ye-nitch-shay-ler), which requires lots of going up and down hillslopes over and over trying to nail down where the rock units change from one to another. We then have to map the locations of the various rock units on our topographic map along with the direction the rocks are dipping into the ground and trending across the landscape. We also have to determine our locations just using a compass and topographic map, so a lot of time is dedicated to just figuring out where we are!

Today my partner and I passed through the village while mapping. The village has a very cold chesmeh so we refilled our water bottles and ate lunch there. I initially did not sit sufficiently far from the edge and had a wet bottom. The school kids who ate lunch with us thought it was pretty funny. There are a lot of cherry and mulberry trees in town, and as we were walking through town, people were calling from their windows, inviting us to eat fruit from their trees. Kyle was trying to reach some tasty-looking cherries and was assisted by a tiny old man who hobbled over and handed Kyle his cane, motioning for him to use it to pull the branches down so I could reach the cherries. It was super cute! All the people in town are used to seeing students each summer, and are interested in watching us work (they probably find it bizarre - banging rocks with hammers), I caught an old woman looking at my map today!

Got to go, have another long day tomorrow!

Salaam alaikum,

Sarah