Today all the North American residents of Taskesti, along with our camp mom and friend from down the road, traveled to the booming 5,000 person provincial capitol - Mudurnu for the High Mountain festival. Little did we know that this festival would actually be taking place, in part, on the top of a high mountain! We had lunch on top of the mountain, then drove back into town for some shopping.
Lunch consisted of a huge communal platter of rice, chickpeas, and some sort of meat with thin flatbread. The way you eat this is similar to the way you pick up dog poop if you live in a city - you tear off a piece of the bread, and grab a large pinch of food in the bread.
Here's a picture of me trying not to spill all my rice out and Nejla, our "mom."
After eating lunch we walked around the mountaintop for a while, checking out the stuff the vendors were selling, when we were surrounded by Turkish high-schoolers who all wanted to take pictures with us! I think I had my picture taken upwards of 10times with cute Turkish girls and their siblings! We left the mountaintop and drove down into town. Several of us went to the town museum where they have artifacts and pictures all from Mudurnu over the years. There was an exhibit on the manufacturing of silk, from worm to final product. They were actual live worms and silk moths there! Andrea and I touched the worms - they just felt like normal worms. The museum is in an 1860's courthouse, with a trendy coffee/tea shop on the first floor. We walked up to the town clock tower afterwards. The view from up near the clock tower was great, so we took a group picture!
We also stopped at this really nice, historic home-turned-hotel/restaurant for tea just before leaving.
Apparently a traditional part of the festival is amateur wrestling. We attended a wrestling match, and one of our guys actually participiated! He fought one guy and beat him fairly quickly, although he was quick to say afterwards that when signing up, he was asked "just for fun? or competitive?" and he had made sure to emphasize that he was playing "just for fun!"
Tomorrow morning we leave for Cayirhan until Thursday for more mapping. The road to Cayirhan is pretty much the same road we took to Sivrihisar. The road is fine now, but apparently back in the day when our instructor was working on his PhD thesis in this area, it was pretty scary. He told us this joke on the drive home on Thursday:
A Southern Baptist preacher dies and goes to heaven. He reaches the pearly gates and meets St. Peter. St. Peter welcomes him warmly, saying "Reverend, it's so good to see you here, we're very happy to have you, we'll have your accomodations ready in just a few - Mehmet! Mehmet! We're SO GLAD to see you! We've been waiting YEARS for you! Come on over here! Your room's all ready! Boy, are we glad to see you! We're so excited!" The preacher is getting upset here, wondering why some guy named Mehmet is getting this great treatment, so he asks "Hey, why is this Mehmet getting all this attention? I've spent my whole life serving the church, I've been a preacher for 40 years, I've lived my life as Christ's servant, why am I here waiting while Mehmet gets right in?" St. Peter responds "well Reverend, you did serve us your whole life, and we're grateful, but honestly, your sermons put most of your congregation to sleep every Sunday. Now Mehmet was a Turkish bus driver and drove the route from Ankara to Istanbul and back every night, and each night, for 40 years, 44 people prayed all night long!"
No worries though, our driver is THE BEST and the roads are nothing like they apparently used to be.
Time to go pack!
Salaam alaikum,
Sarah
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