Ulus and Hamamönü

The day after returning to Ankara from Antalya, I gave my dad a tour of Ulus. Ulus is truly the "old town" of Ankara and my favorite part of the city. We took the dolmuş from our neighborhood to the covered pazar.

From the pazar we walked through the metalworks district and up the steep streets where other vendors peddle their wares on our way to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. The museum is housed in an old Ottoman inn, and unfortunately currently under renovation (although the admission price is the same...). So, dad only got to see some of the treasures, namely Hittite artifacts dating back to 1500 B.C.

This cuneiform tablet was taken from Hattuşa and dates to the 1200's B.C.

From the museum we walked to get some photos of the Ankara Kalesi, the ancient fortress overlooking all of Ankara.

Plenty of people still live in the old houses within the fortress walls.

An exterior view of the walls. Notice the houses built into the walls.

This is a picture of a tower in the fortress. Among the huge stones in the middle part you can see what appears to be a Crusader's cross on one of the stones. Possibly from its conquering by Crusaders in 1101, or possibly just a relic from Armenians who used to live here.

From there we could look down onto Hamamönü, a part of the city where the houses had been restored to look like the Ottoman era. The city had been hyping this restoration effort in the local news, so we went down to see it. Check out the interactive website the city has created for Hamamönü.

This old portion of Ankara adjacent to Ulus has run-down houses that are mostly slated for demolition by the city. They will be replaced with high-rises, which is how the rest of Ankara has been greatly transformed over the last 30 years.

Hamamönü is to the center/left.

After walking the streets of Hamamönü and being relatively unimpressed, we came across the Haci Bayram mosque attached to the site of the ancient Temple of Augustus. To my shame, I didn't even know this existed, although I'd visited other Roman ruins in Ankara. The Augustus temple was built in 25-20 B.C. after the Romans conquered Anatolia. The mosque was built in 1425 A.D. by the new Turkish rulers of Anatolia, not long before Istanbul was conquered.

The temple walls. Greek inscriptions still visible on the wall are of historical importance.

After leaving the temple area just as Friday prayers were getting ready to begin, we payed our respects to Mustafa Kemal Paşa before hopping the bus to do more shopping on our side of town.

Seeing the statue honoring Turkey's great modernizer so close in proximity to its diverse ancient history is always thought-provoking.

After a fun evening of Central Asian cuisine, my parents flew back to the U.S. on Saturday. They enjoyed their Turkish vacation. 

Teaching English in Turkey

(Justin) Two weeks ago I finished my first semester teaching 2nd-4th graders here. I had a tearful goodbye with my colleagues, since our family made the decision to return to the U.S. to help Elias's progress with his special needs. Everyone commented that it felt like I'd worked there for years rather than just one semester-- it was such a good fit for everyone. Here are some fond memories. This was my view after arriving every morning (most days more sunny than this one):

You can just make out Anıtkabir in the center of this one.

On a bulletin board in the high school wing I was met with a daily reminder of where I'd come from:

Below are a couple of items I got from students during my time that I appreciated. The first is a set of Atatürk Turkish coffee cups that one of my students gave to me on Teacher's Day.

The second is a picture one of my 2nd graders drew for me for Christmas with a note from her in Turkish that she loves me and will never forget me.

Having read this book and talked to countless other veteran teachers here, I can say the complaints of Western teachers in Turkish classrooms are universal. It is tough. The schools are loud, discipline is weaker than at a typical American school. At my school, the acoustics of the rooms and corridors were akin to a racquetball court. During the 10-minute recess after each period, the shrill screams literally hurt your ears. This can shake you deep down to your nerves (signs written in Turkish on the walls pointing out the scientific hazards of "noise pollution" only make it worse). So, you strive for peace and quiet in your own classroom-- meaning you have to keep the kids busy at all times. 40 minutes have to come loaded with 10-minute activities, and any exciting games you have to play need to have strict rules/boundaries to keep kids quiet.

Kids are emotional. They are just as passionate about their football teams as their parents are. There is no age limit for crying to be unacceptable. Insults quickly lead to violence.

And the kids LOVE and want to be LOVED. The best teachers are mugged in the hallways by their students/former students who want to hug them. (Touching is very normal here, it often makes Westerners uncomfortable.) They are lavished with gifts on Teacher's Day. I never achieved that status. In part because I'm not the most teddy-bear kind of guy, it was my first time teaching little ones, and I also had the misfortune of preparing young students for their first Cambridge exams (and their first English speaking/listening exams in any case), which added a bit of seriousness and stress to what had previously been mostly speaking-English-for-fun class.

My advice to anyone wanting to teach in Turkey: Learn Turkish first. This will make you a better co-worker and allow you to understand problems in your classroom. You need to make friends outside of your department and it will be hard for you if few of your colleagues speak English well. You obviously don't want to use it in your classroom, but if I hadn't spoken Turkish, I wouldn't have been able to get help with issues from the homeroom teacher, principal, etc.

But here are a couple of native English speaking colleagues who made my time there go faster as well. I'm glad to have met Jim, a retired Royal Air Force man from Scotland, and Robin, a South African surfer. They helped me have fun. 

 

Here's to the toughest job I've had with the greatest colleagues and boss (Ayşen Hoca) in the world. 

Book Review: The Yogurt Man Cometh by Kevin Revolinski

Some friends of ours lent us a copy of The Yogurt Man Cometh: Tales of an American Teacher in Turkey as it's a humorous read about an American's crash course in living in Ankara and teaching at the same school where Justin teaches. We highly recommend the book to anyone living in Ankara or coming here for the first time.

Ankara was Revolinski's first real foray outside the U.S., he has since become a travel blogger. He captures the hilly slopes, the perils of public transit, and the difficulties of trying to teach English to private school students very well. Kevin was able to make friends quickly and accomplished a lot of sightseeing in Turkey in just a year's time, despite getting seriously ill in the process. The experience takes place in 1997-1998 and it's interesting to see how much the city has grown and changed even in just 15 years.

The book is a quick read, it's like a series of blog posts. It's the book that will get you closest to what our lives look like in Ankara. Trust us, you'll enjoy it even if you never plan on visiting here.

First Big Snow in Ankara

(Joni) Last night and today, we got our first big snowfall in Ankara. We've had some dustings before this, but nothing that accumulated much or stayed longer than a few hours. This was 3 or 4 inches, though, and it's COLD, so it's going to stay a while!

This was early in the morning. It kept snowing so we ended up with a bit more than what you see here.

Despite children everywhere clamoring for a snow day, the roads were good enough for Justin to have to go to school this morning, but Elias doesn't go to school on Tuesdays. So instead, we bundled up and decided to play in the snow for a few minutes in the parking lot next to our building. (I'm a wimp and don't like the cold, so we didn't stay out long.)

Elias' favorite things are "flopping" and "rolling" in the snow. He didn't inherit his mama's dislike of cold!

The snow was too powdery to pack into a snowman, but that didn't hamper Elias' enjoyment!

After we had been out for a little while and were about to head back in, one of the men from our building came out to clear the snow off the cars that were parked in the lot. The Turkish culture LOVES children, so he was pleased to see Elias out playing in the snow. He even showed Elias how to make a snowball, and the man told him to throw it at me! I chose not to translate that part of the Turkish for Elias... :) But what I did tell Elias was that he was NOT allowed to throw a snowball at the man! However, then the man said, "Come on, throw it at me!" So I told Elias the man wanted him to throw it at him, and Elias thought that was great! The man threw one back, and they exchanged a few snowballs... Elias' first snowball fight!

Then we were able to move on to my favorite part about playing in the snow... The hot cocoa to warm up with when you come inside!

Elias was so excited about having two big marshmallows floating in his!

So I'm not a fan of winter weather, but having a small child helps at least make it fun! Hopefully we'll get a mild winter this year and it won't last long.

Celebrating the Winter Holiday in Turkey

(Joni) As I mentioned in my previous post, the vast majority of Turks don't celebrate Christmas. However, many of them do celebrate the New Year, and they do it very similarly to the way Americans celebrate Christmas - tree with lights and decorations, giving presents, even Santa (Noel Baba, which means Father Christmas in Turkish) comes on New Year's Eve here! This is why I said Winter Holiday in my post title... Even though in our house, we were very much celebrating Christmas, a lot of the lights/decorations/festivities we are seeing around us are because of New Year!

Karum Mall in the town center has some beautiful star/snowflake decorations.

Since we believe in celebrating Christmas as the birth of Christ and not just a winter holiday, we tried to maintain our family traditions that would help us keep that in mind. So we did our Advent Tree (where we read a short Bible story and put up an ornament every day of December) again this year, and we enjoyed that a lot!

Elias next to our tree in his Phineas & Ferb Christmas jammies that Grandma & Grandpa brought when they visited in the Fall. It's Christmas Eve, so there's only one spot left at the top of the tree for the Christmas Day ornament!

We also threw our own little birthday party for Jesus on Christmas Day, which I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of. But we had a yummy dinner and birthday cake!

Since the postal system between the US and Turkey is expensive and unreliable, rather than mailing gifts to us, our family just gave us money and we did our own shopping for gifts... Elias got so many trains - he's a happy camper! We also had one gift that Grandma & Grandpa had brought when they were here, and it had been sitting in my closet since September! So that was fun for Elias to finally open it!

It was the Toy Story movie and some Toy Story figures. He loved them!

Since Elias had so many days off school, I tried to fill them with fun Christmas-y things like watching Christmas movies (His favorite is the old claymation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!) and making Christmas cookies!

My favorite Christmas cookies - peanut butter blossoms! Elias liked the melted Kisses more than the cookie part - he definitely comes by his love of chocolate honestly. :)

We were also able to Skype with our families on Christmas, which was a blessing. Thanks to modern technology, we were able to watch all of them open the Turkish gifts we had sent, which was so much fun! :) So we had a nice first Christmas in Turkey, and we get to keep celebrating since the holiday the Turks are celebrating is yet to come! We're looking forward to seeing how they celebrate the New Year!

A Tale of Two Holidays

(Justin) The neat thing about Turkey is the co-existence of religious reverence and secular democracy. We experienced it firsthand this week: 

A local supermarket advertises options for your sacrifice holiday.

The Muslim world was geared up for Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, where Muslims celebrate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Ishmael. (FYI-- Abraham's birthplace is located in modern southern Turkey.) Schools, banks, and other institutions were closed last week from Wednesday to Sunday (plus Monday, see below). To celebrate, families typically gather together from all over for a large meal. There is often a live animal slaughtered for the meal and also for ritual sacrifice. For example, there is a large place on the western outskirts of Ankara (and other parts of town) where cattle and sheep are sold for slaughter and you can either take the cow up to the hillside to be sacrificed or pay for someone to do it for you. Other people will simply buy meat for the meals from their local butcher. Families distribute some of the meat to the less-fortunate, and there are charities that collect money for the poor if you aren't distributing anything yourself. Children may get candy and other sweets. Here's a good post by an ex-pat woman who has often taken part in the holiday rituals. Those who don't have family obligations seem to travel to the beach or elsewhere for a nice vacation, which is what we did.

Because Muslim holidays revolve around the lunar calendar, the holiday moves around and this year buttresses October 29th, Turkey's Cumhuriyet Bayramı or "Republic Day," which commemorates Atatürk's declaration in 1923 that Turkey was officially a republic. This is one of the biggest secular holidays in Turkey and an important day for Kemalists, those who want to preserve the legacy of Atatürk and his principles to guide the country. There are typically ceremonies honoring Atatürk at all the schools (even though they are closed, students and faculty attend a ceremony in the morning), a ceremony at his grave with air force flyovers, and banks and such are closed.

Banners of Atatürk like this one and Turkish flags will be flown all over town on Monday.

However, this year there was some clash of political ideologies. The current ruling government is not the party of Atatürk and is more religious conservative. They have made some changes to how Turkish national holidays are celebrated. This has led to some restrictions on marches and other demonstrations were planned for Monday. Ankara's mayor sent out a notice for schools to remain closed on October 29th and not to celebrate Republic Day until October 30th (as part of their normal school day). However, the school I work at is very Kemalist and held Monday's ceremonies as planned (after all, everyone had already made their travel plans around being back at school for the 29th).

In any case, it was interesting to experience two of the biggest holidays in Turkey together over the course of six days.

Mom & Dad's Visit, Part 2

(Joni) Click here to read the first part, then read on for the rest of our adventures with my parents.

On Saturday, we went to one of the huge shopping centers (Anatolium mall & Nata Vega Outlets) that also has a super-cool aquarium which we had never visited.

Forgive me that this picture looks a little off-kilter. It's a printed photo that I just took a picture of... Still lets you see how cute we are!

On Sunday, we took Mom & Dad to visit the international, English-speaking fellowship, and that was fun for them to see. Then, we went out to lunch with some of our dearest friends here.

Then that afternoon we visited our favorite park in the city.

We rode the Ferris Wheel too!

On Monday, Justin was surprised to get the afternoon off, so he took me out on a date while Grandma & Grandpa kept Elias! That was a win for everybody! (Here, American movies are played in English with Turkish subtitles, so we greatly enjoyed The Bourne Legacy!) While we were out, Elias had a great time with Grandma & Grandpa. Grandma snapped this picture of Elias & Grandpa playing on Grandpa's iPhone.

They called it the Turkish-English game. Really it was just the Google Translate app, but Elias thought it was hilarious when Grandpa's phone spoke in Turkish!

Then on Tuesday, we visited Anıtkabir, the mausoleum and museum of Turkey's founder and hero, Atatürk.

It's built on a high hill, so there is an amazing view of the city every way you look!

There is a cool walk leading up to the mausoleum with stone lions on either side, and Elias thought it was funny to put his hand in their mouths. Chomp!

Then Wednesday it was time for them to leave again. We had so much fun together that Elias tried to stow away in Grandma's suitcase!

We are blessed and grateful beyond measure to not only live in such a neat place as this, but also to have family who loves us so much to come visit and enjoy it with us! We had such a great time with them!

Mom & Dad's Visit, Part 1

(Joni) My parents came in from Kentucky for their first visit to Turkey, and we had a STELLAR time with them! Rather than doing a huge blog series with all the pictures, I thought I'd just do a 2-part overview of the highlights.

We gave them a great overview of life in Turkey, including the delicious Turkish food!

We had dinner at our favorite restaurant in our neighborhood, just around the corner from our house. They got the full treatment with several courses and delicious food!

Dad is a coffee-lover, so Justin took him to try Turkish coffee. Wow, that stuff is strong! I think Dad enjoyed the home-brewed coffee from our French press more.

Trying Turkish maraş ice cream. Yum! Elias definitely comes by his love of ice cream honestly... from Grandma!

We even discovered a new dessert while they were here! We thought we were ordering plain ice cream, but instead we got Dondurmali Irmik Helvasi. Once we adjusted our expectations, it was tasty!

And public transportation!

They were troopers to stand in the overcrowded mini-buses!

When we all squeezed into a taxi, Elias always wanted to sit on Grandma's lap!

My Turkish language tutor and a friend of hers offered to take us on a tour of the city's castle and adjoining Anatolian Civilizations Museum. Those things were neat, but we had the most fun just visiting with the two Turkish girls!

After the tour, we stopped at a cafe, and we had the best time just hanging out together!

Click here to read Part 2!

A Picnic in the Woods

(Justin) If you live in Çankaya and don't have a car you can easily visit lots of neat parks, but it seems like actual wild nature is discouragingly out-of-reach. But luckily we live on the edge of town where a steep valley with walking trails, a woods with a couple of springs, and a great view of the valley and lake below is just a short walk from our apartment. One of the entrances is just outside Elias' Turkish preschool so I explored it a bit before today, but then decided to bring the whole family on a picnic to the woods. It's nice because even though the city is just a couple hundred yards away you can't hear it and you can breathe plenty of fresh air and the smell of pine trees.

View from up on the road. The tall trees in the middle are where our picnic was.

The city has made it a picnic/camping area by piping up some of the springs

Elias splashing in the spring water.

Elias thinks peanut butter & jelly sandwiches are great no matter where we are.

There are lots of quartz rocks to find, and plenty of turtles on the roads.

The roads have been dug and grated for cars, but it's not clear where there's any entrance or exit for them. Some of the roads are just dead ends on the side of the cliff. This is a view of the lake below. On the other side of the valley you can see shepherds tending sheep. It's quite steep.

Unfortunately, some of the nicer spots are littered with trash, part of life here. But there are plenty of green trees, fresh air, and wild flowers.

Not terribly far by taxi there is another larger woods and lake that's more touristy that we hope to explore next week when Joni's parents come for a visit.