i've never been so clean!

Today was the ultimate girls day for Colleen, Stephanie, Eilidh and I.  We hopped the super-posh Bilkent bus into Sihhiye, where we found this adorable little restaurant that had a gorgeous waterfall as a backdrop, which conviently provided mist for us during our brunch.  We all ordered a delicious traditional Turkish breakfast plate, which consisted of two types of cheese (one being Bayir Penir, which is incredible), olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, salami, little sausages, bread, jam and honey.  Yum-O, as Rachel Ray would say.  I'm getting the impression that Turkish food is very fresh and simple, and I like that.

We caught a cab to the Tarihi Sengul Hamam, in the conservative (and slightly poorer) area of Ulus.  The hamam was a very interesting experience for us Western chicks.  While I consider myself to be a pretty liberal woman, there's just something about walking around topless in a room full of women that unnerves me.  So, we change into our bikinis and go into the bathing area, a gorgeous, square, marble room in the middle of which is a huge heated slab where women are lying and being scrubbed down by other women.  Around the perimeter of the room are a bunch of marble sinks and taps.  The idea is, you bring your own soap and shampoo, sit by this sink give yourself a little soaping (friends soap each other) and rinse yourself with a little bowl from the water in the sink.  Now, we have no idea whats going on, really.  A kind Turkish women who spoke a little English ordered our services for us at the front desk and told the host lady what we were getting.  So we left it up to the Turkish hamam ladies to lead us around.  I was first led to a massage table where I was instructed in Turkish to lay down and this women pulls off my bikini top.  Ok.  She takes this cloth mitt and start vigorously rubbing at my body.  This is meant to get all of the dead (and not quite so dead) skin off your body.  Well, let me tell you it worked.  I have never seen such gross dead skin all over my body, and I actually exfoliate at home!  I felt like a grubby little kid - I have never felt so clean in all my life, and my mother can attest to the fact that I spent many hours in the bathtub as a teenager.  Nothing compared to this.  After my scrub, I was lead to the hot marble slab in the middle of the room where a woman scrubbed me down with soap.  This treatment was lovely, and even better was what followed.  I had the most dedicant Turkish coffee massage, where coffee grinds were massaged into my body.  It smelled heavenly, and even left my skin with a nice tan tint.  Once us Westerners got over our initial shock of taking off our tops, we relaxed and had a great time.  I will definately be returning to this hamam, and I'm hoping to go at least once a month.

After the hamam, we walked through Ulus and bought real Turkish delights (honestly, they are nothing like what he have in Canada).  These Turkish delights (actually called lokum) are soft, gummy, sugary and coated in powdered sugar.  The guy who we bought them from was so nice, and the man from the shop across the street gave us pretty keychains that had the Turkish symbol on them.  It was really sweet.  The girls also bought spices and wheat grains from a merchant.

We found our way to the Ulus metro station and hopped a train to Kizilay, where we found a cute restaurant for supper.  I'm actually starting to orient myself in Kizilay, and I'm enjoying shopping and eating there.  We even found a bus that goes to Bilkent!

i am not a Russian prostitute.

Today we were 'forced' into a scavenger hunt of the great city of Ankara.  In order to get us newbies familliar with the city, we were sent into the city with maps and a list of things to find.  Luckily, Eilidh and Colleen and I had the same opinion regarding scavenger hunts 'Scavenger hunts are for foolios' and so we decided to head into the city but enjoy our day and if we saw a few things on the list on the way, so be it.

We took the Bilkent bus to ASTI, the major bus station for the city, and hopped on a metro train to Kizilay, a shopping and cafe area of the city.  The first thing on OUR scavenger hunt list?  Delicious food.  We suddenly forgot our instructions to not eat outside of a cafe out of respect for those fasting for Ramadan (bad foreign girls) and parked ourselves at a table outside of a cute restaurant.  Firstly, I must explain that foreign women here are treated REALLY well...and if you're me, with fair skin, short blonde hair and light eyes, you're treated like a celebrity.  All day long, men were nudging one another, looking me up and down, smiling at me and staring.  There were about eight men working at this rather empty restuarant, and we were the only ones eating there.  We navigate our Turkish menu and decide on Tavuk Sis, which is becoming my no-fail favourite, mostly because I can actually pronounce it and I know that what I'll be served is always chicken on a stick and rice.  Perfect.  Our adorable waiter brings over a delicious-looking salad and explains that it's from the chef, who is waving shyly at us.  Tesekurler! (Thank you!).  Meals here always end with complimentary cay, which is Turkish tea, and it's absolutely delicious.  I've learned how sucessfully to make it myself...it's a bit of a process for a very small amount of tea, I must say.

So, off we go, into Kizilay, but not to find the things on my scavenger hunt, but to shop, of course!  We find this fab little shop that sells brand name clothing from last season very cheaply.  I found names from Topshop, Bershka, Abercrombie and Fitch and Zara...there were cute tops for 5 lira!  (That's about 2.5 pounds, and maybe 3.5 canadian dollars).   Most of the clothing is cut so small it wouldn't fit over my left thigh, but still, a pretty cool find, and great for Colleen and Eilidh, who are built like gymnasts and ballerinas, respectively.

So we're wandering down the street, and taking pictures of random things when these three Turkish guys come up to us and ask us to take their picture.  Um, ok.  So we did.  Then they wanted us in the picture, so we took turns posing with these guys, who clearly wanted to document their proof that they spoke to us.  I must pause here and explain to my mother that these guys were completely harmless and that Ankara is a really safe place.  Really.  After taking the pictures, one of the guys comes up to me and asks me if I'm Russian.  I'll pause again to explain that there are alot of Russian women who live in Turkey and unfortunately work as prostitutes, they are known to the locals as 'Natashas'.  Because Russian women often have fair skin and hair, I am constantly mistaken for being a prostitute, because let's face it, I stand out here like a sore thumb.  So I tell the guy that I am not Russian, but from Canada.  No dice.  The guy insists that I am Russian, and proceeds to tell me that he can speak Russian.  Well, good for you buddy, but I'm not Russian.  So he begins speaking in Russian and his friends laugh and I'm like 'Ok, Mister, I don't know what you're saying, but I'm pretty sure it's dirty.  You can't afford me'.  It was a pretty random and hilarious exchange.

All in all, we actually cleaned up at the scavenger hunt, and happened to stumble upon almost all of the things on our list, without even trying.  The only thing we didn't get was 'mc hammer pants', which are super comfortable linen pants that are sold in many market-like stores here.  Maybe tomorrow.  Tomorrow we're heading out to the Turkish Baths which are in Ulus, an area of the city.

My new-found friends who conviently look like they could be in a Turkish boy band.

oh you sexy plate of olives!

I know I that I've said this about other olives before, but today I ate the best olives I've ever had in my life.  Oh my, I do love my olives.  I'm not kidding when I say Turkish olives had a bit of an influence on my decision to move here.  There is nothing quite like a delicious, salty, meaty, rich olive.  Or, as Greg Lee would say, a 'sexy olive', as he did in Greece when he professed his love to a plate of round, rich, ripe olives drizzled in (what else) but olive oil.

Just to bring you up to speed on how I got my greasy, olive oil slicked fingers on this delicious food, I should recount my first day in Turkey.

I had a really great first day....no rushy, stressy nonsense like my first days in other places I've moved to, but a chilled out, get the essentials done, relaxed kind of day.  I met the other foreign teachers and we went for breakfast at Starbucks and then got ourselves equipped with a Turkish mobile phone.  A lovely Turkish Celta trainer from our language school went with my group, made up of a fellow Canadian girl, a Scottish girl and a bloke from Manchester, England.  After getting set up with an over-priced, well out of date Nokia phone, our group set off in search of cheese and olives in Real, the huge grocery store near campus.  We had a fantastic time navigating the aisles, searching for the essentials and checking out Turkish cuisine.  We stepped up to the deli, salivating over the amazingly wide variety of local cheeses and olives.  The deli man must have saw me wipe my drool away because he offered me a sample of cheese to try.  It was delicious.  It was creamy, rich, salty and crumbly all at the same time.  Don't ask me how thats possible, and any of you cheese experts would definately have a much better way of describing this amazing food.  The nice deli man also gave me several olves to try, but I knew exactly which ones were coming home with me.  Dark, rich and plump, these olives were incredible...and also the most expensive in the deli.  Oh well.  If you're going to do it, to it right.  With the help of one of my new-found friend's guidebooks I managed to order a half a kilo of these beauties, for the bargain price of only ten lira!

Having accomplish our mission, we grabbed a cab back to our appartments and decided to tackle the huge pile of paperwork for us to do.  We decided to do our paperwork together, and so we hung out in my flat, and drank Turkish wine (not bad) on my balcony.

Later on, we changed into slightly nicer clothes and met the rest of the school staff for dinner.  We had a fabulous night chatting with the friendly Turkish teachers.

this blog...

The purpose of this blog is to track my journey of teaching, travelling and living in Turkey.  While my efforts at blogging in the past have been less than successful, I really do want to make an effort to do this for two reasons:  Firstly, I want a way to remember all of the amazing things I'm going to experience this year and secondly, I'm hoping this will be a convienent way to keep contact with all of my friends and family back in Canada.

I encourage people to ask questions and make comments on this blog, which will hopefully make it more interactive than just a diary.  It also might encourage me to update more frequently.

The flight to Turkey (and this is a long one) is from Moncton to Montreal to Munich to Ankara, all of which I've done before, just not strung together in so many hours.  I leave from Moncton at 4pm and will arrive in Ankara at 3pm (their time, which is 6 hours ahead of NB).  I'm just about finished packing my two bags and backpacks filled with clothes, shoes and a year's supply of tampons and getting ready to say goodbye to friends and family for nearly a whole year.

It's not long now...