Hannah goes to Turkey

Two weeks ago, for Eid break, my friend Hacer (pronounced Hajer) and I went to Turkey. We visited the village that Hacer is from, called Kahramanmaraş or just Maraş, it's small but beautiful. Currently Hacer’s family is building a house there. We stayed in one of the rooms that was finished but the place still has a ways to go.

 The trip began at midnight Abu Dhabi time when Hacer’s dad drove us to the airport. We then flew to Istanbul, and then took a short beautiful day plane ride to Maraş.

The lake

Once we landed, we drove to her house, which is on a mountain, and she showed me around. Her house has 4 floors, 7 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, a pool (pictured above), a tennis court, an elevator, and 3 porches. Lucky!

After the tour Hacer and I played with her Husky puppy Joey, who is adorable!

Then Hacer showed me her goats Cinnamon and Rice Pudding, Cinnamon the male goat is pictured above.

Right next to the goats are the chickens who share a pen with the turkeys, haha turkeys in turkey :)

While we were enjoying the animals the sun was setting, it was beautiful! Although it was sunny, it was very cold and we had to wear lots of layers. We also had heating problems so we spent a lot of time drinking hot tea which her grandma would make us, 24/7. Her grandparents spoke only Turkish so I picked up on a few words, Yok-No, Tamam- Okay, Sal- Thank you.

The next day the donkey that Hacer rented arrived, we named it Donkey. But while we were taking it to its stall we opened the door and were shocked to find another goat. We named it Fluffy.

Sadly we later found out that Fluffy was Hacer's driver's Eid goat, that they would sacrifice on the night of Eid :(

Me and Fluffy. The rest of the day was spent riding Donkey, playing with Joey, and pampering Fluffy. That evening we went to Hacer’s Uncle's house, who lives on the same mountain, and had dinner there.

Hacer and her Uncle's cat

The following day we rode the donkey and played with the goats and dog. There was always something to do.

The next day we all went to her grandpa’s farm which was 45 minutes away. Along the way we saw herds of sheep ready for Eid.

The farm was very nice. This picture shows the entry road to the farm.

The farm’s gazebo

One of the 3 farm dogs

Hacer’s cousin Sami and his friend. After a nice day at the farm we had a very nice Eid dinner, but were sad to hear that Fluffy was no longer with us :(

The day that followed we went downtown to do a little shopping. It was very nicely decorated for Eid.

The days that came after those were spent watching movies, playing with the animals, drinking tea, skyping, hiking, shopping, and enjoying the sunsets.

Me on the last day.

Me and Hacer on the last day.

The transferring flight had an 8-hour lay over which Hacer and I spent in the world lounge, fancy schmancy. In the end the trip was tons of fun! It was a great experience and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to see Turkey!

Mackenzie goes to Turkey

In the Abu Dhabi airport, we had to wait a long time for the plane to arrive, so we spent it blowing bubbles!

This was in the airport, finally at Istanbul, although we we're still awaiting a long bus ride.

My group (from left to right): Farah, Elena, Darcy, Mackenzie (me), Dana, Jacquelin. 

When we got to the hotel, we unloaded our luggage and there was a lady sitting in front of the hotel on a bench. She was there every day.

In the bus, we passed lots of horses and cows. I liked the fact that there where always mountains outside the window!

This was the first site we visited. It was just a block away from our hotel. Every one was excited and took lots of pictures of the columns.

This is the same sight, we saw a lot more of the columns in the other sights!

Again, the same sight, a close up of the top of a column. I thought they where very interesting and I was amazed that they lasted this long!

This is the Temple of Apollo, there were oracles here that could 'tell the future' in the ancient Greek times.

This is inside the Temple of Apollo, it was huge! Me and my partner walked all the way around the outside hoping to find a way in from the back, but we discovered that the only entrances were at the front. 

This was one of the entrances/exits, it was a tunnel that led upwards (as you can tell), it was really hard to get a picture here because there was always people walking in front of it or behind it or in it!

This was inside the Temple of Apollo, lots of the other blocks of rocks had carvings on them too, but I found this one particularly interesting because it wasn't chipped at all and it was a griffen, I also thought it had great detail in the wings and feet.

It was a long hike up a mountain to get to this sight, but it was worth it, there were so many parts of columns on the ground that everyone was climbing on and looking at the great view of farms that apparently used to be a sea! 

Same sight, royalty used to live on top of that hill in the background, there must have been an even better view from up there! 

This was one of the many secretive paths we found at a site (wich I forget the name and the use of it), there were plenty of pretty flowers and structures (that we weren't allowed to climb :( but they looked cool anyways) and it was very fun to explore!

This is the train museum, it was very big and our whole grade played cops and robbers climbing all over trains and running around, it was very fun!

This is one half of a giant circle of trains, they each had a big pile of rocks under them and I found some really cool rocks that I kept!

At the train museum there was a newly married couple that were getting professional pictures taken. I thought the bride was really pretty!

And apparently the bride and groom liked us, because they asked if they could take a picture with all of us, we where all so excited!

This is the theater. If someone stood in the middle, and someone else stood at the top of the seats, then even if the person below whispered loudly, the person at the top would be able to hear them. The yellow dot at the bottom left corner of the picture is a dog, it followed us from where we had lunch, which was just a short walk away, so you can imagine how big it was!

This is the great theater in Ephesus, the most crowded area we toured. They where doing construction on it, but we still got to go into it!

These were the public toilets, sadly, only men could use them, (not that anyone used them anymore!) they had a river underneath them that would carry your waste away, and then a little stream in front so that you could wash you hands. Pretty early stage of sewage!

This is the Celsius Library, it was tall, but not very wide, I still liked it though, and when we sat down to write an entry in our journals (something the school made us do) me and my friends sat on a ledge, then we decided to move. Right when we moved, a snake fell from the celling (it wasn't hurt) and slithered away.

This was in Aphrodisias, this was a temple of some sort... I forget who it was built for, but it was nice, and we found a bee just kind of sitting on one of the pillars!

Again, Aphrodisias, the market place, it was a long path/road with columns and 'shops' on either side, I liked all the greenery.

Near the end of the trip we went to a weaving school, we saw some students weaving (such as above) and then we saw how they got silk from silk butterfly eggs.

These are the silk butterfly eggs, wrapped in silk, they had a machine that would spin really fast and wind up all the silk. It was pretty cool.

This was a stop to have a sack lunch at a small restaurant, they gave us apple tea wich was very good, and we got to get a view of the sea, wich was about 30 feet away!

Animals! This was turtle we saw on the steps of where the ancient olympic games where held, apparently, since everyone was coming, we disturbed some black jackets, and we started getting attacked, it was not fun. but the turtle was cute!

These were some cute horses we saw on our way up to the cave of seven sleepers, I took plenty of pictures of them!

This was an adorable kitten I saw in Ephesus on a pilar, I wondered how it got up and how it was going to get down. There where a lot of stray cats at the sites.

A chicken, we saw lots of chickens just wandering around in Turkey, but why chickens? Why not turkeys?

We saw lots of stray dogs on the streets, but most of the were yellow with black muzzles. I thought this one was different and looked like a golden retriever!

Another chicken, a nice one too! well, all in all, I had a lot of fun in Turkey, and hope that I can go back soon!