Separation Anxiety

You would think that after years and years of practice, saying goodbye would get easier. You finish school and people go their separate ways. Friends move away to go to university or to live in far away countries. Family members migrate or pass away, never to be seen again. That is life I guess - hellos and goodbyes. People come, people go. Fact of life. But saying goodbye never seems to get easier.

These are my last few days in Sivas. In three days, I will be back home in paradise for two weeks, with my family, loved ones, and friends, seeing familiar faces and eating our favorite foods, swimming at the beach, and enjoying ourselves in the biggest, wildest, drunkest Carnival in the world, the sun beating on our faces, calypso pumping, people dancing through the streets until the sun rises.

Sounds pretty good, no?

So why do I feel so incredibly sad?

I am definitely suffering from some separation anxiety in preparation for my departure from Sivas. I've only been here for six months, but this funny little mountain town has become a part of me and I've become strangely attached to it. Things that were bizarre six months ago are now perfectly normal. And the two ladies, Z and D, who were complete strangers have become good roommates and friends. I've learnt some Turkish, and taught some English. I've been beautiful places and strange new landscapes. I've walked in 1,000 year old caves and stood in awe in fantastic mosques. And I've looked, listened, pondered, and absorbed the Turkish culture like a sponge.

There are lots of things I am going to miss -- cheap and delicious Turkish food, drinking tea with shopkeepers, and sharing laughs with my students in class. I'm gonna miss hearing the call to prayer echoing through the streets five times a day, eating fresh bread twice a day, women who take pride in being ladies, and cold Efes in a warm bar with Drunken Dentists.

Coming to Turkey has certainly been a life-changing and eye-opening experience for a little girl from a small island. Traveling to this new and different culture has been difficult, exciting, fun, frustrating, and wonderful all at the same time. I am quite sad to leave, but who knows, maybe in the near future I will live in Turkey again. I will definitely return to visit and hear the sound of the call to prayer echo over the Bosphorus in Istanbul. I can't say when, but rest assured, I will return to Turkey one day and look back on my 6 months in Sivas and remember all the good times.

Changes

And old family friend of my grandmother's named Edgar used to always say, "Plans Change". And Edgar certainly was right, because sometimes plans can change very drastically overnight.

Yesterday, we heard some very disturbing news: our school was suffering from serious financial sufferation, and was drowning in debt. Some mysterious dude in Norway is apparently buying the whole shebang and taking over ownership.

Now, that is not the real problem -- the real problem is that he believes he cannot afford to keep, house and pay three foreign teachers, and only wants one of us to stay. Another problem is that we all have to be out of our apartment by the end of the month and figure out what the ass we are going to do.

Considering that Zeynep is technically Turkish (even though she teaches in English with a Canadian accent), that means they want either myself or Dr Dre to stay, by ourselves, in Sivas. And as I may have mentioned before, Sivas is kind of a small, conservative town, with one bar and no other foreigners. And considering the language barrier, the prospect of staying and living here alone is not too appealing.

Our boss was practically begging one of us to decide to stay, saying that he would find us a new roommate and still take care of us, but to hell with that.

I GOIN HOME FOR CARNIVAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am now officially heading home on February 23rd to do three very important things:
1. PLAY MAS
2. get my working holiday visa so that I can make loud koin in London
3. get a TAN (we are both grossly pale, like those geckos that live behind the paintings)

It has all been so sudden... when our director told us that we had to go, we all tossed and turned all night wondering exactly what to do. Go to Istanbul to work for a few months? Perhaps go to another country to teach? Japan? Korea? Dre and Zeynep are still not entirely sure what they will do, but either way, all of us are leaving Sivas within 2 weeks.

Ohhhh Sivas. So this is the end! Two weeks and no more Sivas! At least I can say I had a good experience, and enjoyed teaching, and saw many many beautiful places. I think it may be an extreme shock to go from the winter of Sivas to the madness and mayhem of Carnival. Two weeks is a very short amount of time, but better than nothing I suppose!

I wonder though... what shall I do with this blog?

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Things have been all around NICE in Sivas. Even the weather has been pretty damn sweet. The sun shined its damndest, and melted all that slippery snow on the sidewalks, and it was actually warm enough to lime in the teacher's lounge with the windows wide open for a change. It was nice to feel the sun again.

Above: A sunny day on Ataturk Caddesi, right in front of our school.

The other day I was strolling down the avenue and saw a huge, loud mob of people clamoring like crazy. It was right on the corner of Bank Street, so I figured it was FREENESS. And you KNOW how no matter where you go, people love free stuff!

What did I see?

THE BIGGEST FREAKIN DONER I'VE EVER SEEN.

What the heck is doner, you may be asking? Well boys and girls, it's only the tastiest Turkish treat around! They stack thin, seasoned slices of meat (either beef, lamb, or chicken) on top of each other on this gigantic skewer, until it is about three feet high and over 100 pounds. Then they spit roast it on an open flame, slowly turning it and carefully slicing off the cooked outer layers. It is positively delicious.



Above: the doner-freeness extravaganza. They were giving away 'doner durum', which is slices of meat wrapped in pide bread, kinda like a gyro. People were going NUTS. I think the whole promotion is because of the bird-flu scare, and the fact that chicken sales have dropped drastically as a result.

*******************

Today we did something a little........ strange. Some students of ours, who speak quite quite well, invited us to a ski place in the mountains to ski and bar-b-que. However, we were not aware that it was going to be a SNOW-B-QUE!


Below: Cem and Oral try to get the fire started...



... and Durgu roasts some sucuk (sausage), sweet long peppers, and tomatoes.



It was good food... and the mountains are really beautiful...but geez... standing in -20'C weather in the mountains of Central Anatolia with snow up to my ankles is not what I thought I would be doing on my day off! But say what... when in Rome, right!

Long time no see!

SNOW IN YUH PWEFM!!!!!!



Winter has officially come to mash us up. It is about -20'C every day, although sometimes it is nice and sunny and all the snow melts. However, there is a big downside to the sunny weather -- the sidewalks have become a MAJOR health hazard! For some god forsaken reason everything is covered in a slick sheet of bumpy ice, and I have now buss my ass and fallen right down FIVE TIMES. Haven't these people ever heard of SALT???????????



This was the view from our living room the other day. It was madness.

It's been a heck of a long time since I've written. Chad left on the 17th and since then I've pretty much been swamped in work. Plenty new classes started, and now we're all working 6 days a week. Today is our day off, thank god. Zeynep and I went to the gym this morning, but the aerobics instructor was sick so two other ladies ended up leading the class, which was just fine. I even got an inpromptu belly dancing lesson! And tonight, we are going to the university to enjoy some fish. They bring it to the table whole, head, tail, everything. And it is freakin AMAZING.

My real concern these days is what to do come July. My contract is supposed to be up in July, and I have to decide what it is I am going to do and where I am going to go. Should I go back to Trinidad, find an apartment and a job, and so forth? Should I go home for the summer, get a visa for the UK and then buss it again? I'm really not too sure what will happen!

Anyways. Sorry for the lame post. Really not too much to report on this side!

What A Wonderful Week!!!!!

It has been an absolutely wonderful week having Chad here. Surprisingly, he settled into the Sivas flow of life quite well and not suffered any real culture shock (except for one toilet episode, which I shall tell you about later). In fact, Chad seems to like Sivas so much, he says he would not mind staying!

We did pretty much nothing for the first day, as Chad recovered from a lack of sleep, due to him working the night shift in England for two weeks straight. He was also very skinny from living like a true bachelor in London, so I set on the task of fattening him up for the kill, with lots of yummy Turkish food.

Chad was not the only one who was being fattened up for the kill, because the Bayram holiday is called The Festival of the Sacrifice, where everyone slaughters an animal to give thanks for the year's prosperity, and shares the meat with neighbors and those less fortunate. So on the first day that we went wondering around, we saw our fair share of bulls, cows, sheep and goats in the various stages of sacrifice.

Someone's eating lamb tonight!!!!

Beef, anyone?



When it was all done, there were truck loads upon truck loads of skins. And lots of blood in the streets. Yech!

But enough of the blood and gore, and on with our story!!!

So off we went, to see Sivas, and I was more than happy to play tour guide.

Above: Chad strikes a striking pose by the Cifte Minarets.

We also took a walk up to the Sivas Citadel, which was an old fort overlooking the city, and it was just beautiful, with a fantastic panoramic view of everything.

Chad thought that he would just breeze out in Sivas for ten days. But little did he know that I had orchestrated an evil evil plan, to whisk him away on a surprise adventure to a magical far away kingdom known as Cappadocia, The Land of the Fairy Chimneys.

Cappadocia is famous for its 10,000 year old civilizations, cultural importance and unique cave dwellings. The area was once highly volcanic, and the rich volcanic peat that spilled over the land for millions of years was blown to and fro by the winds, to form bizarre stone structures which came to be known as "Fairy Chimneys".

Above: Us in front of fairy chimneys.

But Chad knew nothing about all this! Poor ignorant fool!

I awoke his sleeping ass at the butt crack of dawn and told him gently that we had to get up, bathe, pack our bags and get to the bus station. He was more than a little bewildered, and in the bus station experienced the mildly difficult and slightly upleasant task of using the squatting toilets, but once on the bus we were fine, and heading to Goreme for three days.

Above: the town of Goreme.

Goreme has a fascinating and bizarre landscape. The first settlers in this area were nomads, who decided to carve their homes into the soft but stable earth. But it was not just a bunch of people sitting in a cave poking a stick in the dirt -- they carved elaborate underground cities, farmed the land, and had rooms for every purpose, from camel stables to wine fermentation, to long tables and benches, all carved into the caves.

We arrived at our hostel, The Traveller's Cave, and settled in to our cave room. It was very comfortable, though it smelt a little dank. The most interesting feature was the fact that the shower was IN the toilet, so that if you in fact wanted to, you could pee, brush your teeth, and bathe all at the same time.



Our hotel



Our three-in-one bathroom.

Goreme has become a big tourist area over the past twenty years, with endless hotels and hostels created from the ancient caves in the area, and so the town has become a bustling little area, with lots of bars, restaurants and stores selling souveniers.

The Traveller's Cave was chock full of about 30 Korean tourists, and one very large New Zealander called Steve who meant to visit Turkey for a few days and accidentally ended up staying for over four weeks. Apparently so many Koreans go to Cappadocia that the hostels and restaurants will have their information in English, Turkish and Korean! In fact, our hostel even had stir-fry on their menu!

Above: Steve and his Korean "darlings", the dude from the hostel we called "Fabio" on account of his mega mop of hair, and me and Chaddos.

After settling in to our place, we walked about 1 km to the Goreme Open Air Museum, where we spent the afternoon. The Museum is an old cave community with lots of churches, and is now a protected World Heritage Site, and a very, very big tourist trap.

Cappadocia was also highly influenced by Christianity, when the disciples passed through Turkey spreading the word. The area is full to the brim of endless rock churches, cave churches and monasteries. The caves are all painted in the red ochre with paintings of Jesus Christ, Mary, endless saints and important scenes from the Bible.

The next day, after sleeping for about ten hours, we found a dude to take us around on a mini-tour and show us a few selected sites.

First the Sword Valley...



Then to see an area full of rock structures that look like animals; this one is known as Camel Rock...



Then to see more rock formations and Fairy Chimneys,

By the way... has anyone noticed that these Fairy Chimneys strongly resemble giant circumsized totees? Because I do!



Then Chad almost got bit on the head by a camel, ha ha! Good stuff.

Mmm! Doesn't Chad's head looks like a tasty treat? Nam nam nam!

That night we had a big dinner, and smoked some nargile and drank some delicious ice cold Efes.



The next day was our last day in Goreme, so after breakfast Chad and I ended up wandering around in the bush for a few hours. It was really stunning, and we felt as though we were a million miles away from everything, with nothing but miles and miles and miles of red and pink stone, fairy chimneys, and ancient caves.

Here Chad reclines in what looks like the eye socket of a dinosaur head

Goodness gracious! Doesn't Chad have a very large... um.... heh... smile!

Above - a pretty cat, a very blue door, and old-school burglar proofing.

Unfortunately, all things must come to an end, so we checked out of our cave and got our asses back on the bus, and headed back home to Sivas to enjoy Chad's last two days.

And now he is gone. I reluctantly took him to the airport this morning and bid him a very very fond farewell. I don't know when Chad will be back or when we will see each other again. So if you all will excuse me, I am going to go and drown my sorrows in chocolate and love songs.

Peace out!

TOMORROW!

Tomorrow is the big day -- Chad arrives!




This picture below was taken the day that I was leaving Trinidad. It can only be described as "A Perfect Day". I went in the morning with my darling sister and brother-in-law to get one last trip to the beach before heading to the airport that night. We ended up discovering a beautiful little place to take a dip, which we dubbed The Emerald Cove, because of how perfectly green the sea was.



The sun was shining, the sky was a brilliant blue, it was very, very hot, and the water was very cold and crisp. We played in the waves for about half an hour, and waved at fishing boats going by. After that we lounged on another nearby beach, Las Cuevas, for a few hours, just enjoying my last swim and the tropical weather. It was a strange feeling, knowing I was leaving my home when I don't exactly have a plan for the future. I can only hope I will find a teaching job and be on my way soon.

That afternoon as we drove back, all drowsy and happy in the back seat, watching the dense forest and bamboo whizz by the car window, I thought about how beautiful Trinidad is. But instead of feeling sad or depressed about leaving paradise, my family, my cats and dogs and friends, I felt strangely peaceful. Like this was how it was supposed to be.

Some people HATE Trinidad and are just dying to get out and move to Miami or Toronto or London or wherever, and never look back. I guess that last day just gave me a good feeling to know that even though I was leaving home, and did not know where I would end up, or when I would be back, there were many, many good things to go back for, and that I would be back to enjoy those things, when the time was right.

Language barriers

I think I have been going about this whole language barrier thing all wrong. Since we came I have been trying to pick up a little Turkish here and there, so that at least I could get by on my own... for example I can go to the market and ask for a half kilo of this and a kilo of that and ask how much... I can order in a restaurant... I can convey basic information and even have a semi-conversation with a stranger and we can understand each other. My Turkish sucks but once they can get a few words they can figure out what I have to say, and sometimes I seem to trick a few people into believing I amTurkish!

But today I have decided that trying to pass for a native is all wrong, so I have decided to start talking to strangers in English. And you'd be amazed at the difference! SO MANY PEOPLE know English! Here all this time I assumed most of them didn't know English, so I spoke to them in Turkish, but the second they hear me talk English, the English comes out! Sometimes they don't speak very much, sometimes they can only say 'where are you from?' but hey man, I done with this Turkish business. I thought that the more Turkish I could talk the better, but hell, it seems that the more English that I speak, the more English I get back! So from now on, I done with this trying to fit in crap, and going for the all out tourist vibes!!