First Weekend

We have had workshops and planned activities every since we arrived and this weekend offered alittle free time. Friday was a full day of English language teaching workshops and a fablous Turkish language/culture presentation by a professor from Bilkent University. She taught us how to say some greeting like iyi aksamler (good evening), gunyden(good morning) and a few more contemporary sayings that are not taught in standard language classes. We did talk about some important holidays and I found out that I will be off from school for a week in November (16-19th) for Kurban Bayrami (sacrifice holiday). Need to start making plans to do some traveling at that time!:).

At around 730 we went to a BBQ at the ambassador's home. Very nice guy and of course lovely house. I also met the press office director(?) and another guy from the economic office that had recently finished a post in Bagdad(with some great insight). Everything was nice and the food was good (American style of course). Nothing super crazy happened.

FYI, I can not figure out how to get the pictures to be throughout the blog and not just at the top and therefore they are all at the top. Sorry, but they are not in any order. They include a group picture with the Ambassador, getting ready to go into the Turkish bath, the Anatolian museum and Kale resturant.

On Saturday, we had lunch at Kale resturant which is a very old house and many of the furnishings are preserved. The food was good and the view was great! After lunch we went to the Museum of Antatolian Civilization. Great exhibits of reliefs, statues, pottery and etc from ancient times.

Next, a small group of us went to a hamam which are very old bath houses from Ottoman times that people still go to for a good scrub. Let me tell you.....you have to leave your inhibitions at the door! I purchased a body scrub, coffee scrub and massage(aka the whole shabang) for only 35 TL (about $25). We were told to go in a changing room and undress down to our panties and put on a towel. We were then led through a small door almost underground to the hamam. Inside the hamam it was about 150 degrees!!! It is basically rooms of marble slabs and sinks. We dropped towels and had to use little bucks to dowse ourselves with water until we were nice and soft. Then an old Turkish woman grabbed me and took me to the middle marble slab where she literaly scrubed the top layer of skin off and then did the coffee scrub. It was nice and felt like I was in ancient times. The inside was beautiful with stars cut out in the ceiling for light and all the white marble. Will try to get up the courage to go back for a bikini wax, which is supposed to be great and for only about $4! I came out renewed and definitly clean!