The Highlights: Cappadocia

The Highlights: Weeks 4-5 (The School of Seven Hills)

The Highlights: Week 3 (The Southeast)

Oh what's up, Tigris river?

Panorama of the Mesopotamian Plain. Pretty sweet.

Frisbee selfie at the Tigris river!!

Mor Gabriel Monastery in Tur'Abdın

A matchstick model of the monastery 

Kind of "Mines of Moria"-esque

Where I am now. The top of the dorm building I'll be in for 5 or 6 more weeks

The Southeast

After an amazing week of travel in the southeast of Turkey, I am back in Istanbul at Yeditepe University. I'll wait a day or two before I write a post about my first impressions here. Sorry about not posting anything in a while. It's been pretty busy over here. As you could infer from the title, I'd like to talk about my trip to the southeast. Pictures soon to follow.

Last Monday, the cohort and I checked out of our hostels and got on a bus to go to the airport. It was snowing when we were leaving which was pretty awesome to me as a southern Californian. We flew out of Istanbul to Diyarbakır and got on a bus to take a quick tour of the city. The first place we stopped was at this huge wall surrounding part of the city. The wall is the second largest man-made wall after the Great Wall of China and it's made of black basalt so it's pretty awesome. After that we drove around some more and eventually got to our hotel. While we were driving around, I noticed that there were a lot of worn down, abandoned houses. It reminded me a lot of Ensenada and some parts of that city. It was pretty crazy seeing such a big economic disparity between Diyarbakır and Istanbul, however, it was nice to see a part of Turkey that wasn't super touristy. We were only there for about a day and a half and then we left for Mardin.

It was really, really cold when we got to Mardin. We checked into the hotel and went to dinner after getting settled in. It was really foggy the first two days we were there so I didn't do much. After the fogged cleared though, it was beautiful. Actually, beautiful isn't the right word. It was...incredible. A few friends and I walked up to the top of a small mountain and hung around there for a little. We could see the Mesopotamian Plain right in front of us and we were all awestruck by the view. While we were in Mardin we went to go visit a few monasteries and that was really cool. It was weird to me as an American that something could be that old. Two of the monasteries we went to were both over a thousand years old. Crazy. The buildings were beautiful and I'm still processing everything I saw there.

I did notice that while we were in the southeast I was getting stared at a lot. People kept asking me where I was from and what my ethnicity was. At first, I was more than a little annoyed by it, but I realized that there probably aren't a lot of Asian people that go to the southeast of Turkey and when they do, they're mostly tourists. After I realized that, it still made me kind of uncomfortable but there was nothing I could do about it so I just moved on.

Overall, the trip was a great experience. I learned a lot of cool things, saw a lot of cool things, ate some good food, and hung out with some cool people. One thing I think this trip definitely helped with was bringing our group closer together. There were some solid bonds forged on that trip, both between certain people I wouldn't have expected to become friends and the group as a whole. It was great for me bonding with some people and I'm getting closer with some of the group which is so much fun. However, I do really miss my friends and family back in the States, but as they say, abscence makes the heart grow fonder.

In the eternal words of Porky the Pig, "Th-th-th-that's all folks!" Thanks for reading, everyone. I'll try to post more often. Blessings upon you, dear friends. Until next time.

In Christ,
Ethan