Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Geologic kitty guards the rocks!

Merhaba!

Today we were invited to have lunch at the home of an old lady in Yeniceseyhler. We ate flat bread with walnuts, rice rolled up in grape leaves, watermelon, tea, and some strange warm clear gelatin... we weren't really sure what that was. Three of us sat on a couch covered in rice bags; the rest of us sat on the grass in the front yard on rice bags - they're pretty much the same material as plastic tarps. Here's a picture of us eating:


This is a picture of the cute little glasses of tea we drink from and the pretty saucers the tea is served on:



It was really nice; the old lady's son, a man in his 30's, kept bopping around taking pictures of us between serving tea and passing plates of food. Our bus driver was also enjoying himself and walking around taking pictures between grabbing bites of food.

After lunch several mapping groups were walking along one side of a certain hill when we were encountered by a cute little kitty. Bill, one of the guys from UT on the trip, picked the cat up in his arms. The cat had probably never been loved on before, but she loved it when Bill held her and the rest of us came over to pet her head. Bill put the cat down so that we could work, and the cat walked around on the rocks we were looking at, probably in hopes of getting picked up again! Here's a picture of the kitty sittiing at the top of the rocks, watching us work:



This just in: I just drank garlic milk - a Polish remedy for sore throats. Not because I have one, but one of the guys has bad allergies, so Anna, a Polish-Canadian, made a big vat of it. It tastes like the liquid that the escargot are cooked in. I'm not sure if the escargot liquid is what I want to drink on a regular basis though...

Mom also wanted to know what the dogs are like here, so here's a picture of a particularly cute puppy in town. All the dogs are sweet, but sadly a lot of them have some sort of medical problem it seems. A lot of them limp, and of course none are neutered or spayed, so there are tons of strays running around town. It makes me want to work for the SPCA doing spay/neuter drives or bringing free veterinary care to rural areas.


Ok, time to shower while the water's still hot!

Salaam alaikum,
Sarah

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Weekend recap

Merhaba!
After a very labor-intensive week of projects here in Taskesti, we were all looking forward to a relaxing trip to the Black Sea. Sadly though, our bus driver's grandfather died this past weekend, with the funeral being Sunday morning, thus we last-minute changed our plans and went on a closer, afternoon-length trip to Lake Abant. Lake Abant is a place I'd heard of before, but not actually known where it is. It's fairly close to Taskesti, about an hour's drive due to the mountain roads, but fairly close as the crow flies. It's a mix of ritzy, high-end stuff and gypsy village, basically. Lake Abant itself is beautiful, it's up in the mountains (great views on the drive up, lots of cars pulled off the road for pictures). Unfortunately, swimming in the lake is not permitted. I also noticed that there was no boating, sailing, jet-skiing, etc. on the lake, so I'm guessing that the lake is protected by a nature organization to keep it looking nice and being a good eco-community. We all wandered down to the lake and waded in up to our ankles to cool off a bit. Here's a picture of a few of us on our aquatic adventure:


We were all pretty hungry when we arrived, so we stopped at the restaurant on the pier for lunch (very $$$). The menu had some pretty amusing translations, Andrea and I split the "trout on pan" aka pan-fried trout. The flavor was pretty good, but the fish still had its head and fins. I had to cover up the head with a lettuce leaf so it would stop staring at me. Creepy! Here's a picture of our meal:


On the opposite side of the lake, there were tall, fancy buildings that we interpreted to be expensive hotels. Some of the girls walked around to that side and reported that there were a few very pricey shops. The other extreme though, was that on the side of the lake with the restaurant, it looked like a gypsy caravan had set up camp. Lots of Turks brought their entire families to the lake, packed cooking supplies, and were cooking their lunches in the shade of the trees several tens of feet back from the lakeshore. Very much a family atmosphere.

In Muslim culture, Friday is the holy day of the week, the equivalent of the Sabbath. All other Muslim countries have Sunday - Thursday as the work week, with Friday and Saturday as the weekend. While Turks celebrate the holy day on Friday, they work a Western work week, Monday - Friday. This is one of the many ways Ataturk Western-ized/secularized the country.

On the way home, we took an off-the-beaten-path road and stopped at a nearby fish farm. Several of my fellow campers tried their luck at catching fish with their bare hands. I don't think any of them were successful...



The past two days have been very busy! We're mapping the rocks in/around the neighboring village of Yeniceseyhler (ye-nitch-shay-ler), which requires lots of going up and down hillslopes over and over trying to nail down where the rock units change from one to another. We then have to map the locations of the various rock units on our topographic map along with the direction the rocks are dipping into the ground and trending across the landscape. We also have to determine our locations just using a compass and topographic map, so a lot of time is dedicated to just figuring out where we are!

Today my partner and I passed through the village while mapping. The village has a very cold chesmeh so we refilled our water bottles and ate lunch there. I initially did not sit sufficiently far from the edge and had a wet bottom. The school kids who ate lunch with us thought it was pretty funny. There are a lot of cherry and mulberry trees in town, and as we were walking through town, people were calling from their windows, inviting us to eat fruit from their trees. Kyle was trying to reach some tasty-looking cherries and was assisted by a tiny old man who hobbled over and handed Kyle his cane, motioning for him to use it to pull the branches down so I could reach the cherries. It was super cute! All the people in town are used to seeing students each summer, and are interested in watching us work (they probably find it bizarre - banging rocks with hammers), I caught an old woman looking at my map today!

Got to go, have another long day tomorrow!

Salaam alaikum,

Sarah

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Week 1 update

Merhaba (Hello)!

Sorry for the huge delay with blogging, it took a few days to get the internet up and running out here, and then it took a while for me to figure out how to work around the internet settings to be able to access my blog.

As of a few minutes ago, I just finished with week 1 of field camp. The work consisted of a lot of hiking over hilltops, chasing elusive outcrops of mudstone and sanstone, trying to measure the total extent of the units. Strangely enough, Turkey has a similar history to Virginia, geologically. Most of modern Virginia was added on at various points throughout geologic time by island arcs (similar to Hawaii) being dragged onto the continent Laurentia (ancient North America). Being on the east coast, Virginia accumulated a lot of land mass through this process, including ocean floor bits, volcanic material, and any sediments that had collected on the sea floor near the islands. Turkey is also a hodge-podge of various pieces of volcanic arc systems. We examined some of those rocks this past week, and will map the area in detail next week. Some of these rocks are fairly rare - our instructor said maybe only 1 in 100 geologists has seen rocks of this composition: sandstone composed of volcanic rock fragments. If you're a geologist - we saw olivine sandstone. If you're a non-geologist - we saw peridot sandstone. Very cool.

Summary of trip so far:
On Sunday I flew to Istanbul via Turkish Airlines. If you are ever planning a flight and this airline is an option, take it! The plane was nice and the service and amenities were fantastic. We were served a full hot breakfast on PLATES with miniature teacups for our hot drink of choice (as opposed to the little styrofoam cups they usually give you). Every passenger is automatically given free headphones, and one guy in our group who flew overnight said that everyone is given a fleece blanket for the evening, not the cheapie polyester ones that stick to your clothes.

Upon arriving we took a bus to Taskesti, the small town of about 2,000 where our field station is. The bus is pretty intensely decked out - I notice new adornments every day. There's a Turkish flag hanging from the top of the windshield as well as a strip of fringe (matching fringe on rear windshield), and all sorts of pendants dangling from the rear-view. There's also some small decorative rugs in the aisle and the driver's seat is surrounded by multi-colored fake flowers. The horn plays a little tune when honked. To get an idea of the bus, listen to the Bud Light "Real men of genius" taxi cab driver jingle, it's pretty accurate. Traffic in Istanbul is horrible, especially crossing over to the Asian side when the lanes decrease from 8 to 3. A guy in a new Lincoln rear-ended us trying to squeeze over into a lane. We didn't feel a thing, but he's got a little hole in his bumper. Overall, the cars around the city looked like cars seen in the US: Volkswagon, Honda, Lincoln, Ford, etc. Out here in the country the cars are much older and less American in appearance. Many people ride tractors into town (kind of similar to the shore's farm equipment traffic)!

Our lodge is super luxurious... pretty much on par with old VSFA dorms and classrooms (for non-ESVA people, VSFA is the summer camp where I usually work... ANYTHING but luxurious!). My friend, Andrea, and I are roommates, we are actually in a 2-person room with attached bath, which is nice. We eat breakfast at the lodge, lunch outside, and dinner in town at a local restaurant. Our camp mom, Nejla, cooks for us, packs our lunches, and serves us tea (cay, pronounced "chai") in the afternoon while we're doing homework. She is very sweet but doesn't speak any English! I've made sure to learn enough to say thank you (Tesekkur ederim) and to say yes (evet) when offered something. Eating out in the evening is nice - it's covered by our tuition and supports the local economy. Also, all our food comes from local farmers.

The children here are adorable! There's about 5 little girls ages 6-12 who wait for us by the road on our way back from dinner. They practice their English on us (Hello! How are you? What's your name? Bye-bye!) and bring us cameillas every day. Andrea and I already have a huge flower collection. There's also some little boys who come over to swing in our swing and lie in the hammock. Their dogs also come over and lie under the tree in the shade.

Tuesday was our first day in "the field." Here's a picture from lunch: This is a watermelon being washed for dessert. We have watermelon at least once per day which I love! This area has a lot of natural springs, and where possible, the water is piped to a fountain (chesmeh), so people can use it. The water in most of them is safe for drinking - our camp director knows which ones! - and the water from them is amazing! So cold and delicious! It tastes so clean compared to the clorine-y water at camp.



Friday is market day in town. We went yesterday morning (you have to go before 11 AM, between 11 and 3 it is so crowded you can barely move). It's pretty neat, there's a lot of fruits and vegetables sold, as well as HUGE sacks of grains, dried beans, and spices. There's a lot of people selling clothing (especially women's), but you can find basically anything you need there. It's the Turkish equivalent to Jaxon's, basically. That being said, similarly to Jaxon's, there is probably not a lot there that you would want. Any of the food is good (dissimilar to Jaxon's where the candy has been there for 10 years), and there are some quality items, but there are lots of cheap plastic children's toys, cheap costume jewelry, and an excess of women's clothes that all look generally the same. It's expected to haggle with the venders for a deal when shopping. Ned would excel at this, I'm terrible at it, although I did get a beautiful 10 lira scarf for 9 Turkish lira! I brought my Turkey guidebook with me so I could try to bargain in Turkish. Key phrases are Ne kadar (how much?), on (ten, most things are around 10 lira), bes (5), sekiz (8, what they will usually give it to you for), dokuz (9, what I got it for... lame). At the market, there are young boys carrying around big trays of tea. They just hand it out for free! Tea is the national beverage of Turkey, and is grow along the Black Sea. It is served in small, handle-less, hourglass-shaped glasses, usually on a saucer with a tiny spoon and two lumps of sugar. The sugar, in my opinion, ruins the flavor, and most people drink it straight. Unlike most of Asia, where green tea is the norm, the tea is Turkey is incredibly strong black tea.

Tomorrow we are planning to go to the beach along the Black Sea. It's been super hot and we've been spending so much time sweating out in the field that we've been begging our instructors to take us swimming. If the weather holds up, that should be our adventure for tomorrow, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Salaam alaikum (peace be with you),
Sarah

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

First Post!


Hi all,


This is my first blog, so I apologize for the boring layout! As most of you know, I'm spending 5 weeks in Turkey this summer for geology field camp - boot camp for geologists, basically. This will constitute my first "geologic adventure," but I'm hoping for many more to blog about during my grad school career. My goal is to blog daily with pictures of the area and updates on what I'm learning and experiencing. I've shown here a poor map of Turkey. The A, B, and C are our three destinations. The yellow star on the left is Istanbul, the yellow star on the right is Ankara, the capitol.


That's all for now, I better get back to packing!

Sarah