Turkey Adventures and the week after

I'm so so so bad! I've been meaning to update this for weeks and its not that I've been overly busy, except for while I was away in Turkey. But somehow I just keep letting the days slip away. I've now been through another Eid here, so more down time (a whole week off... with nothing to do). I was ready to come back to work this week. But at the end of this week I get to fly home and spend 3 weeks in TN for Christmas. I'm in desperate need of some family and puppy time, so it can't come soon enough. Work has been frustrating lately with all the time off, from a society that doesn't exactly have the strongest work ethic... which is to say they look for every excuse not to work. When I'm getting this cynical, I know its time for a break! Even though I just had a small break in Turkey!

Adam and I went to Turkey for 10 days over Thanksgiving and we had a great time. We split our time between Istanbul and the Cappadocia region. Overall I loved Turkey and I can't wait to explore more of it because its such a diverse country. That being said, I'm pretty much done with Istanbul, even at the end of November in the pouring rain it was really crowded with tourist seeing all of the major attractions, just like us. We saw the Blue Mosque, the Agia Sophia, the Topkapi Palace, the Basilica Cisterns, walked around the grand bazaar (ok I really enjoyed that one!), the spice market, etc. We stayed in the tourist section, so we could walk to everything. And the hotels were decent, small, but noisy!! The street we stayed on had construction going on and they literally worked 24 hours a day (SO different from Kurdistan!), at 3 am they had a concrete truck pouring concrete! So we couldn't sleep well and it rained most of the time we were in Istanbul, so crowded, rainy, no sleep, lots of walking (in the rain), means Istanbul wasn't the greatest part of our trip. But it is a cool city and I'm glad I've experienced it. However, the gem of the trip was Cappadocia. We flew from Istanbul to Nevesehir, only a one our flight and got picked up and brought to our hotel in Urgup, where we were the only patrons!

Cappadocia
So Cappadocia is the name of a region in Central (Anatolia) Turkey that is unique because of the kind of stone that is ubiquitously distributed throughout the land. Thousands of years ago, this area was full of volcanoes and lava covered the whole area. This lava turned into a kind of rock called tufa, which is very very soft (can be manipulated with fingernails), so it has been shaped by wind, water, and overall erosion into crazy shapes and patterns throughout the years. Also, harder stone, such as limestone settled on top of the tufa, which creates some of the weirdly balanced columns you'll see in my pictures. The whole place kind of looks like it belongs on another planet or like you're walking around on a sci-fi set. http://picasaweb.google.com/chelseajaccard/CappadociaTurkey# Click on that to see some photos! So we first stayed in a little town called Urgup and stayed in this great boutique hotel that had recently been renovated and it was done tastefully and traditionally. We were the only people staying our first night so it was quiet and peaceful. The hotel happened to be right next to a winery, how convenient! So we went for a tasting and bought a bottle or four. We enjoyed our new wine on the roof top of our hotel with a nice sunset overlooking the bizarre landscape. Everything was in house with this hotel, they provided dinner and breakfast and we hired our tour guide for our hiking tour (which provided lunch) all within the hotel. Very convenient and the owner was really nice and spoke English and really appreciated our business (its low season there, and unlike Istanbul, there really weren't other tourist around).

So our second day in Cappadocia was our big hiking day, we started walking at 9 and stopped around 4. We walked through what they call rose valley b/c there's iron ore in the tufa, so it has a red hue (other places have sulfur and are yellow, etc). It was awesome climbing around in this stuff. Another key feature of this stone is that because it is so soft, it is easily carved out to create living quarters, so in times past people lived in the stone and carved churches out of it. This used to be a predominately Christian area. So you'll be walking and all of a sudden come upon an old church with Frescoes painted on the walls, our guide was telling us that they dated back to the 3rd and 4th century... don't know how true that is, but regardless they're old. In addition, this stone isn't just above ground, its underground too, so back in the day when Christians were being persecuted in Turkey they carved out whole underground cities and lived there to hide. We toured one and while it was pretty crazy to imagine people living there, it was one of those overly crowded tourist things (several bus loads of Koreans were down there at the same time as us), so it wasn't that enjoyable. Plus it was dark and small, the passages between rooms you had to crouch and walk b/c they were only about 3 feet in height. Though still cool to have seen. Anyway, back to the cool hike which we did enjoy. After walking for a few hours we came to a town (sadly I forget the name) where we were to have lunch, but we were early so we got to explore the old section of the city, which was about 100 feet high maybe 400-500 feet wide carved out of this stone, where everyone used to live. It has since been condemned and no one can live there, but the structure is still there and we scrambled up, down, around, through, inside, etc for just over an hour and truly, truly enjoyed ourselves. I know Adam had a few scary moments when he lost footing and was hanging over the valley holding on with one hand... but he saved himself and while I didn't attempt climbing on the exterior walls, I did my share of scrambling as well. It's a crazy place to imagine people living. And if you decide that day that you want a new bookshelf, you just start digging into your wall and viola in a few minutes you have it! Renovations were a snap! :) After lunch our walk continued through more extra terrestrial like landscape (again check the photos link) until we came upon a road where some churches in the rock served as another big tourist land b/c the big buses could pull right up to it. I'm really glad we were able to spend the day walking through the landscape, not be zipped around via bus. Another quiet dinner at our hotel with some more wine from our neighborhood winery capped off a perfect day.

The next day we moved hotels to our own personal cave in Uchisar, the hotel is called museum hotel and it was spectaular. We stayed in the Khandil Cave and it was Adam's Birthday, so we walked around trying to find some lunch once we got there, but again b/c it is low season, nothing was open so we had to walk a long way and poor Adam was VERY sore from his antics the day before. We eventually found a restaurant and the door was locked, but I knocked and they let us in and served us, again we were the only people there. It was a very nice lunch, but this part of town was quiet expensive, oh well. The rest of the trip we enjoyed our cave hotel with our awesome views and expensive food (they had mojitos, for $15 each, we had 4)! One day back in Istanbul allowed for me to find the perfect lantern and then back to Erbil. We had 5 days in Erbil before Adam had to go back to Baghdad and we mostly relaxed and watched movies and ate (and road go carts).

So that brings me up to date, after Adam left it was Eid, and I sat around and did nothing, though we FINALLY got propane for our apartment, so I could cook. Now just have to make it through this work week and then I'm home for three weeks!

I had a special treat this weekend. A coworker left for the weekend and granted me the gift of the keys to his car!! I finally was able to drive myself to the store when I wanted, to the gym when I wanted, etc. It was glorious! Just like everything else here, there are a hundred different stories as to why I haven't been given a car yet, but they all result in my being carless.

Another big development I was also finally able to move into my apartment last night! No more hotel for me! I'm sharing an apartment with two other American women, one civil rights lawyer, one other young professional that just moved here last week to work for the Department of Foreign Relations. We've been working the last few weeks at getting all of the furniture and everything ready. We realized last night a big thing we forgot... propane (gas stoves, no natural gas lines here!) so we can't cook yet, oops! Its nice to finally fully unpack for the first time and feel like I'm in a home. Though I will miss my clothes being ironed for me. :) This now makes the car situation even more difficult because I'm away from my colleagues that have cars and I'm quite a bit further away.

We're busy in the planning phases for some field survey work, which is exciting. But not as exciting as my upcoming week... I'll be in Turkey as of late Wednesday night and will spend a few days there, including yes Thanksgiving in Turkey! :) The photos will be awesome and I will share soon!

The Iraq you never see

Strange things about Kurdistan:

* They don't allow cars older than three years to be imported into the country.

* If you buy a new car, you also then have to purchase (if you don't already have one) a much older car and cut it in half! (they're trying to keep junk of the roads) But you have to show proof of this before they'll give you a license plate.

* The color orange here is really popular, carpets, couches, curtains, clothing... you name it you can get it orange! They must all be VOLS fans!

* This is the one place in the world I've been where Pepsi is more popular than Coca Cola, though they have plants here for both. I don't drink either, so it doesn't affect me much, can we get a Dr. Pepper plant here please?

* There is a full fledged film school here, professionally accredited and doing great work, who knew!?


Just some insights from this week. So last week I had the pleasure of going to a wonderful Christian village, called Bedial. More beautiful scenery along the way, this time there was snow on the distant mountains in Iran and Turkey.
This cross was on top of a small chapel, but as you can see its a bit broken!
This is the head of Bedial in front of the old church. This village was destroyed in Saddam's Anfal campaign, but because the church was of stone, it wasn't fully destroyed like the houses and such. They've since built a new church where they worship, but this one is pretty awesome. No one really knows how old it is... someone said several hundred years... but we don't really know!

I'll post a few pictures here, but you can go HERE: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2125291&l=4a2d7&id=7413237 and see alot more.



Also I got my hair cut here and its the best hair cut I've had in years!! I love the J&K women's center!!!! I still have a free full body massage and free facial to use at some point before January. :) They've torn up the road in front of and behind the center though and I'm afraid its hurting their business. So many of the business men here want to see them fail, b/c its two women owning a business that caters to nothing but women. So I love supporting them and really hope they're able to hang on! I should be headed there in about an hour... its by far my favorite place in Erbil!

Weekend

Another week goes by! This week was full of work. At one of my ministries we just got a new office building and the internet doesn't work well, so it makes it difficult both to do work and to procrastinate work. :) One of our projects, a building project for a Ministry seems to be getting on track and that's very exciting! It's going to be alot of work, but it'll be a historic project to be involved in!

Today is our official day off and it was pretty low key, but I did go to lunch with a friend to a new restaurant outside of town which had a better view than food I think! They insisted on paying and later were discussing the price in Arabic... I guess they don't know how much I understand... but it was WAY to expensive for what it was and I felt bad, though I offered to pay at the time. Generosity and hospitality here is ubiquitous, even when its ridiculous. The cost of food is one of those unexpected costs here. Salaries are not that high and groceries aren't all that expensive, but restaurant food is exorbitantly expensive! A normal meal (nothing special, chicken, fries, etc) will run you $20-$30. Don't get me wrong there is cheap street food (not cheap by Ghanaian standards, but you can get a shwama for about $2). I don't know how anyone getting paid what the majority gets paid can eat out, much less pay for others!

After lunch we went to a new park that just opened about a month ago and its beautiful! Lots of fountains and waterfalls and bridges and flowers and paths, they did a very nice job. I'll have to go back with a camera. So the company was nice, the landscape was nice and I saw quite a few surprising things at this park. Friday is the most popular day for everyone to go out walking, and everyone appears to be well aware that its see and be seen. Women and men alike are wearing their best clothes (while I certainly was not...), fully made up and carting along the whole family. Or couples were holding hands or arms entwined, something I've been noticing more and more lately... and that I find almost shocking for the area (not bad, just shocking)! However, the most shocking thing came when we were walking out, a young man pranced in fully made up, he had on mascara and tons of foundation and blush... I had no idea it was ok to be that openly homosexual here. He's definitely the first one I've seen here, but to be that open about it really surprised me. Good for him!

Tomorrow a last minute exursion was planned, so I'll actually have something interesting to write about and have new pictures! So expect an update soon!

Long Week

The flight back, though not in business class was not too bad (the food not nearly as good though!). I've been back for a week exactly, but it feels like longer. Not that I had that much work per se, but because time moves slow here, especially when you're sick.

I was lucky enough to catch a cold from the guy sitting next to me on the way back to America, he was coming from Russia. So I caught an Russian cold on the plane, it incubated in America and turned into a sinus infection in Iraq. Very international! Though I'm feeling a bit better now, the cough has decided to stick around.

We finally got the keys to our apartment... but its unfurnished and they haven't approved the budget for the furniture... so I'll be at the hotel awhile longer. I still haven't unpacked from being home in hopes that I won't have to. But since it took two months to get the apartment, we'll see!

It's funny what's expensive here. Today I went shopping with a coworker to outfit our new office with supplies, everything from bathroom cleaner to coffee mugs to tea sets. One of the most expensive items was a little set of 12 miniature spoons to stir sugar into tea glasses, it was 22,000 Iraqi Dinar (about $20). To compare that with something else, the codeine I bought today to help me sleep and take with my cough syrup was 1,000 Iraqi Dinar (less than a dollar)... things that make you go hmmmm...

Adam and I are going on a trip to Turkey for Thanksgiving and I can't wait!!! Turkey is an amazing country and I've wanted to go here for a LONG time! We're only going to Istanbul and Cappadocia, so that leaves alot of Turkey unexplored for later!

The internet was out at the hotel all day until late today... made me wonder how in the world I made it through 2 years in Ghana without even having electricity most of the time, much less anything as fancy as a TV, computer, or internet! How life changes! Though I sure did get alot of reading done in Ghana, so far here I've only read 2 books, a bit off from the two a week I was reading there!

This is a very disjointed entry, full of random thoughts as I came up with them. I guess that's what happens when I have nothing really interesting to share, but wanted to update you all anyway! So Happy Halloween everyone, the only sweet thing I had today was a cough drop and cough syrup... eat some candy for me! (But don't blame those extra three (four, five?) reece's on me Mom!)

Wedding on the Farm!

You'd think it would be easier to write more when I'm in the U.S. with more reliable internet and what not... but man this is a busy place!

So my brother officially got hitched on our property that we call the farm (though there is no crop cultivation and no animals, other than when our dogs are there and a couple thousand yellow jackets). The wedding was Saturday and it was beautiful! The sun was shining all day, the temperature was mild (though it did get cold by the end, that's what giant bonfires are for!), and nothing big went wrong! My brother has been working on the stage for the last 4 months (it was already built b/c he throws concerts from here, but he stained it and tiled it and cleaned it, etc). Here:
We were blessed to have so much of our family in one place to celebrate this day! 6 of my cousins and 2 sets of aunts and uncles stayed at my house, in addition to my 2 sisters and myself. We had a full house, as did my parents with both sets of grandparents and 2 more Aunts and my Mom's best friend. There were only about 80 RSVP's, but there were at least 160 people there! It was a beautiful and unique ceremony, my brother is very into the Cherokee Indian culture and they had many Native American aspects to the wedding, everyone was doused in sage smoke before going on the stage, the music was a Native drummer and his wife chanting, they had their hands wrapped (which is a Celtic ritual I believe). The whole ceremony was perfect for them, the officiant spoke of their friendship and the nature of their souls communing and making a better place for each other and spoke of their music and creativity and it was just perfect for them. (If you can't tell from the photos, my brother is a bit of a hippie and yes the bridesmaids are barefoot!) The flowers were the absolute most amazing I have ever seen in any other wedding in person or in any bridal magazine. Alot of this thing was a family affair and Ashley (my new sister!)'s aunt Teresa did the flowers, my aunt Teresa took the photos, and friends manned the tables and did the sound. The only outside people were the ones taht set up the tent and that brought in the catering. Anyway back to the flowers... I somehow got stuck on 2nd camera duty, so most of the photos I took are part of the "official" photos and I won't get to see until she processes them, so I only have the few I took with my camera, so here's a picture of my handsome little brother with his awesome flower:
I was supposed to cut his hair the day before, but we ran out of time, oh well!

The rehearsal dinner was at my Dad's favorite restaurant, the China King Buffet in Lenoir City! :) Yes that's right the dinner was at an all you can eat Chinese Buffet! But it is fantastic, its all you can eat sushi along with the food. That's right folks, we're classy. :)

There wasn't much traditional about the wedding, other than her dress, which was awesome. I'm going to post all of the pictures I have (not that many sadly) on my picassa page.

It was a quick trip home and I'm going crazy trying to get everything done today before I fly back out tomorrow! It has been fantastic though!

Vienna

The travel has begun and I'm excited to get it over with and be home, but I'm also savoring it for all its worth... because this is the last time I'll have business class for probably a VERY long time! The food, as expected, did not disappoint. My main course was a fillet of beef and while it was cooked more than I would have preferred, it was a quite tasty piece of meat for airplane food... plus the grilled veggies that came with it where awesome! :) I didn't enjoy the red wine pairing with it as much though... should have gone for the champagne, as was my first instinct!

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Vienna right now, it's 9 pm here and I'm going to go roam around in a minute, but I'm an Internet addict and had to log on and check my mail and the stock market and call folks to let them know I'm ok and all that jazz. I know, big waste of time when I'm in one of the coolest cities in the world right?? As soon as I finish this, I'm out the door, don't worry!

I'm always struck when I come to Europe about compactness, efficiency, and overall order of things and Austria is no different. Everything is so clean that when you see a small bit of graffiti it hits you like a slap in the face! I also love that you can be going along in a taxi (yes I'll be walking in a few minutes, ok, I just haven't yet!) and passing high rise buildings and gas stations and WHAM you pass a centuries old Church. The tension of modernization and old world seem to fit seamlessly somehow because its Europe!

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go *waltz* around the city. (was the emphasis really necessary??) :)