Double Serving of Turkey

A week with Turkey, the country, and turkey, the bird, is a very good week indeed, at least in my book. My vacation wound down with 5 days in the nation of Turkey, primarily in the Cappadocia region near Goreme. I first visited Turkey three years ago, but coming now from Macedonia I was struck by similarities between the two nations, both formerly part of the Ottoman Empire. Many words and food dishes are the same in both countries, so I must confess that Turkey felt decidedly unexotic compared with the other places I visited on vacation. Nevertheless, I enjoyed hiking around Cappadocia's unusual rock formations that were used for centuries for everything from churches to pigeon coops to residences. At the end of the trip, I had a few hours in Istanbul for souvenir shopping at the Grand Bazaar and my semi-annual Starbucks chai latte.


The edible turkey made an appearance on Thursday at the Peace Corps Thanksgiving celebration / swearing-in. After successfully completing their training, the newest 37 volunteers were sworn in by the U.S. Ambassador with their proud host families looking on. Shortly after the ceremony, I started staking out the pumpkin pie until given the all clear to dive in and claim it, as well as the turkey that is flown in especially for Thanksgiving.


One volunteer even had a can of cranberry sauce, which we passed around the table so everyone could have a spoonful. I'm thankful to have made it through my first year in the Peace Corps and thankful that there is a year left to accomplish more and for additional exploration of Macedonia.

Now official, the freshly minted volunteers departed Friday for their new homes and Bitola welcomed two new ladies, Helene and Lauren. Helene is my new upstairs neighbor and will work at an NGO called LifeStart. Lauren will teach at a primary school and lives 15 minutes from us. My sitemate Phil extended for a third year and Ashley from my group lives just outside the city, so there is no shortage of Americans in the greater Bitola area.

Tomorrow I officially begin my usual hodge-podge of projects again, not to mention I'll resume my workouts to counteract the holiday treats I recently consumed. If you check out my photos on Picasa, I would be thankful if you would imagine me 10 pounds lighter.

Syria: Souqs, Sweets, & Sheep

Entering Syria, I felt like I drank two Coca Colas back-to-back and was all hyped up because my group got into a verbal and physical fight with a rude Dutch-Syrian couple about whose turn it was at the one window for foreigners entering Syria. Ironically we couldn’t escape these same people in Damascus, running into them at least 3 times in the souq (shopping corridor). As much as I would like to say that we just ignored them, I think some sneers were exchanged by both parties.

The majority of my time in Damascus was spent in the aforementioned souq. The souq ceiling is covered, but you can see light coming through the bullet holes created by French machine guns flying over during the nationalist rebellion in 1925. The first night, we listened to a storyteller at a café and despite being entirely in Arabic, it was a delight because he was so animated and the café had a great atmosphere. The courtyard of the Umayyad mosque proved quite picturesque, with its golden mosaics and shining marble floors. The girls paid 50 Syrian Pounds ($1) for the required hooded robes to enter the mosque grounds. I had an interesting time waiting for an old courtyard to open, miming with an old man sitting in the spice row about the operating hours. He invited me to sit with him and gave me some tea, which I watched him prepare with about one part tea to three parts sugar so of course it was delicious.

Prices in Syria are even better than in Macedonia and somehow being surrounded by salary-earning group members made me forget that I have volunteer wages, so I indulged in some souvenir shopping. I invested in some wonderful food as well, including the legendary Bakdash ice cream shop in the souq with salep-flavored ice cream rolled in pistachios. There were wonderful little pizzas for less than $1 and falafels for the same price.

From Damascus, we took a very fume-filled van to Palmyra. We drove within 100 miles of the Iraq border, which may be the closest that I ever want to get to Iraq, but it felt strange to see highway signs to Baghdad. The attraction in Palmyra is the ruins, which are the first that I’ve seen with dual language inscriptions, in Greek and the local Aramaic. There was also an interesting astrological carving in one of the temples. Katie Travel Tip #3: When traveling in the desert and around ruins, khaki pants hide dirt the best.

From Palmyra we took a tiny but better maintained van to Crac des Chevaliers (Fort of the Knights). The fort was originally a small Kurdish outpost but was expanded by the Crusaders, and eventually turned into living quarters for locals until the early 1900s. Our hotel was perched on a hillside directly across from the fort, so it was a tremendous view to wake up to.

From Crac des Chevaliers, it was back in the cramped van to the city of Aleppo. Luckily we were able to add two stops, seeing huge wooden water wheels in Hama and then a “dead city” called Sergilla. We arrived at Sergilla just at sunset, so the abandoned stone buildings had a beautiful hue. At our van driver’s advice, we went in the “back entrance” i.e. over a crumbling rock wall and paid the entrance fee on our way out. In the Sergilla parking lot, a local family was using the pizza oven, an intriguing process. Basically they rolled the dough, put sauce on it, and then used something akin to a catcher’s mitt to slap the dough against the oven wall. Once it was cooked, they would peel it off the oven wall. They gave us some to try and I liked it.

Our arrival in Aleppo was the night before the beginning of Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice, called Kurban Bajram in Macedonia), a three day Muslim holiday celebrating the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son, before God offered him a ram to sacrifice instead (at least that’s what Wikipedia says). Our hotel was directly in the souq and carrying our bags in was like salmon swimming upstream. Insanity is the word that comes to mind to describe the souq that night and the next couple days were carnage. Sheep carnage, that is, as sheep butchering in all its stages went on day and night. Coming and going from the hotel, we were forced to dodge piles of discarded sheep parts, rivers of blood, and the live sheep milling about before their demise. If you don't want to see such things, don't look at my photos on Picasa. Apparently all the women and girls were home cooking the sheep because the first day of the holiday, only men and boys were out. I felt like the last woman on the planet with all this testosterone surrounding me. Almost everything was closed for the holiday and the KFC that I searched out closed two months ago, so my main memory of Aleppo will be sheep.

Exiting Syria, our shuttle bus operator filled the empty seats (and let one guy sit on a drum in the aisle) and we slowly made our way through all the requisite fees and windows without any throwdowns. Overall Syria was great because there were very few tourists and it was inexpensive. I think it would be a difficult place to live though, with websites like Facebook and Blogger banned and the President’s picture splashed up everywhere. Now I’m in Turkey for the second time, heading towards more geological wonders and marketplaces.

Red, Dead, & Well Fed

My arrival by ferry in Aqaba, Jordan got off to a good start with a functional ATM card that put some Dinar (not to be confused with the Macedonian Denar) in my pocket. The tourist track in Jordan is not cheap though, so my Dinars didn’t seem to go nearly as far as Denars. There is not much of note in Aqaba but from there my group departed by minibus for Wadi Rum with our Jordanian guide, Jemal.

In spite of Jemal, I greatly enjoyed Wadi Rum which is a desert region tinged red and covered with giant rock formations. I say this about Jemal because although he endeavored to be a good emissary for Jordan, his machismo and tendency to not listen to our requests made him come across as a tool. However, nothing can spoil the greatness of Wadi Rum with its glyphs of camel caravans, big stone bridge to climb on, and a lovely sunset. We slept out under the stars and then started our next big day with some delicious sage tea and pita bread with yogurt and spices.

If there was one reason I booked this vacation, it was to see Petra—otherwise known as the place where the Holy Grail is hidden in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The Treasury is what is featured in the film, what looks like a building façade carved into a cliff wall. The sight really is dramatic and impressive, only appearing after walking about 20 minutes through a narrow canyon. What I didn’t realize beforehand was how much more there would be to see, with other such building-like fronts throughout the area including Royal Tombs and a Monastery. Our second day there, I took off with Simon and Richard from my group on a trail labeled “dangerous” without a guide. The primary danger seemed to be getting lost and unfortunately we ended up standing on top of the Treasury, instead of across from it as we intended. After a couple hours of exploring, we came out another “dangerous” path that was essentially a drainage canyon, a fun scramble once I felt secure that the Bedouin who led us into the seemingly dead-end canyon wasn’t after my Dinars, other than some baksheesh (tip).

After the dust and sweat of Petra, the next logical stop was to freshen up at the Dead Sea. There are many fun facts about the Dead Sea that make it so unique: it’s seven times saltier than a normal ocean (30% salinity) and the lowest point on earth (1,378 feet below sea level). Accordingly, the Dead Sea visit had a warning associated with it that I’ve never received elsewhere in my travels: don’t shave before going in the water. I followed this guidance but nevertheless, water that salty has a way of burning in uncomfortable places. Still, pushing past that, it was fun to float completely effortlessly like a cork. The other girls and I treated ourselves to a Dead Sea mud treatment (3 dinar = ~$4), slathering ourselves with black mud and taking a million photos while we waited for it to dry. Then we washed it off in the sea and I think my skin did feel nicer (though I must confess I did it mostly for the novelty of being smeared in black mud).

This trip is taking me smack dab through the Promise Land, which was laid out in a mosaic map on the floor of an Orthodox Chruch in the city of Madaba. The map was discovered when the church was being renovated, so it’s not complete but the way the locations are labeled is quite something. From Madaba, we drove an hour to (and two hours back, due to a van breakdown) the Roman city of Jerash. Katie's Travel Tip #2: Always bring a snack and water in the case of breakdown/transit strike/apocolypse/other. The highlight of Jerash for me was a group of teenage girls on a school trip. We were all in one of the site’s amphitheatres and several of them said “hi” to me and we chatted a bit. Then, a drummer and bagpipe started playing and the girls flooded the stage to dance and sing. With their head scarves and school uniforms, I thought the girls would be reserved but instead they were spirited and having a good old time. We took some pictures together, which along with my other Jordan images are on Picasa.

Being in Jordan solidified that my group is on the fresh squeezed juice and falafel tour of the Middle East. Seriously, I have both almost every day, with falafel sandwiches going for about 50 cents and fresh juices for $3-5 a large mug. All this would be healthy if I weren’t chasing it with equally delicious baklava—Jordan has amazing bakeries on almost every corner.

Our visit coincided with the Parliamentary elections, so we visited a different Crusader castle than the one on our itinerary. Apparently the decision to close the scheduled castle to tourists was a good one because a candidate was shot there around Election Day. Luckily we didn’t observe any other violence, at least not until we got into some words with a Dutch-Syrian couple as we entered Syria—more on that in my blog on Syria.

Chasing Moses

After 6 hours by car, 7 hours of layovers, and 3 hours of flying, I arrived at my hotel in Cairo to begin my vacation. The start seemed somewhat dubious after I couldn't get any of my ATM cards to work, leaving me to get through all of Egypt on $100. On the plus side, I saved money and my cards are now working. Katie Travel Tip #1: Always bring some cash!

I'm traveling with 8 other people plus our tour leader, and it is a good mix representing Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, and Singapore. Our first day on the road, we climbed up the 3,750 "Steps of Repentence" up Mt. Sinai, where Moses is said to have received the 10 Commandments. The highlight was supposed to be the sunset at the top, but I thought the climb was the best part because of the great terrain. We came down in the dark but skipping most of the steps, for a total trip of about 5 hours.


The next day we saw nearby St. Katherine's, a Greek Orthodox Monastery marking where Moses saw the burning bush. The big story that morning though were the mosquito bites that nearly everyone had all over their faces, including yours truly. For most of the last week, it's looked like I have the chicken pox. The bumps have largely receded now, but we were overjoyed to have mosquito nets at our next stop, the Red Sea.


At our Red Sea beach camp, each of us had our own bungalow. There are pictures of this and more up on Picasa. I greatly enjoyed sitting in the shady lounge area reading and dining oceanside. The downside of talking with my fellow travelers is that now my to-see list is even longer. We all get along well and it is nice to be with a mature group that is responsible about the departure times and whatnot. After the Red Sea, we took a ferry to Jordan and I'll write a dispatch on Jordan, my 35th country, soon. P.S. Sorry about any typos, Blogger thinks that I am writing in Arabic, so spell check isn't functional.