Day 131: Sunrise on Mt. Nemrud – Karakut, Turkey

(Him: Charlie)

For a second time in a week, we woke up in pitch dark to see sunrise. This time around, instead of from a hot air balloon (in Cappadocia), we are atop a majestic mountain, with gigantic sculpture of various gods, and a possible tomb of King Antiochus I Theos of Commagene.

The King was a full-of-himself maniac, who constructed huge sculptures on top of the lofty mountain. Over the years, the heads of the figures had fallen off to their feet, but the mystical yet majestic feel continue to impress every tourist! When the sun started beaming at sunrise, spreading a golden coating on the sculptures, it was truly a magical moment!

Day 129: The Next Canadian Pride – Diyabakir, Turkey

(Him: Charlie)

Canadians are a proud bunch! The national pride is most vividly shown on July 1 across the nation, when red/white paint takes up kid’s face and maple leaf flags dot every street. Canadians are also proud of Canadian inventions too. From snowshoes to basketball, to telephone, most Canadians can name them as if they invented them.

In the last decades or so, the Canadian pride would have to be the once mighty telecom conglomerate Nortel and, the most recently, RIM. The latter pushed the Canadian pride to a lofty height by almost bringing the Coyotes back to Ontario!!

Fast forward to present day, Nortel has vanished and lackluster RIM is far from the superstar it used to be. What goes with them, perhaps, is a dent in the pride on Canadian inventions? If that’s the case, I’ve found a very competent candidate for some celebration – the Just-for-Laugh TV program!

This Montreal based TV program, which plays jokes/pranks on people, is hilarious and does not require any language skills to understand. I suggest it should a Canadian pride because the program is being played everywhere in the world. I have personally seen it on airplanes, buses, European countries, and most recently, today in Turkey!

Most people may guess it’s a program from the US or Europe, but just like people couldn’t guess the origin of basketball, Canadians can come up with amazing things!

Perhaps the next time Canada hosts an international event, the Just-for-Laugh green monster can jump out to greet our visitors, just like “Mr. Bean” did at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Day 127: Life of a Kurdish

(Her: Joanna)

I randomly came across a trip advisor review about a Kurdish village home stay when we were loading up maps of the next city we are heading to.  Both Charlie and I were thinking “Cool!”.  That’s exactly what we want to see.  We decided to squeeze in a night at the home stay and email the organizer.  Likely, she replied almost instantly.  Not knowing how to get to this town and the schedule of the buses, smartly, Charlie asked the owner of the place we stayed (via Google Translate).  Sweet! 

Unexpectedly, we were picked up by a really nice Fiat mini-van by a guy dressed in traditional Kurdish pant, sharwaal (like what Charlie was wearing in the pic) but speaks really good English.  I was a bit confused.  After a 15 minute drive from the town Hilvan, we arrived the village of Yucavali. 

We were greeted by the host, who is a 19 year-old local boy and speaks really good English, his mom, and dad.  We were invited to sit in their garden filled with fruit trees (and chickens and turkeys running around) and had tea, of course.  It wasn’t anything fancy but really raw and neat.  There were 2 other guests from California joined us.  Though the host was so young, he was very composed and organized.  He gave us a briefing of the village, their tradition, and the history of the community project, which the Home Stay is part of it. 

Kurdish people used to be nomadic until 7-8 generations prior.  You can still see some tradition from their currently living style.  Even though they live in a house, they sleep outside the house in the summer time or on the roof.  The house is sparsely furnished with essential equipments.  Surprisingly, the living/dining/napping room has AC.  Thank God to that as it was crazily hot in the middle of the day which the AC made the heat a lot more bearable. 

The main living area is lined with carpet and cushions.  During meal time, the area will be lined with a table cloth where we ate.  There’s no shower or bath.  It is plain old school pouring hot water into a bucket, mix with cold water, and splash yourself clean.  It is my first time washing myself like this.  We have access to steamy, hot water to shower anytime in the day.  Often we forgot that it is a lot of effort and a lot of energy is being used to bring us such luxury and comfort.   

It seems like that most work end up on the shoulder of the women in the household.  I woke up at 6 am to check out what the mom does in the morning.  The host’s mom was already awake by the time I got out of bed and finished sweeping and cleaning the front porch, and gathered a bunch of branches.  She quickly fed the chicken and milk the cow with well trained skill and speed before she set up to make bread on the mud ground in front of the house.  You can see the strength of the host mom just by how she kneads the dough.     Not an easy job being a housewife in rural area.  The host mom showed me how to roll the dough into bread.  Though I thought my first Kurdish bread was a success,  I am not even close to her amazing skillfulness in multi-tasking between roll the bread dough, keeping up a steady fire to bake the bread while baking the bread on the metal plate that requires constantly flipping and turning to avoid it from being burnt.  My piece of bread never made it to the breakfast table but a nice meal for the chicken.

From the eye of a city person like me, the life of these villagers is tough and they seem to be very poor.  However, they get to spend a lot of time around family and friends versus spending the bulk of your time at work; caring for and helping each other versus socializing with people that don’t truly matter;  spend time in nature, breath air and equally respecting nature versus spending time indoor with little exercise and develop all sorts of chronic disease; enjoying food they made organically versus constantly worried about the source or safety of food we purchase from supermarket where the bulk of our food are genetically engineered or mass produce in farms that ran like manufacturing.  Everything has its pros and cons.  Are city people really wealthier than villagers like them?  Like the host’s father said with a satisfying laughter, “I’m just a small farmer.”

When we ask the host whether he will inherit the farm and continue to live in the village, he gave us a shrew and said he wanted to work in the tourism industry while other family members can help his father out.  Though these villages are mostly secluded, as they get exposed more and more to the outside world and man-made needs, more will give up their lives in the villages.  Less and less of them will appreciate what they have.

Day 121: A Fantastic Cultural Experience - Konya, Turkey

(Him: Charlie)

“Whirling Dervish”, when I first heard about it, I thought it’s a couple other English words that I didn’t know. But it turned out, I uncovered a whole new world that I have not heard of before. 

This “dance”, as part of a religious ceremony, is the legacy of the famous Muslim philosopher/poet, Rumi. As the dervish spin with the music, they would reach a trance state, and they get closer to god. By traveling to Konya, the place where Rumi lived and died, we had the opportunity to witness this intriguing ritual (aka Sema). The dance, or the concept, may sound funny to outsiders, but their devotion and dedication to god is definitely venerable.