Tuesday, December 7th, 2004

Well, today I made my mystery voyage to Baypazarı. What a nice time! I met this guy at the education conference named Sabri. He is the assistant manager at the technical school there and also teaches the banking classes. He really wanted me to visit and I agreed. So Sabri rolled up to my dormitory at 8 am today and off we went. The town is about 100 km northwest of Ankara, sort of on the way to Istanbul. While driving in we passed some beautiful plateaus that looked straight out of Arizona (not that I’ve ever been there). We arrived at around 9:30.

Around 50,000 people call Baypazarı and the surrounding areas home. There is a lot of agriculture in this area, as well as about 10 factories that make semi trailers. Aside from the shop owners, this is how most people make their income. It’s a really nice place. Very rural, which is something I don’t get to see here. Or I guess just haven’t seen here. Really most of Turkey is like this. I’ve just been spending my time in big cities.

We visited the school and looked at all the facilities. Very nice, very nice. What can you say? I met with some of the teachers, some of the students, and drank around seventeen cups of tea. In the afternoon we took a walk around the town and saw some things. The neat thing about this place is the old style Turkish houses, built before apartment buildings became the norm. They are quite often very beautiful. Streets here are all old cobblestone type, and narrow. We explored the city center, weaving our way past mosques, copper-deals, spice shops, butchers, silversmiths, and anything else. I really felt like I was in a different world. It’s all functional, none of the Istanbul tourism, just people carrying on with their lives. Old women wear the baggy pants that you might see in photos. Men crowd around produce trucks, smoking cigarettes and preparing for the Wednesday market. At call to prayer time people flood toward the mosques. It was really quite interesting.

We visited a museum located in a large old-style house, and saw many old items from life here. Then we climbed up a big hill and looked at the city, blanketed in a fog/smog mist from the weather and the coal furnaces. All in all, it was a great day.

I met some students who were really nice, including one girl who is from Ankara. She visits almost every weekend, so this Saturday she is going to take me out and show me “things in Ankara that I have not seen before”. So who knows what that is, but it sounds like fun. Her name is Başak and she’s a tourism student, so she’s got English down very well. She’s the one in the middle of the photo here. Its’ so funny, here was the same as Çankiri. The guys almost avoid conversation, while the girls are really assertive. It’s a surprising thing for me. I guess I had stereotypes about the sexes here, and they’re being broken down. So good!

That’s about it. I came back in the evening, hung around a bit, and now I’m writing. And I think I’m done! Not bad for a days work. I need more random experiences like this!