Jellyfish and Guard Dogs

North Aegean Sea: Weekend Study Trip with CIEE

     Our trip started at 23:30 Thursday night with a 7 hour bus ride to our hotel in Ayvalik, a small town on the Turkish coast of the Aegean Sea. After eating Turkish breakfast (for the millionth time since starting my study abroad) we immediately headed into town to visit a local NGO that supports women's right to work... 

      Afterwards we had an hour or two of free time to wander around the town. We walked up and down the sidewalk/dock that borders the town watching the fishermen untangle their nets from the morning's catch. 

      Some of our friends recommended that we walk to the top of the hill to see the view. Getting to the top involves walking through the center of the residential area of town. The town is relatively poor and the residents are mostly low-income. This was the first time that we have been to an area of Turkey outside of Istanbul that wasn't extremely touristy. It was a very hot day so some of us were wearing shorts and some of us were wearing short sleeves or sleeveless shirts (If you don't know, this is very taboo for Turkish people) but it was really hot and we are Americans. [I'm really bad a packing so I forgot all my summer clothes since Istanbul was freezing the day we left so I was wearing pants and boots.] Walking up and down the water no one really bothered us unless they were trying to sell us something but when we started walking up through the center of town more and more people starting staring and hollering at us. We kept just trying to ignore them and keep our heads down  but at one point there was a group of men sitting around outside and one of them stands up trying to get our attention, trying to get us to talk to him, and when we ignored him I guess he got offended and in order to save face in front of his manly guy friends he starts yelling at us as we walk away, "i know you, i know your country, i hate you, i hate your country" all the while including curse words and all the while his friends laughing in the background. My friend Angela was starting to feel very uncomfortable and anxious so we turned the corner and walked back to the main part of town without getting to see the view from the top. Another girl wearing shorts later told us that this really old Turkish woman came up to her and said "Ayip" which means "shameful" in Turkish. Since we were in Asia and in a smaller poorer town  the area was a lot more conservative and religious than Istanbul. We had been warned about this sort of thing before coming to Turkey but have yet to experience it. You live and you learn. We just brushed it off our shoulder and decided to stick closer to the tourist areas when we were wearing such attire. 

      However, we met some really nice people in the town too! Before we ran into that rude group of men we ran into a super cute pair of ladies and their young daughter. We were taking pictures and they asked us to take their picture so they started posing and modeling in the street, it was adorable. We tried to have a conversation but we were all so tired from the bus ride that we could hardly remember any Turkish and they obviously knew zero English. We found out that one of the women was sick with cancer but couldn't afford the medical treatments she needed. They weren't asking for money, just trying to have a little fun out on the town. They wanted to get our address so we could send them the pictures we took. We tried to get their e-mail address but that didn't work; I assume if they don't own their own camera they don't own their own computer either. So they walked behind us up the street for a while and when those rude men started yelling at us they starting yelling back at them defending us. we hardly saw ANY women out on the street other than those two sweet ladies and their daughter.  It was just all men which felt very strange. In this type of town the women get married, stay at home, don't work, take care of their husband, and apparently hardly leave the house. Which is why the NGO we visited is so important, it empowers women to work for their own money and get out of the house. 

     After lunch we bused to Pergamon to visit the ancient city of Acropolis which was beautifully adorned with millions of wildflowers. It was, for lack of a better word, EPIC. I could hardly decide which was more amazing, the wildflowers or the ruins... We got to climb all over the ruins (which was not the best decision on their part seeing as I'm so clumsy and accidentally destructive)...

I'm the one on top  :)

      Exhausted we head back to the hotel in Ayvalik which is an hour's drive away. The rest of the day was ours to use freely so we all snagged our swim suits and ran to the beach right down the road from our hotel. It was still March and all of the Turks kept saying it was too cold to swim yet but the weather outside was hot so we didn't really care how cold the water was going to be. But oh boy was it cold. But so worth it to SWIM IN THE AEGEAN SEA! It was amazing and so much fun! In order to stay warm I was splashing around and swimming circles pretending to be a shark. Yeah. Some of the other CIEE kids were too scared of the cold to go swimming so we were pretending to sing the song of Sirens from Homer to beckon them into the water: it worked. I got stung by a jellyfish but I'm pretty sure it was dead because of how cold the water was so the sting was not bad at all.

    We went back to the hotel for a quick change and food and then straight back to the beach to play games and hang out. We found wooden tanning chairs laying around and set them up in a circle near the water. After a while one of the wild dogs came to hang out with us. And after getting fed a little and petted a lot he decided to work as our watch dog. Every time another animal or would come close he barked them away. It was the sweetest thing! He even made multiple trips to follow each group of people as they walked back to the hotel to protect them along the road. 

     The next day we checked out of the hotel and drove to an Olive Oil Museum since Turkey is famous for their olives. We all bought some olive oil, olive oil soap, olive oil lotion, etc. They say the Greeks were choosing between Poseidon and Athena to name their capital city after. Poseidon brought humanity horses and Athena brought humanity the Olive tree, Athena won.

     We then stopped by a village in the historically rich Assos, also known as Behramkale. And then off to TROY! People who have been to Troy before warned me that it was underwhelming so I was mentally prepared to be underwhelmed except for I was getting really excited to climb into the mock Trojan Horse and take really cheesy tourist pictures. The coolest thing to see at troy was this pile of puppies we found!! Precious. They were so tiny it looked as if they had just opened their eyes yesterday. The second coolest thing and most terrifying part of Troy was the mud brick house that bees had turned into one giant bee hive. I walked through that section so quick that I forgot to take a picture of all the bees and holes they dug into the mud brick. The entrance way of the site was being renovated and was under construction; the entrance way which includes the Trojan Horse was under construction.The Trojan Horse was covered with scaffolding and black fabric, I was beyond disappointed.

Pile of Puppies!

Super sarcastically excited about seeing what should be the mock Trojan Horse

CIEE group photo on the Theater seats at Troy

     At the end of the trip so much drama had developed with the tour guide we hired. He was treating us like pre-schoolers and kept lying about his credentials and facts about the sites. We were a group full of university educated Americans some of which who are studying archaeology, like come on dude we aren't going to let these things slide. He just talked so slowly and was so boring, I would have been very interested in learning about all the sites had I been learning it from anyone other than him. So when we was doing his little talks I would go find my friend Tasha and ask her the real story about the sites instead. Tasha is a non-traditional student meaning she is a lot older than the rest of us but still one of my favorite people because she is hilarious and has a "I don't give a s***" attitude. She is studying Archaeology and Art History and is just incredibly smart in general. When the tour guide misinformed the group she politely started a discussion with him about controversy over the discovery of the site of Troy and the archaeologist who discovered it, Heinrich Schliemann, and for the rest of the time the tour guide was extremely unprofessional and passive aggressively attacking Tasha.

If you're interested, here is a documentary made by The History Channel that analyzes the Troy controversy. Jump to minute 20:00 to hear specifically about the Heinrich Schliemann controversy. Or jump to minute 28:20 for a brief one minute summary.