The Wonders of Cappadocia

Tesekkurler, hello,

This morning I woke up when my head slammed down on the rapidly vibrating bus window. Yawning, I looked at the clock. 6:30 in the morning. We should be arriving in Cappadocia in another three two hours. As I was sleeping, it turns out that our bus broke down two times delayng our arrival time from eight o'clock to ten o'clock. There was still another four hours left! I tried going back to sleep but the bus was bouncing too hard to get comfortable. Near the last twenty minutes of our trip, my mouth started to feel funny and my stomach was getting a bit bubbly. I needed fresh air and a good night sleep.

Our hotel is a bit different than the usual. Ours was called the Cave Hotel because it was carved into a large rock. It was the best thing I've ever seen! The moment I found my room, I threw my bag onto the floor and leaped into bed. and closed my eyes' took a deep breath and...
"time to go have brekfast," called my dad. Taking a deep breath I forced my eyes open and rolled out of bed onto the floor were I crawled to the front foor.

We ate breaktfast in the Cave Hotel lobby. There was bread, ham, cheeses, olives, cucumber, and carrots with a hard boiled egg in the middle. Just as we where finishing our breaktfast, a bus came to take us to our tour guide.

Our tour guide lead us to a small area of Fairy Chimmnies where she said we had fifteen minutes to explore and take pictures on our own. Fifteen minutes later, our tour guide called us to come back. Then she told us some Cappadocian history. The name Cappadocia means The Land of Beautiful Horses. Then she took us to a trail where we walked through a mountaine side of Fairy Chimnies. Fairy Chimnies are tall rocks with a sort of mushroom top at the top. It was actually the towns people who named the odd looking rocks. The reason they named them the Fairy Chimnies is because they look like chimnies, and the fact that no man could build such marvalous structures, so they must be made by the fairies.

After exploring the Fairy Chimnies, our guide took us to the van where we drove to a pottery shop. In the pottery shop a man showed us how to make a pottery vase the traditional way. What he does is sit on a bench with a wooden wheel in front of him. With his feet he spins the wheel around. On the wheel s a slab a clay. While the weel is spinning, he pushes on the clay slowly making a vase.

Then he took us to the designing room where they draw the pictures and paint on the pottery. Last of all he showed us the show room. The show room, like the rest of the pottery factory is underground. As I was walking by my mom near the plate section, I saw her looking at a small yellow plate as if wondering how mutch it would cost. To make a long story short, we ended up leaving with a small yellow butter dish that was made in this shop in the traditional way. Very nice souvenir.

Time to Exlpore some cool Christian churches built into the rock. Inside were drawings on the walls that tell stories. Drawn on one wall was a picture of a grasshopper. Next to it was a drawing of a cross. The grasshopper is the sign of cleverness, and the cross was the simble of Christians. So when you put them together you got this... People who are clever support Christianity. In another church, our tour guide showed us another drawing of a women with a man face. She had a long white beard and a long white moustache. The story goes like this. One day there was a young beautiful woman. Whereever she went the men followed her. The woman wanted to be left alone. So one night she prayed to god that the men would stop following her and leave her alone. The next morning, the once beautiful young woman now had the face of an old man. Inside all these churches where pictures and stories like that.

Next stop, to the carpet shop. At the carpet shop, we switched guides to a man who knows all the things about carpets. First, we are going to see how they make hand made carpets. The man led us to a room with about four women sitting on the floor in front of a large sort of wooden construction. Leading down it are hundreds of strings. What the women do, is take a piece of yarn, find the two strings she needs out of a hundred, ties it on with a double knot, pulls it down so it is tight, then tears it off. To make one square centimeter, the weaver has to do that twenty five times. Wow.

Next, our guide took us outside to a strange looking machine. It was a large bowl filled with hot water. There were also dozens of small white coccoon looking things inside as well. In fact they were actually coccoons. Silk worms. What they do is put the silk worms in the water so the silk stretches better. Then they attach twenty five silk worms together and attach them to a wheel. When the man turns the crank, the weel turns which unwinds the coccoon. Each coccoon gives 1500 meters of silk.

I was almost glad when the tour bus droped us off at the Cave Hotel because that means, I can go and sleep a comfortable sleep in a bed under the covers!

Words in Turkey:

seker- sugar
tuz- salt
biber- pepper
bir-one
iki- two
uc-three
dort- four
bes- five
alti- six
yedi- seven
sekiz- eight
dokuz- nine
on- ten

Parker Vining