Fairy Barf or Else

So one of the ideas left was to get a picture of what our bazaar is like. Every week (usually), we as a team take the wonderful waz to the bazaar in order to load up on food items for the week. Because Matt and I live on a public transit route, we sometimes make other trips for a few small items at other times also, but for the most part, our shopping gets done on one day. Hence calling that day of the week "Bazaar Day."

We can find all kinds of wares, though not always the same ones from week to week. There is an entire hardware section, but we didn't visit that section the week we were taking pictures for you. A good portion of the shopping is done outside, but there are 2 large indoor areas where vendors set up. We were very excited during this week of picture-taking to find tomatoes (didn't think we would see them up there until spring), which cost about $2/lb. We knew this was high compared to summer months or warmer places (the capital has them currently for about 75 cents/lb), but it was totally worth it. I enjoyed tomato sandwiches and we made plenty of salsa as well. (Salsa = happy Matt = happy Cindy)

This is where you can find several versions of several things. You can see some of the vegetables. There is also homemade butter and sour cream, bread, and non-perishables like margarine and grains.

Our spice lady friend is set up here. All of the spices are in Russian, so I've gotten fairly adept at recognizing pictures once they were explained. 

More indoor shopping.

The outdoor hustle-and-bustle of people. This is the typical crowd size. Pretty much all shopping is done in the morning and the bazaar shuts down starting at lunch time.

Seller from a nearby country selling sheepskin vests. And yes, Matt did buy one of them for our supervisor for Christmas.

Welcome to your home goods section...on the ground. This is where I found a cutting board and rolling pin (we're still looking for a better rolling pin, but this will do for now).

Seriously?!?! Could the options for dish soap get any better? I submit that they could not! (And for your language learning, barf means snow here. Yep, go ahead and have fun using that where you live.)

This day we also decided to try something new. Before we came, we were told that a meat grinding attachment for our KitchenAid would be really helpful. But since being here, we pretty much only heard that buying beef in our town was not something that was really done. Being the brave (okay, maybe unwise) people that we are, we decided to try the meat-buying thing so that chicken and hot dogs weren't the only meats we ate.

Welcome to a local butcher's shop. Matt kind of got some dirty looks for taking pictures here, so we didn't get any better ones. But look at that meat! He asked for a piece without bones and fat, and got a chunk that pretty well met that criteria.

At home we tried to figure out what to do next. Matt is cutting it up small and getting rid of the nastier-looking parts.

Nothing appealing about this

Nothing

Gross! It looks much better when it is pre-packaged. Yuck!

We set aside a few "steaks" for supper that night (since frozen green beans were a surprise at the bazaar that day). Matt's was palatable. Mine, well...

So after that experience, we may be doing it once a month tops. The flavor wasn't all that great, but it was nice to have a little change in the diet.

Turkey Tour

This is the second post by Matt, the guest blogger here.

One of the incredible advantages to living overseas are the opportunities we get for very cool vacations. Destinations that are normally too far or too expensive for Americans are now much more accessible, so we get to do some things we would normally never be able to afford. One such opportunity came up in January. We were going to a meeting in Turkey and went four days early to take a “Seven Churches” tour in Turkey.

The name refers to the seven churches mentioned in the opening chapters of the book of Revelation. These churches, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, were all rather important towns in the first century and sights of early congregations of Christians. They are also all in modern day Turkey, a country simply full of ancient historical sights, so we jumped on the chance to see what is left of each of these cities.

After all the excitement of coming down from the mountains (see previous story) and a rather long delay for our flight out of our country, we spent a very short night in Istanbul (Turkish Airlines gave us a great hotel room for free, even though it was a weather delay; good for them) we jumped off the plane in Antalya and got directly on a tour bus. We were tired, but really enjoyed seeing the history set in these cities. Since it was winter, we often had the sights almost entirely to ourselves, though it was often a bit cold and rainy, and were free to pretty much wander over two thousand year old ruins at our pleasure. This is something you simply can’t do in America, we don’t have many two thousand year old ruins, and even two hundred year old ruins are roped off and kept far from anyone who would want to touch them.

I will tell the story of our vacation in some pictures, since seeing is so much better than just hearing about it. Sorry some of the pictures look squished, the orientation got a bit weird while uploading them. You get the idea though. It does make us look rather thin, we have been eating better than that. 

The main street of Laodicea. The pillars have been put back up, but these are the early paving stones. 

Matt at one of the main Temples in Laodicea. It was really cold and drizzling that day, but it's our first stop so we had to hang out a while.

Matt and Cindy among ruins in Laodicea. The first of many piles of old rocks. 

The hot spring at Pammukale. It is a mineral spring that falls over the mountains and makes the cliffs all white. This is where the "hot or cold" lecture makes more sense. 

This is why Cindy loves turkey. Yes, it's a plate of cheese and olives for breakfast, pretty much every day. She even found curds, one of her favorites. 

All that's left of the old city of Philadelphia (huge Eagles fans here). Interesting to see the columns of a Byzantine church with a mosque in the background. This was the case in almost all the towns we stopped in.

The first thing you see in Sardis is the public latrine. Yep, that's seats made out of stone in the wall with a trench under them.

This is the floor of the synagogue in Sardis. It is one of the oldest in the world, though not functioning. 

They even had marble left on the wall that had inscriptions of which of the prominent citizens paid for them. 

This is the old Torah seat at the back of the synagogue where the scrolls were kept.

This is the main table, apparently dating from well in the BC period. The building itself was Byzantine, this table is much older. 

Us in front of the baths. Yep, that's a bath behind us, with the gymnasium grounds in front. Romans took their baths very seriously.

Pergamum. This is what is left of the Zeus temple, the "throne of Satan". 

Far and away the most impressive theatre we saw. It overlooks a cliff with the new town way down below. Not as big as the one in Ephesus, but almost all original. 

This is the theatre entrance.

Cindy leaving the theatre.

The underground tunnels in Pergamum.

Top of the city, the Domitian (I think) temple.

Matt with Domitian. I am sure he would be horrified to have a Christian leaning against him like this (he wasn't such a fan you know) but such is life. 

This is the underground mall in Smyrna. Seriously, their agora had a basement with the columns and arches still functioning. It was huge. 

The fountains in their mall are still working. 2,000 years later, you can still drink out of their fountains.  There is still some of the decorations on the walls even.

The shopping seems to have dropped off some though. Odd. 

This is the above ground part. 

Apparently Smyrna (now Izmir) is famed for their meatballs. Who knew? 

In Thyatira, another place with a Byzantine church and remains of a pagan temple in the center of town the only thing left to see. The ground is higher than it used to be, either that or they were really really short Byzantines. 

Nike in Ephesus. The left side of the picture, with her robe sort of swooshing out, is supposed to be where the Nike Swoosh comes from. 

Matt in Ephesus on the downtown street. 

Ephesus is the most impressive and rebuilt city of that period in Asia, lots left of it to see.

We are in front of Celsus' library, easily the most impressive building in town.

Greek statues in all their glory. Oh, wait, that's us, well, close enough.

It's hard to see, but it's actual 2nd century graffiti. Someone carved a menorah in the steps of the library. 

Cindy made a friend at the theatre. 

This is the theatre at Ephesus (yep, the "great is Artemis of the Ephesians for hours and hours" one). It is rather impressive, and you can hear the stage easily from any of the seats. Seriously, a Korean guy sang Ave Maria while we were there, you could hear him perfectly from anywhere I walked. 

Just outside Ephesus, this is supposed to be the tomb of John. Yes, that John, of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and the Gospel. 

An early baptismal at John's church.

This is all that is left of the Artemis temple the Ephesians were so riled up about. It used to be one of the seven wonders of the world, now it's a column. From the size of the column, I am sure it was pretty impressive at one time. Ironic that Cindy (whose first and middle name are both from Artemis') is there.

Cindy with Artemis' pose where her idol stood. We saw the actual idol in the museum, but we couldn't take a picture. You get the idea anyway.

So that is our Turkey vacation in pictures. I know Cindy doesn't ever put up this many, and I am sure not everyone is going to bother looking at all of them, but at least you get to see them if you want.

Coming Down

Most of the posts up on our blog are Cindy’s, just like most of the updates are Matt’s. However, just like Cindy sometimes writes part of the updates, sometimes Matt wants to blog some interesting info about life, so here you go.

Where we live is, in a word, remote. It’s not like stuff isn’t available there (see the post on Cindy’s favorite foods available here) or that it’s particularly uncomfortable (see our house, not bad) but it’s just a really long way from anywhere else. Distance wise, it’s not too bad, about 600 kilometers (370 miles) from the capital city. It is just a really long drive in time. The roads are not good, the vehicles you use are usually old and heavily used, and it’s just not a comfortable drive. If the weather is good and everything is perfect, it can take as little as 15 or 16 hours to make the drive. If everything doesn’t go perfectly, it’s longer.

Now of course, there are plenty of things that can go wrong. The road is through mountains, so avalanches, landslides, falling rocks, or just heavy snows can block the road. Wrecks are not uncommon, and one side of the road is a cliff up, the other is a cliff down to a river, so there isn’t a lot of room for forgiveness in wrecks. There is road construction and repair here, but there isn’t any room to make a detour, so they just block the road until they are done. There are two river crossings (no bridges), so if the water is too high at either one of those, you have to stop until it goes down. The vehicles aren’t always the best, we ride in shared SUVs that are pretty much taxis that run up and down to the capital. They are usually old, a bit beat up, and can break down pretty easily, which will slow down a trip. Cindy and I were very fortunate to come up with nearly no incidents in travel, making a good 16 hour trip in the rain over two days. Coming back down in December, it was a bit different.

We left the day after Christmas, knowing we had a flight to catch on the 29^th to Turkey. About 9 in the morning we got a call that the car arranged the week before had backed out, so our supervisor and his wife were looking for a new truck to take us down. They soon found one, we packed up our luggage and headed into town. We had a slight dusting of snow the night before, but not much and we had yet to get a heavy snow over the winter, so we had high hopes for a quick trip. We left around 10, and it started snowing just as we pulled out of town. It proceeded to keep snowing for the entire day as we drove on the cliff side road for seven or eight hours of daylight. We stopped for dinner and decided to keep going; with the snow it might close the road if we didn’t.

Driving at night may be harder on the driver, he’s tired and can’t see well, but it’s easier on the passengers because, well, they are tired and can’t see well. This is a blessing while driving on a cliff, believe me. An Iranian road crew working construction delayed us a bit, but the crane moved out of the road enough for us to pass on by, so we kept on. It was just a slog on, a bit cramped, but doable.

Then midnight came along. By then we had left the river and were crossing over mountain passes on the way north. It was usually snowing at the top of these passes, but raining as you went lower. We were heading down one of the down slopes when the fog really started to get thick. Before long, our driver could no longer see the road. It’s not that he couldn’t see far down the road, or that he couldn’t see the edge of the road, he literally couldn’t see the road out of the window at all. My supervisor and I jumped out of the car with our handy headlamps (yay Black Diamond) and started to run down the middle of the road so he could follow us. I put a headlamp on backwards so he could see me, then held one pointed at the sides of the road so I could see where I was. I could rarely see both sides of the road, but could keep one in sight and judged the middle pretty well. The driver sometimes decided to keep to one side, something I had to motion him to stop because in places there was a hole in the road. Did I mention it was raining? Yep, freezing rain, and my rain jacket is in my house. Why would I possibly need a rain jacket? I did have a synthetic insulated jacket on (props to Mountain Hardwear here) and so kept a bit warm and dry, but before long my jeans were soaked and my hands went pretty numb before I managed to pull out some gloves. All that said, running downhill will keep you pretty warm. I have friends that do this sort of thing (also known as “jogging”) for fun. Rob Pengelly, you are a friend and a gentlemen, but patently insane, sorry.

After an hour of this, a couple of miles down (and by a couple, I mean it felt like 10 but was probably only 2) the fog lifted and we pulled into a little restaurant to get some food and rest. I had a bit of tea, stood next to a stove to dry off a bit, and caught my breath. Both of us were soaked from the waist down, but not too bad. Then we got back in the car.

Now the battery had been giving the driver some problems, so to be safe he left the radio off for the rest of the trip. We were fine with this, 14 hours of Tajik and Russian music is plenty for most people. He also decided to leave the heater off for the remainder of the trip. I soon noticed that in wet jeans and freezing weather the inside of a car can get a bit chilly. Luckily my jacket had kept most of me warm, and my lovely wife lent me a down jacket to cover my legs up a bit for warmth, but it wasn’t a fun remainder of the journey. We finally pulled in to a snowy capital city around 9 in the morning, found a taxi, got to the guest house, changed clothes real quick, and fell into bed until around 2 in the afternoon. 23 hours down on what was really a pretty average trip. I wonder why our supervisor and his wife decided to fly up this time? Hm, go figure. 

Bottom of the hill, trying to warm up a bit by a little stove before the drive out. 

Good Eats

We may be stuck in the capital for a bit, so wanted to get on board taking advantage of the free (and faster!) internet where we're staying. To start off a possible string of posts, welcome to our kitchen at our home in full swing. Some things that we would keep in our house as staple items in the States are either just not the same or not available here.

We're thankful to our dear friend Sky Scott for this tortilla recipe that we've used at least 4 or 5 times in the month and a half that we've been in this house. We have made numerous tortillas and tortilla chips. One of our teammates says they are quite "must-y," which after thinking she meant stale, really means that they must be eaten. We couldn't agree more (hence several of the tortilla batches being turned into chips).

Matt is the expert tortilla roller. His mom trained him well!

This is the amount of "must-y" chips that one recipe makes. Delicious!

And several of you have commented on the homemade bread that was referred to earlier. Confession: I hadn't actually made bread yet. But there have been 3 loaves since then, and all of them were quite successful! Hip Hip Hooray! And with it just being Christmas cookie season, we learned another trick for one of the slices from this loaf: put it in with your cookies to keep them soft. Somehow they absorb the moisture out of the bread, which subsequently becomes as hard as a rock. But hey, it makes the sweet things taste so yummy!

It may have a pretty dark top, but it still tasted mighty fine!

Videos!!

So now that we are in the land of good internet for a few days, we've got a couple videos to share with you.The first is the tour of our house. The second is our ridiculously scary-sounding Christmas tree lights. You may only want to leave it on for 3 seconds so you don't walk away with a headache. I'm pretty sure that even tone deaf people would cringe at the sound of this thing. Anywho...enjoy!