martes, enero 10, 2012

5 Months, What? 2nd Part

Merhabalar (Hi everybody)

Yesterday I posted about the exchanges students that are living in here as you know there's 17 girls and Churrito my friend from Mexico (he's name is "Luis Enrique" but he likes to be called "Churrito")
All of them make my exchange even better

We have every Saturday Turkish lessons at "International Izmir House" so after that we walk around the city, have waffles (the girls love them), go to buy something, have something to eat, and enjoy the time that we have together. But that's the present time, So I'm going to talk about what happened at the first camp.

We went to Cesme, to one of the beaches there, Cesme is about an hour far away from Izmir, that is not much
.

It was great, we swam (the water here is really cold, but we swam anyway) we had something to eat, we knew each other (but Michelle wasn't here yet, we had to wait more for her, she's from Canada) the committee told us some rules, he spoke about us a little bit, and we said what was different about here.

After the orientation camp we went to Ephesus and to the house of the Virgin Mary for the second camp. now with Michelle that came to Izmir a little bit late, and she arrived here a day before this trip.



This trip was awesome, we stayed in a nice hotel the first night, had the second orientation camp there, and at the next day we went to the Virgin Mary's house. That place is so peaceful, like in other world. A lot of people from all over the world goes there, when you go inside that place, is like everything that is bad disappear and inside your body there's just peace, it's an small house, at the bottom there is this water that goes out of a rock, "holy water", and also there is this wall named, "the wall of the wishes" where you write your wishes and tie it there and they'll come true. http://www.aboutkusadasi.com/ephesus/virgin-mary-house.html

After that, we went to "Ephesus" It's an ancient Greek city, It's big really big, we walked a lot there and we saw tons of things from years ago, It has a lot of history, I got surprised about all you can see in Turkey. Ephesus (Ancient Greek Ἔφεσος, Ephesos; Turkish Efes) was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era. In the Roman period, Ephesus had a population of more than 250,000 in the 1st century BC, which also made it one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean world . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephesus


Cumhuriyet (celebration of the republic day of Turkey)
The Republic Day of Turkey is one of the public holidays in Turkey, commemorating the proclamation of the republic in 1923. It lasts 35 hours, starting at 1:00 pm on October 28.
On 29 October 1923, Mustafa Kemal declared that Turkey would be a republic and renamed it as the Republic of Turkey.




We had a Halloween Party








Taksim, Istanbul, Turkey

And then I went to Istanbul when we had one of the Bayrams, that "Bayram" is the Turkic word for a nationally celebrated festival or holiday, applicable to both national (i.e. secular) or religious celebrations.
I stayed there the whole bayram, I went to a lot of places and everything just because of my family. Also I met Barbara Duarte that is on exchange there in Istanbul, I took all the transports of the city that I could ever take, I tried kokorec, and had a really good time



         






And then, we went to Ankara It was tiresome because of the train that we took from Izmir to there (15 hrs to get there and 15 hrs more to come back here.. yeah.. as I said tiresome, but we had a great time, I saw my friend Jorge Cordoba, we had a lot of fun on the train, we went to Anitkabir (the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) and to a different parliaments. It was a nice trip also 



And after that trip we went to Cappadocia,One more incredible place in Turkey  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia . The rocks formations and all the history that is in that place is amazing, It was cold, really cold, but It was a nice experience.  


Then I had my first Thankgiving we had food, a lot of food... and we went to Annie's house, It was an awesome night. 



And then Christmas and New year arrived


    For Christmas we went to a Church (Italian and not good, but anyway) we had a Christmas dinner we  we gave each other presents, danced, sang and had fun. For new year I went to Alacati to say Hosgeldin (welcome) to the 2012.

And that brings me here... Tuesday 10 of January 2012.. I've done a lot of things here, I met tons of great people, had a lot of fun, sad moments, weird moments, days where I can speak a lot of Turkish and days that I can NOT.. but I'm learning, working and growing up as a person everyday. I had to cut a lot of things, because of no time. This weekend, Friday 13 I have a trip to Pammukale, so I'll post more about it when I get back here, this Thursday is going to get here a new exchange girl from South Africa, and she's going to join us on the trip. 

Görüşürüz! (see you later) as we say here in Turkey     

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