3 July Ankara

Full day. Late start:9:30. I think the jet lag is finally gone because I slept until 9:00! An untold luxury. Lecture in the morning from another professor from the Middle East Technical College, and she was delightful, a Cornell Ph.D. The scholars we've been seeing have been top-rate. She gave us a great talk on pre-classical Anatolian civilizations. I'm hesitant to say how much I learned, because it reveals the degree of my ignorance prior to the lecture. We learned all about the Hatti, the Hittites, the Phyrgians and Lydians. And probably a few more groups in there too. Fascinating, and another impressively put together lecture. Off to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, the 1997 winner of Best Museum in Europe. It lived up to its billing. It's the place that every person said not to miss, and they were right. Really great. Our tour guide, Ali, was also a font of knowledge, but we kid him about making stuff up on the spot. Chris would approve--I took 93 pictures during the day. We hiked to the top of the citadel, only a short distance from the museum. Thought of Mom--no guardrails, big drop down. It's a wonderful feeling to climb to a really high point in a city and have panoramic views. Brings out the superhero feeling in a person. Ankara is not an especially beautiful town, in my estimation, but it is very interesting. Beautiful in its way (with a small "b", perhaps). Went to a mosque and went in on the women's side. Wore my headscarf (thanks Mom) trying not to look like a peasant. A young woman's cell phone with a rock jingle kept going off. Not so great. Many women inside this very cramped praying area. About half the floor space was taken up by a platform housing what looked like 8 or 9 small decorative coffins. We also saw the famed Temple of Augustus, in great disrepair but important for its binlingual (Greek and Latin) inscription in the first person by Augustus. It's a copy of the Roman original, but that one was destroyed, so this was a very important link for historians. It's 35 paragraphs that detail Augustus's achievements (in his view) from age 19 to age 76. He became emperor in...27 B.C. (?) Yesterday I was off by 200 years, today only by...well, not sure.
Back to hotel, I went off to get a MUCH needed pedicure. I cannot unleash these pterodactyl toes on the unsuspecting people of the countryside. I learned that I'm almost as illiterate in the language of pedicures as I am in Turkish. To make a long story short, they scrubbed off layers of dead skin (I think I'm 1/4" shorter now) and all my hard-won callouses. And the color I got on my toes does NOT match the color of the shirt I was wearing (I figured it was a safe, pretty concrete bet). No. But rather than ask for a new color once the horror of dark purple had hit me, I kept it as a symbolic reminder to learn better Turkish. At least my toes look human. As I sat with toes drying, spread in those foam thingies, the skies opened--ka-pow!--and a huge, unexpected (by me, anyway) storm hit. Crap, no jacket, no umbrella. Waited for the bulk of it to pass and hit the streets for the 10 minute walk back. The drainage of full-scale rain in the streets was fascinating. Huge swaths of puddle-age made for giant arcs of water as cars blitzed through them. I stopped to snap some pictures, but didn't manage to capture the full beauty (no joke) of it. Will post a few once I get the battery recharged. I'm living on borrowed time here. Sat out with fellow Fulbrighters at the hotel cafe last night, sipping raki and eating soup. I love the soup here.
We leave in 2 1/2 hours for Cappadocia. 4-5 hours on the bus today, lots of walking too. Wish my chiropractor were here. But it should be FUN! I signed up for the balloon ride in a few days. Can't wait.