It's 4 in the afternoon on Tuesday. We've been doing quite a bit of driving in the bus but have seen beautiful Turkish landscape. It's quite amazing to think that only about 800 miles from where we are right now a huge war is being fought in another country. That's like from Portland to just past San Francisco.

Some little bits of info - we drove along the Silk Road - obviously not the original one but where the original silk road was. It was the trade route from Asia. We couldn't stop but along the side of the road were old caravan stops - old stone buildings that were practically rubble but they were places where the caravaners would stop and eat and rest. So the buildings we saw today dated back in some cases to the 1000s AD or earlier. We were driving through farm land and it was interesting to see that the only people working the fields were the women. Despite the secular nature of this country it still has its roots in Islam which has over time gained quite a misogynistic belief system - look up misogynistic and discuss if necessary! As we discussed in class, Muhammed had only the greatest respect for women. Although the Turkish people are very very nice - they believe that tourists are not tourists but actually guests in their country - the men are quite arrogant and definitely have a certain "view" of women that I don't see in the states. When we discussed chivalry in our middle ages unit suffice it to say that chivalry is not a word the men in this country know.

The area we are in right now is called Cappadocia in the Anatolia region of Turkey. Cappadocia means land of the nice horses because the Assyrians thousands of years ago raised horses. An intersting fact - the word pastram is Turkish and literally means squeezed meat - can you guess what word in English is derived from pastram? Pastrami!!

The hotel where we are staying in Urgup is very nice but the computers are sooooooooo slow it took several minutes to load one picture. I have so many I want to show you from today but I only had time to load a couple. Will try to find a faster computer tomorrow but can't guarantee it. So when I find a faster one then you may get lots of pictures in one day.

What you see in these three pictures is one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen. This is in Cappadocia. For a long time volcanos in the area (they are dormant now) erupted and scattered their volcanic dust, ashes, lava and other remains all around. These volcanic residues then became prone to successive erosions through wind rain and different temperatures. Then came a series of earthquakes which increased the erosion. What you see in these pictures are the formations from all of this erosion over time. People actually still live in some of these dwellings today!! The formations are made out of a rock called tufa which is very much like pumace - it's light and actually feels just like pumace. We're going to see more rocks like this tomorrow so hopefully will be able to send you guys more pictures tomorrow.

The third picture is Laurence of Arabia - AKA - my dorky dad. He bought that hat at the stop we made to take these pictures. We met a darling little three year old boy trying to pump up his bicycle tires - I have pics and will send. He was soooo cute - I wanted to bring him home with me! So sweet and obviously used to tourists coming through his TINY little village. Turkey has more than 20 million tourists a year - it's their number one money maker in the country.