Day 5

So I guess I will start putting the dates since I am getting so far behind and sometimes I don't get internet! Today is May 20, 2011 and the first place we went to was the underground city or the Kaymakli. It once housed around 15,000 people. It had both common rooms and individual rooms. I was so excited to actually be able to go see this, I have seen it so many times on the Travel Channel and History Channel. It was amazing to see how the Christians lived when in hiding from the Muslims. I absolutley loved it and the fact that the people left nothing behind facinates me even more! I wish we knew more about it but Sevim said they just don't. After, we went to Pigeon Valley and it had a beautiful view of the valley with rocks that had man made pigeon hole in them. We also saw a lot of pigeons! It was raining so that kind of sucked and we weren't there for very long. Then we went across the street to a jewelry store. The owner gave us a tour first and told us a little about what they did and told us mainly turquoise was found in Turkey. The people were so very polite and made each of us feel very special. They let us try on anything we wanted to try on so of course I tried on the biggest piece of jewelry they had! After that we drove over the Red River, which is the longest river in Turkey. We then had lunch and it was so good! We had tomato soup and beef stew in the clay pot they cooked it in. I loved it and it reminded me of home! Then we went to the pottery town of Avanos and saw them actually hand drawing the clay pots and other things. We got to see them mold the clay, which only reminded me of Ghost and made me really want to make my own pottery! Unfortunately I didn't get to but a girl on our trip did. She was so funny doing it and you could tell how much fun she was having so I am very happy for her! Later, Saviem told her one of the men said to the other man "what in the hell is she doing?" I thought that was really funny! The owner of the store said that pottery business has been in his family for 200 years! Pretty Impressive! Then we went to the Open Air Musuem where they built churches out of the tuff. They were in Goreme and the churches were decorated with unique frescoes depicting various scenes from the Bible. It was very beautiful and very unique. They were very small and fun to explore. We stopped at two places to take pictures, one there was a rock shapped like a camel and there was a beautiful rainbow in the sky. The second place we stopped was to see fairy chimneys and the valley was known as a "girls dream" because of what the chimney's looked like, which I will not say but some men would be jealous! hehe! I also rode a camel! That was so cool, it was so wobbly and I felt like I was going to fall off. He was a stubborn camel and didn't really want to move, which made me nervous but overall I LOVED IT!!! It is time for Turkish Night! Gule gule! that means goodbye!