Missouri, not New York

Being from a large, powerful country with vast entertainment exports, I often bump into the phenomenon that most people in the world watch Hollywood films and as such, think themselves experts on the United States. Everyone in the world has an opinion on George Bush, 80% of the people in the world have some sort of 9/11 conspiracy theory involving brainwashed stupid Americans that they desperately need to share with me, and a good number of people really do buy into the stereotype that Americans know nothing about the world outside their backyards, thanks to YouTube videos like the one above.

But this air of superiority breaks down when U.S. geography comes up, because the reality is that most Turks' knowledge of the U.S. is limited to Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Dallas, Miami, and Chicago (and not only Turks, this applies to a significant chunk of the global population, even the most educated). They're not sure whether California is a city or a state, most are surprised to hear that Alaska is part of the USA, and they're blown away by the fact that we have fifty states spanning 3,000 miles of continent.

This odd gap between perceived knowledge and actual knowledge results in some hilarious conversations when well-intentioned people want to know where in the U.S. I'm from. Inexplicably, everyone frames the question in the same bizarre way: "Which city are you from? For example, California, New York..." forcing me into a brief explanation of the difference between a city and a state and which category Texas and Miami fall into. Turkey is divided into regions as well, and people often state their geographical roots by region, meaning that when they say the name of a familiar city, they could very well mean a village 100 miles outside the city. But the American fashion of listing both city and state, or often just state if it's a small town, is completely incomprehensible to them.

For me, the most entertaining part of being from Missouri is the fact that nobody outside the USA has ever heard of Missouri. The other entertaining point is that our country has multiple states beginning with the letter "M," which all sound the same to untrained ears and causes great chaos when trying to help people locate Missouri on their mental maps of the USA. The question "Where are you from?" never has a simple answer because people want to have heard of my hometown, but the fact is they generally haven't. To date, I've met only two people here who knew anything about Missouri. One was a Turkish guy who spent a summer working in Joplin, driving an ice cream truck through a summer work and travel program. The other was a French guy who spouted an almost encyclopedic knowledge of small Missouri towns with French names, but I'm fairly certain this was the result of a Google search he performed to hide the fact that he fibbed when he initially told me he'd heard of Missouri. Most people simply respond to my answer with a flat, "Ohhh," in the tone that people adopt when they have no idea what you're talking about but don't want to admit it.

But here are the top five best reactions I've had so far in trying to explain U.S. geography to people who aren't afraid to proudly display their ignorance, an attitude which I commend because they are the people who end up learning something from the conversation.

5. "You're from MISERY?" (cliche, but it shows this person's grasp of the English language, so props.)

4. "Where are you from in the USA?"
"Missouri."
"No, I mean like which city, for example, New York, California..."
"Missouri. It's a state."
"New York?"
"No, Missouri. There is a state called Missouri."
"A state?"
"Yes."
"Which city? New York?"
"No."

(The really sad part is that this conversation has occurred more than once.)

3. "Missouri! That's in the south, right?"
"Nope, that's Mississippi."
"But Boston is there, right?"
"Nope, that's Massachusetts."
"Near the lakes?"
"That's Michigan."
"Near Canada?"
"That's Minnesota."
"In that case I have absolutely no idea where Missouri is."
"You get half credit for knowing Michigan."
"Are all these places real?"

2. "I'm from Missouri. It's a state in the center of the United States, near the Mississippi River."
"Oh, ok. I know the Mississippi River. Which city?"
"It's a small city called Columbia."
"Columbia! I know Columbia!"
"You do?"
"Yes, of course! It's in South America! You're from South America? Do you speak Spanish?"
"No..."

1. "I know Missouri! It's very famous."
"Really? Are you sure?"
"Yeah, there was a movie about it."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes! People talk funny there, right? Like 'O ya sure, dontcha know.' "
"Nope, that's Minnesota."

(Unfortunately there is no way to capture in writing what it sounds like when a Turkish person tries to imitate a Minnesota accent. Suffice it to say I started choking on my tea and couldn't breathe for about a minute.)

The corn man

The corn man cometh.



Each afternoon, the voice comes. It first becomes audible from a few blocks away, and gradually the volume increases as its owner winds his way through the streets to his eventual destination of our short and winding road. The call has clearly been honed and perfected through years of practice: without fail, it rings out with precisely the same cadence and pitch every time.

I can hear him from my bedroom with the window shut. I can hear him above Lynyrd Skynyrd blasting from my flatmate's computer. I can hear him every day, rain or shine, regardless of temperature. The corn man: just what you think it is. He's a street vendor, in the same vein as the simitcis that I've blogged about before, who wanders the street selling corn.

Sometimes I watch him from the window as he meanders up our street. He occasionally rests from his chanted advertisement to look up at the buildings, as if expecting a housewife to call out to him and then come running down to collect her corn. But no one ever comes. In over two months of living in this flat and watching this man push his corn cart up the hill past my house, I have never seen him attract a single customer. Who knows how long he wanders every afternoon, or how much corn he sells on an average day. Is it enough to make a profit and justify his long hours of corn peddling? Probably not. Turkish people may have relied on these street vendors for fresh produce fifty years ago, or perhaps even twenty, but now there are about five grocery stores within two blocks of my house, all with reasonably priced vegetables. The corn man seems obsolete, a village relic that doesn't quite fit in with the sports cars and skyscrapers of Ankara.

But this man is a great example of patience and perseverance, because he never fails to come with his corn. Whether or not he sells any is a mystery to me, but he is a faithful visitor to our street every single day, and his voice is a touch that makes this cold, impersonal big city feel a little smaller.

Kos

Greece and Turkey have a long, intertwining history dating back to Alexander the Great's invasion of Asia Minor in 334 BC. Following that time, Greeks colonized Asia Minor and many of the famous Greek cities and heroes were from Anatolia, the peninsula which is now Turkey. Anatolia was primarily Greek-speaking until the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and spread across Turkey in the 15th century.

But even during the days of the Ottomans, and after Greece declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821, taking most of the Aegean Islands with it, there was a significant population of Christian Greeks living in Turkey. However this ended when, following a series of nasty wars in the early 20th century, Turkey and Greece signed a treaty to exchange populations. At this time, all Muslims were forcibly removed from their homes in Greece, and all the Christians were likewise removed from Anatolia and resettled in their respective "homelands."

Since the 1970s the two countries have generally gotten along, and most Turks I know seem to have a positive view of Greece, with the exception of a few disputes regarding the origins of baklava or other cultural items that both countries like to claim.

But I find this interesting because although I knew that Greece had a lot of islands, I didn't realize that they owned practically every island between Greece and Turkey, including the ones that are literally right next to Turkey. So like an idiot, I wandered into Bodrum and saw advertisements for ferry boats to the Greek islands of Kos, Rhodes, Lesbos, and Kalymnos, and was kind of surprised to learn that these were day trips. But I couldn't resist the idea of a $17 round-trip ferry boat ride to a Greek island, so I signed myself up for a day trip to Kos.

Every single other tourist in Bodrum appeared to have the same idea as I did. The customs and passport authorities, on the other hand, seemed to be greatly surprised at the increase in tourist traffic during a major national holiday in late August, and had not made any sort of adjustments to their normal administration of passport and visa control. So our ferry, scheduled to leave at 9:30, pulled out of the harbour at a little after 10:00. Thankfully, the one hour boat ride was worth the wait.

And yes, the Apostle Paul stopped off here at least twice, once at the end of his final missionary journey, on his way back to Jerusalem for his final trial. He was probably not fully able to enjoy the scenery, knowing that he was headed for prison.

That's Kos, up ahead.

Cruising on the top deck of a ferry on a sunny day, wind blowing in your face and watching the coastline glide by-- pretty much like heaven.


The sun and scenery hypnotized me to the point that it never occurred to me that I'd be one of the last people off the boat when we arrived. And oh, was there a price to pay. Greece had even less forethought than Turkey as regards the holiday traffic, and those of us unfortunate enough to be in the back of the line were treated to a full two hours of standing in line in the sun. The Europeans standing behind me were less than thrilled about this: "15 billion Euros in aid, and we have to stand in line for two hours? I want my money back!" By the time I actually got through passport control, I had only three hours to wander the island before having to report back to the ship. Lesson learned! Don't listen to the sirens enticing you to relax in the sun. Get off the boat!

Kos harbor, lined with lots of bicycles and scooters available for rent.


You can see the mixture of history here in the middle of the town square. Side by side there is a large Orthodox church, and a mosque.



Kos was the home of Hippocrates, the father of medicine, and there's a large tree in the center of town that he supposedly planted. The other thing I discovered walking around town was the ruins of the agora, which according to the informational plaques was one of the largest in the ancient world.

However, it's not much to look at now. That archway behind me is really the only thing still standing. Everything else has been knocked down by entropy and earthquakes.

This pile of stones behind me was once a sanctuary to Aphrodite. I'm sure Paul was less than thrilled by that one. Maybe he's the one who knocked it over?



The best part of this to me was that the ruins were just lying about, fully accessible to anyone who wanted to climb on them or, like me, have a pita picnic upon some fallen columns. I guess Greece has so many ruins, a number of which are in much better condition than these, that they don't really care if tourists run amok on their ancient agoras. Besides, the majority of tourists are from Turkey or Europe, which are countries also full of ancient sites. It's only us New World folks who get so worked up over a pile of broken-down stones.

Three hours was just enough time to explore the city a bit, do a bit of shopping, grab a cold drink in a feeble attempt to free my body from its memories of too much sunlight. After that it was another magnificent boat ride back to Bodrum, and then immediately onto a bus back to reality in Ankara, far from the sea.

It was a short, sweet visit which only left me with a desire to go back and explore more of these islands. Now that I know how close some of them are, I might just have to do that.

Castle by the Sea- Bodrum

Teaching does bring its benefits, but working at a language school in Turkey, summer vacation is not one of them. In fact, with kids out for the summer and parents reluctant to let them waste their time at home playing video games, intensive English classes are a popular method of educational childcare, and so every day our school becomes crowded with all ages, starting as young as five. The morning groups come for four hours, five days a week, and the afternoon groups for three hours. All come armed with pocket money for sugary soft drinks and ice cream so during the hourly tea breaks, you're likely to get bowled over by elementary kids chasing each other on a sugar high through the hallways.

While I was lucky enough to escape the madness of kids' classes, I made up for it by working seven days a week for the past three and a half months. I taught two pre-intermediate intensive classes this summer, which were made up mostly of university students using their summer holidays as a chance to get ahead in English. With these groups meeting every morning, I was hoping to get rid of my weekend schedule, but I have been teaching the same group Saturday-Sunday mornings ever since I came to Turkey and we're pretty close by now, so I hated to give them up. So thanks to my attachment to the weekend group, I had a pretty miserable work marathon from mid-May until this past week. My life started to feel a little like Groundhog Day, waking up every single day at the same time, going through the same routine with very few things to break up the monotony.

For this reason, the week-long holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan was as big a relief to me as it was to the millions of people who had been fasting all month. A few weeks ago I had made up my mind that what I needed the most was to sit on the beach and zone out. And so this week I went down to Bodrum, a peninsula on the southwest coast of Turkey, where the Aegean and Mediterranean seas meet. I was so ready for a break that I didn't even care that this is a huge hotspot for both national and European tourists and that the whole place was crowded.

The thing that really sold me was hearing that Bodrum was home to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who said that it was the most beautiful place in the world. If it's good enough for Herodotus, it's good enough for me!

Bodrum is an 11-hour bus trip from Ankara, but the great thing about the buses here is you can hop on an overnight bus at 9:30 and arrive bright and early in the morning to find this:

Herodotus may have had a limited scope of "the world," but I'm almost inclined to agree with him. This is the harbor at Bodrum. Forgive the picture quality- I only had my camera phone.

Bodrum, as I mentioned, is a hotspot for Europeans, which means that pretty much everyone in Bodrum speaks excellent English and that prices tend to be on the high side. But because most of the foreign tourists speak no Turkish whatsoever, the locals were shocked and super impressed by my less-than-fluent but certainly functional Turkish, enough so that prices dropped a bit whenever I used it. Which was good because the beaches of Bodrum have an interesting feature:

You can't quite see it from the picture, but the entire coast is lined with beach chairs and umbrellas belonging to hotels and restaurants. There isn't an open spot to be had. Technically the chairs are free to use, but most people with any sort of ethical compunctions would feel kind of guilty not at least buying a drink in exchange for the privilege of using the beach. This gets expensive eventually, but wasn't entirely bad; I felt pretty spoiled at one point when I abandoned the chairs to sit with my feet in the Mediterranean, reading a book, as a nice waiter made sure my stuff didn't get wet and then fetched me an ice cold beer.

But this beach is even better because it's also got an historical element to it; namely, this was the ancient Greek city of Halikarnassos, home to the Tomb of Mausolus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. There's a Roman amphitheater plastered visibly on a hillside next to the highway, and the landmark of the harbor is the Castle of St. Peter, built by the Knights of Rhodes in the 15th century AD.

And it's hard to pass up a Crusader castle by the sea, especially when I learned that this castle is also home to the Museum of Underwater Archaeology. It was like all my nerdy childhood classical education and obsession with history and archaeology has finally been given a context.




Ancient sites are magical to me because they require so much from your imagination, to have knowledge of different time periods to recreate what these places must have been like hundreds or thousands of years ago. What did Herodotus see when he looked out his window? What would this have looked like when Alexander the Great invaded? What did the Apostle Paul think when he sailed by here? (and he did; I checked in the book of Acts, and in 21:1 he sailed to the island of Kos, which I visited on Wednesday and which is visible from Bodrum) My senses tingled walking through these stones and imagining who else had been there.

View from the castle, which was constructed by the Knights Hospitaller in the 1400s as a safeguard against the approaching Selcuk Turks, who were taking over Anatolia as the Byzantine Empire crumbled. Christians from all over Asia Minor came to this castle to take refuge.

As you can see from the minaret, the castle did eventually fall to the Ottoman Turks, in 1522, and according to Ottoman tradition, the chapel was converted into a mosque. The minaret was later destroyed by French battleships during World War I. Of course now, the chapel/mosque now houses a shipwreck exhibit, so the archaeologists might be the most blasphemous ones in this story of degrading sacred spaces.

The Museum of Underwater Archaeology is spread out through various rooms in the castle, so as you explore the fortress you're also treated to exhibits of Greek shipwrecks and pieces of glass recovered from the bottom of the Mediterranean. The museum boasts one of the largest collection of amphorae in the world, which is pretty exciting if you're me.

No crowds could spoil my mood. All in all it was a time of great refreshment, physically, mentally, and spiritually. There's nothing like the sea to remind you of God's power and encourage you to just sit still and bask in the splendor of His creation. Plus being in a place with millennia of Christian history also gives me a lot of encouragement as I think about all the people who've been here before me, worshiping and proclaiming the Gospel despite all sorts of opposition and persecution. Reading the Bible in this kind of a context where others have been reading the same words in so many different languages in so many different circumstances gives me a much greater picture of Christianity as a family that transcends time and space, and fills me with joy at the anticipation of someday meeting all these people in Heaven. It also serves as a booster for coming back to Ankara, a place where there isn't really a Christian community and where I don't have the opportunity to go to church on a regular basis.


I'm one of the fortunate ones- while I feel a bit disconnected from the body of Christ, it's nothing compared to those out there who are not only spiritually and physically disconnected from others who share their faith, but who also face persecution for their beliefs. So while it may sound strange in a blog post about a beach holiday, I would like to end with a prayer request for all those out there who have little spiritual support and who don't enjoy the blessing of a large community of faith. Please lift them up in prayer as brothers and sisters in Christ, that they would be encouraged and know that even if they feel alone, they are not.


More to come later on my little day excursion to Greece!