operation blowout (the team of shannon, marshall, mon and myself and named for our inevitable gastric distress experienced nearly every morning on this trip) has now been officially dismantled and monica and i have now commenced travel manuevers under the name team iki mm (thats iki, turkish for 2, and mm for mon and megan and because we cook delicious food). operation blowout officially ended bright and early on the 29th at 4:30am when we were dropped off in bozuyuk for a "ten or fifteen minute wait" for a bus to iznik (according to the bus guy in kas). nope. everything at the otogar (bus station) was closed except for one little office. good thing because we had come from kas dressed for kas weather which was in the 80s and it was about 30 degrees in bozuyuk. mon and i took refuge in this one little office much to the dismay of the turkish speaking attendant. he called his friend at 4:30am may i remind you to come and translate for us. we were able to sleep/wait in the office for 2.5 hours until a bus came to take us to osmaneli. from there we were able to catch a bus to iznik and then checked into our hotel (waking up the hotel employees in the process) and crashed until 1pm. the bus ride from osmaneli to iznik was really nice with lots of rolling hills in fall colors, little villages, little farmer turks and fields. after our long awaited sleep, we just walked around iznik for a bit checking out the city walls and walking to the lake. it was really windy and started pouring so we didnt last very long. we got tea and free cookies from a nice bakery man who also sliced the loaf of bread i bought with this awesome huge slicer machine (sliced bread has become a novelty to me and i was really excited). we then got more tea from our hotel manager who convinced us to stay another day in iznik. the hotel let us use their kitchen facilities so mon and i made some really yummy lentil/veggie soup for dinner. in the morning we ventured outside of the city to visit a village in the countryside. we walked through miles and miles of olive groves and vineyards and both are being harvested right now. it was really cool to watch the olive harvest- the men would climb homemade wooden ladders to pick the olives and the women would lay out blankets underneath to catch any olives that fell to the ground. we got several enthusiastic waves from the women which is a nice change from arabic countries where women usually just glared at us if we could even see their faces at all. everyone was so friendly! a number of old men driving tractors (2 in 3 vehicles on this road were tractors) towing their families in trailers behind offered us rides to the village and would instead load us with grapes and corn and tomatoes when we said we wanted to walk. after a few kilometers we came to the village of camdibi and decided to continue on down a muddy rutted road to see where it went. after about 2 more miles we emerged from olive groves into another small village whose name i cannot remember no matter how hard i try. we wandered around the village for a bit watching the kids run around with puppies and some villagers collecting olives, tomatoes and grapes from the mosque garden. after awhile we got really hungry so we sat on the steps of an old closed market for lunch (which this days is a banana, cheese and raspberry jam sandwich- i get my nutrients where i can...). after awhile i noticed some teenage boys pointing at us and whispering and trying to shove eachother towards us among giggles and blushing. finally a group of three approached us with some hesitant hellos. the leader knew enough english to ask our names and where we were from but was lost after that. he apologized profusely, threw his arms in the air in frustration and finally sent a runner to his house to fetch a turkish-english dictionary. this actually proved pretty useful and we were able to communicate much more effectively. the boys appointed themselves our village guides so off we went around the village. we went to see some houses up a muddy alley way, but the boys got worried after they saw a large dog so then we went to an old school. it was just an empty building with broken windows and dead leaves but they seemed pretty proud of it. during this tour we had an entourage of about 15 boys who would fight amongst themselves, trip and shove eachother to get at the last few blooming roses to pick for us. the leader took us to his house where we observed a lively goat slaughter (mon almost stepped on its head) involving 4 generations of the leaders family. his great grandmother was sitting on the floor sorting olives so we kissed her hand ("this is what you do with old people" leader explained) and she pulled us down and kissed our cheeks and foreheads, patted our cheeks repeatedly and babbled to us in turkish which we returned with hugs and smiles. she was so cute! after this leader's aunt made us tea and turkish corn (popcorn with oil and salt) and leader gave us a bag of unpopped kernels to "take back to american to make lots of turkish corn for all your families". he also wrote out popping instructions which included "oil+salt mix". for about 15 minutes leader kept saying "i am your gift" over and over again and finally, after lots of page flipping and puzzled looks he said "can i have gift from you to remember?" all i had to give was some sunscreen chapstick and my smokey the bear fire calendar that had been living at the bottom of my bag since august. he was ecstatic! we headed back to iznik around 2:30 with leader and one friend in tow and finally wore them out in camdibi where there was some more frantic dictionary page flipping and a hestitant "we...we...we miss yous". we departed with hugs and cheek kisses and made it back to iznik in about an hour or so. ali, the hotel owner, drove us to the top of a mountain for sunset and you could see the whole valley, the villages we had visited, the lake and all of iznik. mon and i made dinner when we got back. yesterday we took a bus to yalova and then a ferry across the sea of marmara to istanbul. our first day in istanbul deserves its own entry coming soon!
