Day 6

Rather than the agenda for the day I will start with just a couple of interesting observations:
• Everywhere, including lunch at the parliament, they used paper napkins. At the parliament they also had cloth napkins. The paper is for wiping; the cloth you tuck one corner under your plate and put the other one in your lap – it just catches stuff.
• When I try to get my students to see that time and how it is used is cultural they rarely believe me. In Turkey not only might one hypothesize this by the time everyone takes with everything, but you see it as you drive around town. So far in five days of travel we have seen only one clock – it was in a city plaza and it was 30 minutes behind. In 4 hotels not one single one has had a clock in the room and only one – an “international” hotel - had a clock in the lobby trying to show time around the world.
• Like visits I’ve made to African countries there is what I would consider over-employment – meaning that many businesses have considerably more staff than they need. Our host says that this is so that more people have a job.
• Most “tour spots” are void of all the safety and accessibility conveniences that we’ve come to expect in the US. Most places, even with lots of stairs rarely have elevators. Even on very steep and slippery marble steps at Ephesus there were no hand rails.
• As I’ve learned before in other countries, there is no ice and no wash clothes.

The majority of our day was spent getting to Ephesus and the House of Mary. Ephesus, a Greek city first built in around 1000 BC and most of what we saw was built in the 4th Century, was so glorious, majestic, and perhaps a little decadent. I’ll let a few pictures speak for themselves. We ended the day with a wonderful dinner with a family. I got to sit between a daughter in the sixth grade – she acted like any typical 12 year old including the fact that after dinner she pulled out her little computer and played games and listen to Jay Sean - and a brother-in-law of our host. He had finished a master’s in Industrial Engineering. I learned a lot and he had lots of questions (and misconceptions about the US). He was trying to start his own company of contracting out gps systems for fleets – hardly any one here currently uses a gps and selling to individuals is not in the cards right now.