Just because I’m staying at a hotel on a beach, swimming in the black sea and eating unnatural amounts of halva and baklava doesn’t mean I am not working hard. We are all working extremely hard, waking at five thirty, leaving at six thirty and not coming home until three pm, and then just taking a short shower break and then beginning various office, artefact cleaning, drawing and database work until supper at 7:30. I’m in bed most days by 10. This is why these blog posts are so delayed. The work is so physical that we are exhausted, and although we all love it, we were desperate for a day off. Generally we get one day a week, however this week we switched our off day to Wednesday meaning we have now worked for nine days in a row. However, it was well worth the wait!
There were lots of things to celebrate, namely the ability to sleep in, but also my roommate Fiona’s birthday, and the new arrival, Michele’s birthday. It was also a farewell celebration to Toby, Emre, and the other Turkish students who were leaving, and also a welcoming celebration for the arrival of some new temporary team members. Michele is an archaeologist living in Ankara from Italy, Hugh (pronounced basically like a grunt) is a geophysicist from the Netherlands, Morad is a classical archaeologist from nearby Kastamonu, and another guy whose name I won’t even bother to butcher is a Palaeolithic specialist from Greece. It’s great to have new people on our ever changing team, but sad to see the rest leave. I have plans to visit Emre in Kilise Teppe where he is excavating on my travels, but for the rest, including two of my roommates and two of my survey team members, it was a final goodbye! Therefore we all decided it was fitting to have a hello/goodbye/birthday BBQ on Tuesday, and enjoy a quiet, well deserved, and hung-over day off on Wednesday!
The barbeque was a huge success, and it’s hard to describe how anticipated it was. At this point of the trip we had been at just over two weeks of a purely rice, beans, broth and bread diet. Literally. Protein seemed like a distant memory, making this barbeque even more epic. That being said, I think by any standards (not just the Cide malnourished) this barbeque was of epic proportions. Michele who is Italian made his famous bruschetta on the grill, and there was garden salad and potato salad made by our favourite Scot, Fiona. We also had roasted red peppers and grilled eggplant to kick things off. Next came the main courses, marinated chicken sis, lamb and lamb fat sis, kofte (small Turkish ground beef patties), and sausage… all grilled to perfection! This was all paired with beer, my ultra-classy eight lira red wine, and raki! Raki is the “official” Turkish beverage of sorts, it’s a 40 percent white liquor that tastes like a harsher version of Sambuca and it is normally mixed with water to dilute it, the interesting part is it turns from clear to cloudy when the water is added!
BBQ Heaven!
Raki!Unfortunately my plans to sleep in the next morning were squashed by my internal clock, which will not let me sleep past six am, although even this is an extra hour for me now. However, this was a good thing because it meant that I was able to say a final farewell as the Turkish student’s left on the morning dolmus (shuttle bus) to Kastamonu.
The A-Team before the goodbyes! Sercan, Bleda, Bus, Gwen and myself! Two Turkish, two dutch, one Canadian! Despite the early wake up, our day off was very relaxing. I really needed this. Myself, Fiona and Gwen headed straight to the beach and paid ten Lira to have our own beach beds and umbrellas, with ice-cream and some soda in hand we set up camp and spent the entire morning and afternoon reading in the sun and swimming in the black sea. Absolute perfection! It was nice to be able to be in the sun without wearing all my field gear, although, my original goal of coming back a bronzed goddess has failed miserably… I managed a lovely lobster red colour which has now peeled to look like I’m plagued with vitiligo. Sexy.
The remainder of the day was spent in town, where we had food in town and did some shopping. I had a great chicken sis marinating in a spicy tomato sauce. As for the shopping myself and Fiona went our separate ways, as I am not overly interested in the touristy shops which are all the same. Instead we headed straight to the bakeries. These are true Turkish gems, filled with amazing cookies, pasteries and sweets! I bought some baklava (words cannot fully express my love for authentic baklava), and some pistachio sweets (EVERYTHING here has pistachio in it… I’m never leaving!), and got some cherry and chocolate homemade ice-cream for the road. My one Cide souvenir was a dress in the traditional Cide fabric, everywhere you go in Cide you will see this yellow patterned fabric and most gift shops have babies and girls dresses made in the print. The beachside kiosk by our hotel had some of these girls dresses so I pointed to one and then pointed to myself, eventually he got the idea that I was asking if they came in my size, he laughed a bit but told me to come back the next day… the next day I came back to find a custom made dress in my size! It’s actually a great summer dress and I can’t wait to wear it, although I will wait until I leave Cide!
Marinated chicken sis for lunch in town! Yum!
We finished our day off with supper back at the base, where we had a suprise baklava and birthday cake for the birthday duo, topped with some specail birthday gifts!
...... Happy Birthday Fiona and Michele? 
Birthday gifts! (Note: Fiona is wearing the Cide fabric head scarf I mentioned above!)
Alrighty, that’s all for now… my next post will be more of a photo essay, since I think pictures do the survey landscape more justice than my words ever could!
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