Traveling to Turkey has been an adventure full of surprises. I\u2019m from the Midwest next to the Great Plains region, and before this I had never seen a mountain range in my life. Turkey\u2019s high cliffs, hot sandy beaches, and dusty powdered earth are a change. Lots of the terrain is foreign to me. However, through this program I have learned to see the beauty inherent to the Turkish landscape and appreciate its unique vibrancy. One thing that is familiar is the heat: temperatures over 95 degrees with high humidity can be very unpleasant to some, but they remind me of home in Missouri. I live right next to the Mississippi River so the conditions are remarkably similar. Gazipa\u015fa is a city very much like my hometown, with people very much like those I grew up with.<\/p>\n
The Turkish people I\u2019ve met over the course of this week have taught me that Gazipa\u015fa is a city full of individuals. Each student has a different approach to life: different tastes in music, clothing, food, and religion. Turkish Culture manifests as something different for everyone. However, one commonality I have noticed has been that every friend \u2014 and stranger\u2014 treats me kindly and encourages me to learn Turkish. I\u2019ve been made to feel so welcome here, and I truly appreciate that effort even if I often fail at proper pronunciation (Te\u015fekk\u00fcrler, T\u00fcrkiye!)<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve already learned a lot at the dig site this week. Not everything we find is valuable to archaeological research: decontextualized (surface level) artifacts cannot be used in argument. I also learned that the architectural features of a building can give insight into how it was constructed. Director Hoff\u2019s talk put everything into perspective; five grueling days of work so far are little in comparison to more than a decade of hard work. I\u2019m truly excited to begin excavation on Monday.<\/p>\n
If I had to communicate my first impressions of Gazipa\u015fa to a prospective student, I would say two things. Firstly, be prepared for hard work. Secondly, expect to eat strange foods. Be afraid of neither option. Moving to a foreign country is scary \u2014 all familiar items are left at home, you\u2019re forced to trash your favorite shampoo at the airport, and your sleep schedule is 8+ hours behind the curve. But every struggle is worth it. Our work is hard, so rewarding since it means so much to the people of this city. Traditional foods are strange to Americans in concept, but when we eat we share cultures and discover brand new things. My new favorite dish (Yayla \u00c7orbasi) is something I never would have volunteered to try but I ate it here and it was fantastic. Jump headfirst into the new experience, and remember to reapply your sunscreen! Once again I\u2019d like to say: thank you, T\u00fcrkiye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Traveling to Turkey has been an adventure full of surprises. I\u2019m from the Midwest next to the Great Plains region, and before this I had never seen a mountain range in my life. Turkey\u2019s high cliffs, hot sandy beaches, and dusty powdered earth are a change. Lots of the terrain is foreign to me. However, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4532,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Iz8A-FU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4532"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2599,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions\/2599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}