2022 SDSU Turkey Trip

All a bit tired but safe and sound!  Next stop: Sioux Falls 

We are all checked in to Frankfurt Germany!  Our plane is leaving shortly.  All is going well!

Good evening from Turkey!   We are wrapping up our last day in Turkey.  It has been a fantastic trip.  We started our day at 9 AM with a visit from staff at a local hospital to collect nasal swabs for our Covid PCR test.  (All students and staff tested negative!)  At around 11:30 AM, we traveled to the Urgup city center to shop and relax.  Later in the afternoon, we visited with the Rector at Cappadocia University about Turkish international relations with other countries, including the USA and Russia.  After this visit, we stopped at a local winery and tasted some white, red, and sweet wines.  We then ate dinner before heading back to the hotel for some rest and relaxation! We will leave for the Ankara airport this evening for our 5 AM flight to Frankfort, Germany tomorrow.  I'll do my best to update you on our progress back to the USA!  We are sad to leave but at the same time happy to return back home!  

            Today we all woke up with slight sadness that we would be saying goodbye to our second home, Turkey. Turkey has truly welcomed us with love from her bosom. However, even in our sadness we woke up excited to be transported to another ancient history of Turkey.   Our first visit was to an underground city/museum known as  Kaymaklı.   We were also joined by  Kapadokya   Unversity  students from their English Language Department.  The  museum first opened in 1964 and only ten percent of it is cleaned up for site visit.  Kaymaklı  may have been built by the  Phryginas  in the 8 th -7 th  century B.C.  It was used as settlement for Christians to hide out from wars and storage system during time of peace. As we bent our backs and squatted through each tunnel, we all felt transported back to history. Some of us questioned what it felt like to have a normal life while li...

Our morning started bright and early at 4:30am for a sunrise hot air balloon ride! We drove through the city to the balloon valley; a place full of people just like us waiting in anticipation for the ride. We watched our jackrabbit blue and yellow ballon blow up before climbing in. As we dipped between the valleys of Kapadokya we watched the sun rise over the horizon admiring the view with the other hundreds of balloons around us also on a morning ride. We had a smooth landing followed by cherry mimosas to celebrate a successful flight. After that it was back to the hotel for breakfast. After a quick moment of rest we meet the students from Kapadokya University who will be traveling with us throughout our time here. They are all students in the English Language and Literature Department and will be helping to translate on the excursions. We started our day of touring with a bus tour of the Castle of Cappadocia and The Red Valley. The Castle is the tallest rock structure in the area and...

Hello everyone! We slept in a bit today and left by bus around 10:30 AM for Cappadocia.  Along the way, we stopped at Lake Tuz, an absolutely beautiful salt lake in Anatolia.  We took off our shoes and walked into the lake.  The lake itself is very shallow this time of year, only reaching our ankles. After this stop, we made our way to Urgup, the main city in Cappadocia.  The town has a population of about 20,000 pey, about the size of Brookings.  The terrain is awesome and to my eye somewhat similar to Western SD.  We are staying at a University owned hotel used to help train their students in the hospitality industry. After ordering some Turkish pita and pizza, the students went shopping.  Everyone is very happy!  Looking forward to tomorrow: our hot air balloon ride early in the morning to start the day!

Today started with a 9:30 am departure to the Turkish Parliament, known in Turkey as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. While there, our tour guide walked us through the General Assembly and the areas surrounding, such as the entry point for important politicians and dignitaries, and the wreckage from the 2016 Parliament bombing. We learned about the physical division of the Grand Assembly: elected representatives sit on the floor, dignitaries are situated above and to the left, high ranking military and judiciary personnel view from the upper, right section, and the press sits in the back along with other spectators (see photo below). Parliament has 600 members elected by proportional representation. Perhaps one day I’ll be entering through those tall and shiny doors as a diplomat! Next, we spent time at Anitkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Ataturk essentially founded the Turkish Republic, and led the Turkish National Movement during the Turkish War of Independence...

The first stop on our agenda today was at Tobb University. They have departments for medical science, politics, economics, and engineering. We also got to visit their medical lab. While at Tobb, we also listened to a lecture on Turkey’s political economy followed by lunch! After lunch, we visited a vet clinic. We found it interesting that students go to vet school right after high school, and that it’s a five year program. The veterinarians who run the clinic also hosted us at our farm visits in the afternoon. Today is my birthday and prior to leaving the clinic, I was surprised with birthday cake and candles! If there’s anything I’ve really noticed that stands out about Turkish citizens, is that they are so welcoming, and hospitality is something they take much pride in. Our first farm visit was at a 450 head Holstein dairy cow operation. We found dairy operations here are very similar to those in the U.S. While we were headed to our second dairy, which raised and milked Brown Swiss c...

After a long bus ride and only about 4 hours of sleep, we spent our first full day in Ankara by   visiting various museums, eating delicious food, and exploring some wonderful stores!  Our day started with a visit to Ankara University where we visited their Veterinary Science  Museum and their anatomy museum. The vet school was founded in 1842 during the Ottoman era  and was the first vet school in Turkey. The school was originally located in Istanbul before  it was relocated to Ankara. The museum was organized by vet school faculty in 2016 to display  and share the history of the school and of veterinary medicine as a whole. The anatomy  museum was super interesting as it displayed many different animals’ physical structures at  different life stages. There were elephant bones, fetal pigs, a stuffed tiger, an ostrich skeleton,  and a wild boar skull, just to name a few. One of the skeletons that I found very interesting was  a turk...

  As we enjoyed a more relaxed Sunday afternoon we cracked down Monday morning: we’re in the hotel lobby by 6:30am to catch the ferry boat at 7:30 that was taking us to Bursa. As we arrived in Bursa our first stop was an olive production farm. This is the largest cooperative that produces black olives instead of green olives. They have over 5 million olive trees, and they process olives for about 8 other cooperatives and 30 olive producers. This olive farm controls 1/3 of the black olive production and Germany is their top export market. The group was very surprised that the green tanks that the olives are held in can hold up 8 - 9 tons.  The tanks are over 10 feet deep. An interesting fact is that olives are harvested in November and at this production system there are 2 different ways to process the olives. They are either put into tanks where only salt and water are added and stay in these tanks for 6 months at room temperature, or the olives can stay in the tanks for 3 m...

Good evening from Istanbul! Today was a relaxing day.  Most of the day was "free time" for our students.  Several students took the Istanbul Metro to Galatea Tower, while the rest of the students spent the free time relaxing and shopping.  At 6:30 PM, we took a four hour cruise on the Bosphorus Strait on our own personal boat!  A wonderful dinner of fish or ribeye steak, plus appetizers and dessert, was served.  The view was incredible!!  It was exactly what we needed after several action packed days in Istanbul. Tomorrow we will wake up early to catch a ferry across the Sea of Marmara to Bursa.  After visiting Bursa, we will take a bus to Ankara in the evening, so our next blog post may be a little later than usual.  

Our fifth day was filled with adventure and learning about the vast history that lies within the city of Istanbul. We hopped on the metro and made our way to Sultanahmet one of the most historic neighborhoods in Istanbul. We received a guided tour of the Hagia Sophia the grand mosque constructed as a Christian church in 537 when the city was known as Constantinople. The church was converted into a mosque under Ottoman rule. We then continued with our guided tour to one of the largest cisterns (a large facility constructed to store water) that was constructed when the city was under Roman rule. This visit was followed by lunch at a local restaurant where we all had Turkish meatballs. We then proceeded to Topkapı Sarayı which was the palace where many of the Ottoman emperors lived during their reign. We got to walk through the halls, living quarters, bathrooms, and the throne room. It was incredible to see the sophisticated architecture and tile that covered the walls of the palace. ...