April 03, 2004
Kusadasi, Ephesus, Istanbul...
Hey... I'm in Asia. No wait, I was in Asia, but now I'm back in Europe. I think. In my last day on Samos I had an interesting experience while sitting in a cafe. The woman who was working came up to my table and pulled up a chair and started asking me questions about English grammar. I believe she said she was Polish, but I'm not certain. She first wanted to know what different question words would produce what parts of speech in English. Like what would you ask so the answer would be a noun... or a verb. I did my best to explain to her that that wasn't a good way to think about parts of speech and gave her a basic lesson in person/place/thing vs. action. Comparing adverbs and adjectives was a little tougher and we ended by discussing when you use "the" before a plural noun e.g. "the people" vs. "people". I think I actually helped her out and it was kind of fun too.
I caught a ferry on Thursday from Samos to Kusadasi, Turkey. I was expecting a radical change in everything, but after the various culture shocks I've gone through recently, Turkey has been about what I expected. The people that own the hostel I stayed at in Kusadasi also own a carpet shop and a hotel in Selcuk. After only paying 8 euro for a single room, they drove me around the area and dropped me off for a while at Ephesus on Friday. While some of the ruins are interesting, I'm just not enough of a history buff to get that much of a kick out of it. At least I felt like I was doing something touristy. I also visited the ruins of the Church of St. John, where he is said to have written his gospel and been buried. The guys from the hostel then let me hang out in their hotel and drink tea and learn how to play some domino game too before I got on an overnight bus to Istanbul. I was unfortunate enough to sit near the front of the bus and so all night I got to watch the headlights come straight at our bus on roads that seem to have no lines or lanes. Also I would like to have a word with the person that scheduled a 10 hour overnight bus ride and decided to serve as much coffee and water as the passengers wanted... with no bathroom on the bus!!! Luckily I realized there was no bathroom before hydrating myself too much, so I made it. I don't know how the other passengers fared. Time to go explore Istanbul.