Saturday, 15 December The next morning I got up at 6:30. Melih was still sleeping. I knocked on his door to wake him up. “Hey, I’m leaving in a few minutes,” I called through the door. “Do you still want to join me?” “Yes,” he called through the door, “I still want to...
Thursday, 13 December My short stay at TAC had been an emotional high, and as I walked away from the school I wondered what would come next. I remembered that now I was shifting into Couchsurfing. That should shake things up a bit, I thought. I wondered what it would...
On Sunday, I rolled out of bed and, before going down to breakfast, gathered up my stuff and prepared to check out of the Oğretmen Evi. Later that morning I would be hopping a bus to the nearby town of Tarsus, to visit the students at a school there for a few days. It...
Wednesday, 5 December In the morning Ali and I both woke up around 6:30 a.m. We got up and walked down the street to Hoca’s restaurant for breakfast but found it not open yet. We hung out at the kahvehanesi a while instead. When Hoca finally arrived we stepped into...
Nihat bey, the commander at the jandarma post, had told me to find and say hello to Hoca at the end of the day, so all day long I walked thinking, I can’t just camp anywhere tonight, I’ve got to find Hoca. Whatever I do, I’ve got to find Hoca. In the early afternoon I...
Tuesday, 4 December The next morning, I woke up just before dawn to the howling and yipping of coyotes a few hundred meters away. They either didn’t know I was nearby listening, or they didn’t care. I stepped out of my tent, put on my boots, and noticed that the soil...
