The time for travel and adventure is almost over.

I've been working on this one for a while. It's a bit delayed but I still have some more stories to tell before I'm finished writing. 

School is over. I had evidently forgotten how the end of school actually works. I was expecting children to be there on the last day so I could hand out prizes and things. Lots of hugs, maybe a few tears. After all everyone knows I won’t be here next year. There were only 5 students at school so they got all the cool stuff I had to give away. No one cried and I barely got to say goodbye. It was an interesting last day at school. I also went to Kenneth’s school in the afternoon to watch their end of the year performance. It was pretty cool and there are some very talented children in our village.  

On Saturday, the 16 of June, Kenneth and I left for Turkey. We hitched a ride with the 10^th graders who were going on an excursion to Batumi. This means that we got to see some more of Batumi. We went to the botanical gardens and wandered around there for about an hour. Then we headed to Gonio fortress (I went there back in February). We couldn’t have spent more than 20 minutes there. The kids just weren’t into it which was fine with me but only because I had already been there. After that they drove us to the border, we said our goodbyes and made our way into Turkey.

We walked across the border and then had to catch a small bus to Sarpi and from Sarpi we had to take another small bus to Hopa. In Hopa we caught a large bus to Trabzon. The ride was fine and it took just over three hours to get there. We wandered around for a while and then it was time to meet our host. We decided to try out Couch Surfing and find someone in the cities we visit to host us. We met our host, he took us to the hotel where he works (he is the GM) and we had dinner. Later he took us out around the city, up to the park on the hill; we sat on the beach at night and had an all around good time. The next day Kenneth and I got up early to go visit our must see location just outside of Trabzon. We went to see Sumela Monastery. The day before we bought our seats for the van that would take us there. We ended up being in a van full of young people. It takes about an hour and a half to get there and we stopped for snacks (bought some delicious cherries). The monastery is set into the side of a cliff. I don’t know what could have compelled them to build a complex there but the view was amazing. It was so peaceful. The sad part was that most of the paintings had been defaced in some way. Wandered around the complex for a bit and then headed down the hill to where we were supposed to meet our van to pick us up. It was a good day trip and I’m glad we did it. From there we returned to Trabzon and at 7PM we hopped on the bus to Ankara. It was an overnight bus. 

We met our couch surfing host in the morning to drop off our stuff and then we headed out into the big city. It isn't a great city for tourists but we had a good time wandering around. We saw Ataturk's Mausoleum and visited the top of an old citadel. We walked a lot. We had a good two nights hanging out with our host and his friends. 

 

We left early on Wednesday to go to Cappadocia. The bus trip wasn't too bad. We drove past the Salt Lake of Turkey. Half of the ground next to the lake is white because of the salt. It's really interesting. Cappadocia was amazing. On our first full day we rented a scooter and visited lots of places took some cool pictures. I also tried to climb up some rocks, failed miserably and temporarily removed my fingerprints.  One of my best favorite parts was waking up every morning at sunrise to watch the hot air balloons rise up over the rock formations. Totally made the entire trip worth it. We had a great 3.5 days and finally made our way back to Georgia to finish out our last few weeks there.