Another not so weekly update. I digress, so first Christmas spent in another country w00t. I go to meet some new people that are pretty swell. So big shout out to Edward and Linda for inviting me out Christmas day. I would like to back up to Christmas eve when I actually meet the two. I get a call from Jesus, he says come on down we are doing power hour make a playlist. I'm confuse because I have no clue what power hour is. Well... power hour is drinking shooters of beer every minute. The music will change every minute. Thank goodness we only had enough beer to make it to the half an hour mark because well I am just not as young as I once was. It was harder then I thought any ways. Then on to Christmas. Edward, Jesus, Linda, and I spend Christmas in Darende. Beautiful little town much cleaner then and much more homey than where I am currently residing. No, you may not ask where I am residing. So there is a lot to see in Darende, we decided to do a little hike and have some grub. The weather was a not the greatest but it held out because it looked like rain all afternoon. I took lots of photos from the hike. The hike was through a canyon. I also found out you can raft through there so guess what I will be checking out over the summer. There are also several other attractions that I will want to venture out and check. One of the side passages we explored smelled like sulfur which confirmed our suspicions that there mike be some volcanic activity. There is a picture of me standing on water to be added later. I checked out the temperature of that water because I saw some steam rising off of it and sure enough it was fairly warm. Come to find out later that there is some some swimming locations set up and the water temperature is a nice and calming 22C. I'll have to go check that out later. Once we finished the hike we went and ate Hasbache Restaurant. They had the most amazing food there for very inexpensive the four of us ate there with two sodas for 32tl which is about 18/19USD. I will post the picture up when I get off tomorrow afternoon. I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas.

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Get your own

Here are some of the pictures of "work". Since I can't really show you what I am doing here is some random fun at work. I'll start with the one day we have to get "escorted" to and from work. I found it amusing more than anything else. In the morning we had to caravan to work. here are some of those pictures.

Next is the pictures of us working. Here is why I get paid the "big" bucks.

And here is the final ride home. Rated pg-13 for language hahah

These are some of the sites pictures that I have been promising. These are the beautiful sites I get to see in the morning after a long day of work. I worked my first week of 4 on and 3 off this week. I wanted to explore a bit this weekend but I am feeling a little bit ill because of a co-workers in ability to keep his germs to himself. So I find my self relaxing and reading at the hotel this weekend. At least that is my current plan. If I am feeling less ill I will go out and take pictures in the town. I am also trying to figure out what I want to do for the new years this year. I am going to try and be out in the town for whatever they have planned. I really wanted to be in Bucharest or Bucharest or Ankara but it looks like having only flights in and out of this town per day is a pain in the butt for scheduling. I am sure I will have it figured out a the begining of next year but for now I plan on sitting tight.

Sorry for the sloppy page layout, I'm still trying to figure this thing out.

This is one of my favorite pictures because of the colors from the sunrise reflecting off the clouds and then the brilliance of the moon shining up top.









The next six pictures is of the sun rising through the clouds

 

SNOW











Up close and personal!

The beginning of a beautiful day ended just as it started.

Okay, so I didn't quite make my regularly scheduled weekly blog  my bad. I had  a very tough week last week. I worked an astounding 77 hours last week. To say the least work was/is a bit hectic. I am now working form 0000-1230 four on and three off. I am excited to start this shift at the same time not so much. Today will be my first day starting this shift and I can't sleep. Changing schedules so abruptly is ruining my sleep cycle. One interesting thing that happened last week is that the Turkish government was concerned for our safety (due to protesters... that weren't there) and we were supposed to caravan to work with military support but we didn't. We ended up not seeing them and drove to work in our seven vehicle caravan. It isn't as exciting is you would think. On the way down we did have some escorts, unfortunately they drive the speed limit which does not exceed 70 km/h. That is really crappy because well we normally travel at the speed of 120 km/h. That just meant it took forever to get down the hill. One bit of exciting news is that we can now get packages and not just letters. That makes me happy, I can now amazon it up hahah. Something like that anyways but probably not to much. Later tonight I will post a video and some more pictures of the site. I hope to get some pictures out in town this weekend. I am thinking about going to Bucharest for for the new years.  We shall see. Today/tomorrow I will get to see my first sunrise on the hill. I'll put up some interesting pictures of the hard earned government money too.

Okay, my buddy Thomas hooked it up with a link for rss if anyone is interested : http://workinginturkey.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss click on that and you should be able to follow the feed. This week has been hectic so far I'll put an update the day after tomorrow. It is supposed to snow tomorrow so I will try to get some fun snow pics

So I've figured out why there is so much smog in this part of Turkey. It's all coal lots and lots of coal burning. I am sure that can't be healthy for you but w/e. I got out and got my residence of Turkey for a year. I also took a picture of the hand of apricots. It is the major export of this part of turkey so there is a hand holding apricots in the "center" of the city.

And to my right I have a picture of apricot trees. There is an absurd amount of these tree's everywhere. It is like traveling around and seeing Starbucks everywhere except it is with apricot trees.

First Week

The first week of work has come and gone and I have gotten my first little bit of time off to reflect. This first week I ended up only working about 48 hours with about twenty hours of travel. Tiring to say the least. I'll try to post some pictures when I can. The hotel amenities are very nice and only a mere hour away from work. So with twelve hours shifts and two hours of round trip commutes I am sure this will get old real quick. Fortunately when more people show up we will be able to work four days and have three days of versus working five days and have two days off.

I'll start with the weather on what I will now refer to as the hill. The hill is a cold and currently snow covered. The first day was great, the weather was sunny and it was about 9-10C so pretty warm comparatively speaking. The following days were not so kind. The temperatures did not exceed 3C and went as low as 5C. Of course non of this excludes wind chill. The hill itself is a melting pot of Americans, Turkish, and military from both sides. The hill is a mini bunker to say the least and is kind of cool. The location is not set up completely which to me is interesting. I am fortunate in the fact that I get to see the site come up and do new exciting things that I would not get to see because the location is new. I'm learning all kinds of interesting and finding people who's company I enjoy and can relate to.

Now for the local environment. The town which is some how smoggier then Los Angeles. It is out of control. For those of you who have never been to Europe or any other third world country I can't begin to explain the local driving. Some of it is brilliant some of it is not. I'll start with the most important thing that people should remember if you ever travel out of US/Canada PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY. So the way people cross the street is they run to the center median (the center dbl/single line) and stand there as cars/truck/buses zip by them before finally crossing the rest of the way. Taking photographs doesn't seem to really be a standard around here. Normally in the US you see people take pictures of everything with there smart phones. So taking photo's of the town is something I will most likely do from afar or brave the stares. The big mall in town has a metal detector and you can't take pictures inside of it much like Bangkok, Thailand.  I can assume that is to prevent terrorist from finding key locations for plating bombs.

I find what little cuisine I've had to be tasty thus far. I've really only eaten out of the hotel twice and both times I enjoyed the flavors. The hotel has a more American style cuisine and also some of the local dishes as well. I will of course en-devour to try as much local cuisine as possible. I have found out one thing though the beer sucks. Which I suppose is fine since I don't really drink that much but after this long week I just wanted something smooth and cool I've been told there is only two bars in town and that they are smokey as heck. I will most likely not be visiting these establishments since smoke makes we want to throw up. Bu we shall see.

Finally the internet here stinks. There land lines are extremely slow so I am assuming that their wireless networks are pretty solid. I see cell phone stores everywhere. In the mall alone I counted five stores on the first floor alone and several on each of the four stories. 

more to come next week. 

P.S. If there is anything you are curious about I will try to make and adventure of it trying to find out.