My Post-Sabbatical Year(s) in Asia (or wherever): 4/21 and 4/22

4/21 Cooking lesson

This morning we went to a Turkish food cooking lesson.

preparing the dessert

white bean salad

stuffed peppers

While waiting for the food to cook, we went to the local Saturday market.

I was given this sample of dried apricot, fig and walnut.

Then we returned to the restaurant for our meal

Our meal:

Bottom - Piyaz: white bean salad with haricot beans, garlic, olive oil, tahini, lemon, vinegar and salt

Top left - Istim Kebap: meatball wrapped in eggplant, and cooked with onions, tomatoes, lemon juice, salt and pepper

Top right - biber dolmasi: green peppers stuffed with rice, basil, parsley, and currants, and seasoned with cinnamon, allspice, pepper, salt, and sugar

For dessert, kalbura basti: a kind of donut in sugar water.

It was all delicious, and fun too!

In the afternoon students went to the beach. After swimming, playing, climbing and relaxing, we had a class meeting on the beach. There had been quite a bit of social drama these first 4 days of the trip, so we decided to do a little meditation and discussion. Two of my favorite lessons are the Moab bible story and my Rabbi's interpretation of it, and a lesson from the Dalai Lama.

Beach meditation:

There is a story in the bible: when the Jews escaped Egypt and wandered in the desert for 40 years, they came upon the land of Moab. The King of Moab feared them, and ordered is priest to go to the Jews’ camp and curse them. The priest went to their camp,but instead of cursing them, he blessed them. My rabbi explains the important lesson here: at every moment,you have the choice – to curse or to bless.

I heard a story about the Dalai Lama, the God-King of Tibet, who fled the Chinese to India in 1959, and has been a refugee ever since. Depending on your sources, one to four million Tibetans have died due to the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The Dalai Lama, believed by the Tibetans to be the reincarnation of Chenrezi, the God of compassion, was asked about the Chinese government. And he said that this had been one of his most important lessons, for it is easy to feel compassion for those similar to you or for those that you love, but to feel compassion for the Chinese government has been a challenge for him.

We cannot control what happens to us. What we do have is the choice of how to respond. We can take responsible for our own behavior. We create our own reality. It is not that bad things don't happen. Each person's reality is not what happens to them. Our reality is how we interact with what happens to us. Reality changes as our perspective changes. We have a choice over how we interact with the world. This is our reality. This is our responsibility. This is in our control.

Trip Leader Eli's birthday

Sea bass dinner at Eli's birthday dinner

4/22:

Students Marla and Dani with Marla's pen pal and her mom.

Marla really connected with her pen pal. After numerous phone calls between Eli and the pen pal's mom, arrangements were made for Marla and her friend Dani to have a sleep over at the pen pal's home. they had an incredible time, and made it back in time for our 9AM tour departure.

We spent the day at a tiny village about an hour from Antalya. In some ways it was like turning back the clock a century. On the way we stopped at Evdirhani, an ancient Selcuk ruin (about a thousand years old).

After Evdirhani, we drove to the village of Camali. first we stopped at the mosque. The story is that a man wanted to build a mosque, had a dream of finding gold at a certain spot, found Roman gold coins at the spot of the dream, and used the money to build a mosque on the site.

Students at the mosque.

Beautiful calligraphy in the mosque.

Students in the mosque.

The ceiling of the mosque

Outside the mosque

The leader of the village announced our presence to the village form the mosque's loud speakers, then served us all tea.

The mosque roof.

We then explored the village, ate lunch at someone's home, and then headed back to Antalya.

Cooking our lunch

The lunch line

Enjoying our delicious meal.

When walking through the village, we came across the village matriarch. She is 95 years old. Her family seated her outside her house. Tansule, our tour organizer, showed us what to do, if we wanted. first she went up to the woman, kissed her hand, then put the hand of the old lady to her forehead, then kissed her on each cheek. One by one, many of us did the same. When Lilia went up to the woman, she said to Lilia, "You stay here." She liked her.