Beauty to Conclude With

Finally, the purely natural beauty of Turkey and Cyprus’ physical geography is a part of our trip that cannot be skipped over for its simplicity.  Being on the tour bus for several weeks, we had the opportunity to watch the land change as we drove from central Turkey, through the Taurus Mountains to the Sea, and back up to Istanbul.  The Anatolian land is beautiful.  One scene may hold a thousand different textures—grey rocks clustering and clinging to soft green hills that change shades as they retreat and transform into distant mountains.  The hills carry vagabond squatter villages in pocketed places, and each miniature community is layered with red terra-cotta roofing and guaranteed to contain a minaret for religion’s sake.  While on the Mediterranean we got a small taste of the natural life of the sea.  The very first night, a small group of us were going to sleep on the deck of the boat, and in the thick dark of the night the sound of splashing suddenly drew our heads off our pillows.  Dolphins!  That night we were momentarily in the company of God’s whistling sea creatures.  The strangest vision that I saw proved to be the Arizona-like monuments of Cappadocia.  Standing on the top of a sandstone cliff, I remember looking out at the sandy-brown towers ringed in strange shapes by the eroding wind.  Their pointy tops held a faint resemblance to the minarets that sprang out of the cities and towns across Turkey.  These strange structures dotted the land like the eerie congregation of wind turbines that have commandeered the land of West Texas.  This truly was and alien picture.  While nothing else in Turkey had given me the overwhelming feeling that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, this was the other-worldly picture that had been awaiting its uncovering. 

The transatlantic trip that concluded my freshman year was a major blessing in my life, and though I’ve outlined a few of the learning experiences that really stood out in my mind, these were only a small portion of the five-week long chapter loaded with revelation and cultural education.  I am currently studying anthropology and archaeology, but I have a personal vision of helping people by bringing hope and provision to less-than developed communities.  While this trip has done a lot for me personally, I think that the main goal for myself and everyone else that I shared those five weeks with is to take what we’ve stored in our minds and notebooks and wrestle out a way that we can use it to the advantage of the coming generation to change the world in a way that past generations haven’t yet reached.  This is my goal, and my advice to any other students who may be peering in through this window of my life would be to take complete advantage of the enhancement fund and opportunities to travel places unlike ours.  Being taken out of my own element is one of the greatest things that has yet to happen to me.