Action packed day

It's 4:40am and the birdies are madly singing outside so I'm writing in hopes of sleeping. Yesterday was another long day--we were up by 6am, yes, 6am, I know this is shocking--and we left by car for Nemrut. Nemrut is a collection of huge stone heads and bodies built on top of a mountain across the Euphrates river from k's village. We took a long and bumpy dirt road to the car ferry and the car broke down on the ferry so everyone pushed it off on the other side of the river. I was having issues with the long pants which are under my skirt, the drawstring broke and they were falling down, which inexplicably was apparently very embarassing and I was told not to speak about it, some things here are very confusing. We had tea at a table near the ferry while the brothers fixed the car.

Nemrut was very high (I'm not sure how far above sea level but I think I had some oxygen depletion,) and had views all around--it was very beautiful. I didn't realize until we got there that only one of k's brothers had been to nemrut even though it's fairly close to the village. I have to look it up but apparently the heads were built by a somewhat nutty king and took 50,000 slaves to build. One row faces east and another to faces west so we walked around the mountain to see both. 

K particularly liked the eagle which I think he is imitating.

On the way back we waited forever for the ferry, but we saw the wonderful plastic truck, pictured, which goes around collecting plastic and hopefully, selling it to be recycled.

Next we saw some shepard boys carrying a small bird tied upside down by it's legs so mehmet jumped out and in his scary teacher voice told them that he was from the wild bird protection agency--we drove off with the bird and I untied the knot and we freed the bird, non-stop excitement and drama!

We got back and another brother Yakub was here and cooked a huge and delicious fish coated in spices over the fire. We ate it wrapped in thin papery bread with tomatoes, mint, parsley and scallions. I ended the evening by falling in the mud in the dark on the way to the outdoor toilet. Lots of action.