30 August - 10 September 2006 Kirsehir, TURKEY

This international youth exchange took place in Kirsehir, Turkey (it’s not far from Ankara).Its topic was creating small aircrafts- wooden planes covered with paper, which surprisingly for me, flew indeed! There were groups also from Poland and Romania. Every participant contributed to the project someway. We worked together and in the same time we had fun together to prove that no matter the differences in our cultures, languages and habits we still can get along well and work as a team. And we really did…There was an amazing trip to Cappadocia, a region known since ancient times for its nature bizarre wonders and Christian churches, carved into the rocks. We visited 6 towns in the area, one of those was Haci Bectash, the native town of the famous philosopher with the same name. There we saw some traditional Turkish dances in the yard of a big house-museum. Going on sightseeing we had the chance to get to know each other even better. We got acquainted not just to the people, but also to their national customs and cuisine during the national evenings, which were quite interesting and fun! To be honest, they are one of my favourite activities on exchanges! One of the evenings we spent in a very pleasant bar-we drank Turkish tea and coffee and tried nargile! Very nice! We went all around Kirsehir by playing the game Treasure-hunt-we were divided in mixed groups, searching some important or nice places in the town, answering questions about them. Despite the hot weather and the long walk it was interesting for the foreigners to see one of the oldest mosques, monuments of some Turkish rulers, thermal spring and others. After that we went to the Town hall to take part in the Turkish evening, which was pretty fascinating for its delicious meals, folklore dances and music, in the end everybody joined the dancers! The last day, when the aircrafts were all ready to try them out flying, we went to a lake, part of the biggest river in Turkey- The Red river. There we had a traditional Turkish kebap and swam into the lake (at least some of us…), played beach-volleyball under the hot Turkish sun. Finally we let the aircrafts to glade freely in the wind…The feeling to see the plane you’ve made with your own hands flying in the air is just incredible! Of course some planes were better than others and the best one won a prize-а cup with typical Turkish ornaments, and guess where is the winner from…That’s right- Andrey is Bulgarian! Everybody from our group got back to Bulgaria with his own warm memory from the colourfull Turkey and the amazing time we had together with the Polish, Romanian and Turkish friends!