I just wanted to let you know that I have been working really hard on two simultaneous projects in the laboratory. One focused on using nano-patterened collagen templates to align and differentiate different cell types and the other is that I am writing a review paper with Dr. Hasirci on cell adhesion to nano-grooved templates. I have also started to travel around Turkey during the weekends and have visited Bodrum, Ephesus, Didim, Istanbul, and Izmir. The movies take me about seven or eight hours to make so I have been unfortunately unable to compile the videos and pictures I have taken at all of these places. I will hopefully, this weekend, put together a summary of the last several weeks for your enjoyment. I have two more weeks in the laboratory so I am furiously writing and putting together animated figures for this review. Just a quick update with more to come soon!

Sorry for the late video! I moved from the dormitory EB2 to a dormitory called EB1 (The school closes one of the dorms during the summer session) so I had to reset my IP address for internet access. Everything is all set up now and my room is great! Here is the video from last week!

Last Friday I met a group of students who live on the fifth floor of the dorm where I live (I am on the second floor). I had walked down to the turf fútbol fields to see if I could join a game, but all of the games were already full and because they were 5v5 turf games, they weren’t accepting more players. Instead of doing my own work out, I stayed and watched the games. When one of them finished, some of the players walked over to the benches sat and began to take off their cleats. I noticed that two of the players were speaking English (I later found out that they were Serbian exchange students) so I walked over to the group and asked if the matches being played were part of a tournament set up by the University. One of the Turkish students responded that they were just pick-up matches and then asked me if I lived in EB2 because he recognized me. I talked with the group and they invited me to watch the fútbol matches with them later that night. I posted about this whole event last week, but since then I have continued to hang out with them in the dorm and play basketball and fútbol (even in the dorm lobby) with them, so my time after work to write has significantly dwindled.

On Wednesday of this week, I ate lunch with our chemistry colleagues from the biotechnology unit. Dr. Vasıf Hasırcı’s wife works in the Chemistry department in the building right next to ours, and we frequently collaborate with that research group on some of the tissue engineering projects we have here. We therefore ate lunch with them while Dr Hasırcı was in Ireland. After lunch, one of the women, Ayse, in the Chemistry department invited us back to their lounge for home made Turkish coffee. Before I continue, let me state that I really, really dislike coffee. For some reason, I guess I never developed the taste buds necessary to enjoy the drink. Even when I was in Costa Rica I remember people telling me that the coffee at this particular lodge we visited had the best coffee they had ever had in their entire life. Hearing this statement, I thought that I should try it, seeing as it may be the best coffee I was ever going to have and wondering whether this would open my eyes to the phenomena of coffee that had thus far alluded me, yet when I tasted it, the bitter sand-paper taste laid siege upon my mouth immediately and I could not have more than one sip. I say this to show utterly and completely surprised I was that when I tasted the Turkish coffee, I really liked it. It had some resemblance to the taste of coffee, and I would even say that it was a “stronger” taste. Yet for some reason, the particular mixture of the pure grounds in the cup and a sweetness that accompanied them made for a fabulous drink.

After the drink is finished (leaving the pure grounds in the bottom of the cup of course), it is a tradition to have ones fortune told by the patterns made by the grounds in the cup. The custom is to turn your cup over on to the saucer plate and wait for the cup to cool. When the cup cools, and you turn it back right side up, the grounds have spread all over the inside of the cup, making different patterns and designs. The designs, patterns, and smell of your cup yield to the fortune-teller the foundations to your future your future life. One of the masters students in the chemistry department therefore did me the service of reading my future from my grounds in my coffee cup, revealing to me things such as “you will have to re-evaluate something that is going well for you now in your life and through this evaluation, things will improve even more.” After her reading, I decided that I should take on the challenge and therefore ended up reading the coffee grounds in my fortune-teller’s cup (I will not reveal to you the special art and years of extensive training that was required for me to be able to do this, but rather I will leave you wondering how an American was able to acquire this particular Turkish talent) ☺.

Wednesday night and Friday night I had the opportunity to go to a place called Bahçelievler, which the people here just call Baceli (pronounced kind of in the Italian way (bachelli). The main street in the area has several restaurants, bars, coffee shops, clothing stores, and many other selling items. To get there, you have to take the minibus. Minibuses run all over the city of Ankara and have their destinations posted on the front of the bus. Therefore for 1.8 tr, or $1.20, you can pretty much go anywhere in the city. Anyway, Baceli, is a wonderful night spot which becomes very crowded at night. I hopefully will be able to share some video showing some of the atmosphere on the street during the night. Anyway, I have also been to Cepa (pronounced Jepa) which is the main shopping mall in the city and it is huge. The Cepa shopping mall is modern and has an incredible amount of stores. It rivals the mall of King of Prussia in Philadelphia or other large shopping malls that I have been to. Outside of the mall there is even a little amusement park complete with roller coaster rides and a carousel. I will hopefully be able to share some of this as well in the video that I hope to post tomorrow.

Here is my Week 2 Video from Ankara. Hope you enjoy!

Megavideo didn’t work for me so I’m using Dailymotion now to upload my videos. I was hoping to do some HD video production (although I might still be able to) but there is a 2 GB cap on the movie size for uploads.

Below is an illustration of what I am trying to do by making a collagen surface on which to grow cells. This image is taken from a Paper untitled Microstructured Surfaces Cause Severe but Non-Detrimental Deformation of the Cell Nucleus (click on the name for the pdf of the paper).

After I had finished this Özge asked me if I wanted to help her stain her cells and visualize them. After she stained them we examined them under the compound microscope that is in the visualization room at the biotechnology department. (Images of this will be in my week 2 video.)

On Friday I had the opportunity to eat a specialty on METU’s campus, which is grilled fish on a roll with mint, lettuce, tomato, red pepper, and lemon. I don’t normally seek out fish as a food I normally eat, but I can say that this was absolutely wonderful and I will go back to eating it again. (I have taken video of this place and what the sandwich looked like). At lunch I sat with Albana, and Hayriye and they started to teach me the basic grammer for the Turkish language. Much of this is available in the Turkish-English dictionary I bought but having someone explain it to you makes everything much easier. What is interesting however is that I was able to learn basic Turkish from Albana who is originally from Albania and although has been in this country for 13 years, was not originally from here. Others have offered advice on how to learn the language, but Albana made it very clear and I came away from lunch having a profound confidence that I would be able to communicate with people in Turkish by the end of my time here.

The world cup ceremonies started today! Some of the people in the lab and I were able to watch it on my computer at the end of work. We watched the South Africa – Mexico game and I must say it was an amazing game to kick start the entire world cup games!

After work today, I walked down to the turf soccer fields to see if I would be able to join a pick up fútbol match (having been inspired by the first world cup match). Unfortunately all of the fields were occupied but I stayed and watch the people play. What was interesting to note, was that all of the people playing on the three fields seemed to have a certain understanding of the flow of the game and how positioning on the field was supposed to work. When I played in pick up games in the States, there are several people who understand this concept, but many lack the field awareness that seemed to be an innate property in the style of Turkish play that I was witnessing.

After the game I met some of the people who lived in the building I live in and I ended up watching the France- Uruguay with them and eating dinner with them. I can’t tell you how excited I am about the US-England game tomorrow. It should be an amazing opportunity for the United States and a time for the excitement surrounding the sport of fútbol to blossom back home!

I was still waiting for my collagen solutions to dissolve in acetic acid in the morning so I went to hojam (Dr. Hasırcı) because I believed we had super-saturated the solution and the samples were more like suspensions then solutions. I had originally made a 4% solution by weight of collagen and he said it would still work to make films at 2%. I therefore diluted the sample by adding twice the amount of acetic acid and putting the sample back on the hot plate/stirrer and allowing it to sit overnight. After I had finished this task, Hayriye invited me to watch and help her prepare the tissue cultural medium for the healthy neural cells that she will be trying to differentiate on tissue scaffolds. The tissue cultural room here is the most sterile room in the entire building. There are two doors to the entrance of this room. You are asked to close one before opening the other and once inside all of the surfaces are continually wiped down by ethanol and acetone for sterilization. Once finished using the sterile hoods, we are asked to turn on the UV lamps in the hoods to further clean the hood by destroying microorganism, which may potentially grow in the optimal tissue cultural environment within the room. I helped Hayriye make tissue cultural medium (as can bee seen in my week 2 video) and followed the necessary procedures for cleaning up the room after we were done.

After I finished work I went over to the basketball court. Because it was raining I didn’t play on the out door courts but rather went to the indoor courts. There were many students inside already playing games so I grabbed a ball and began to dribble around waiting for them to finish. At this point, My friends from yesterday and several others from similar masters program showed up and I played with them until around 21:00 (9:00pm because they use military time here). We played for around two hours, and at this point I was entirely exhausted, I bought a blue PowerAde on my walk to the cafeteria called “Sunshine” for dinner and I finished it in three steps. I ordered Tavuk şiş which was chicken with tomato, rice, carrots, and potatoes (I will show some of this in my week 2 video).

Dostlar Mantı Rest.
Karakusunlar Mh., Çankaya, 06530 Ankara
0312 284 1965‎

It is a dish with pasta dough filled with meat and spices. It is topped with yoghurt, tomato, butter, olive oil, and they suggested I put spices on it. I was able to determine two of the three spices I put on the dish. One was a red pepper flake and the other was mint. This was all mixed together and the dish was actually eaten with a spoon.
Before we ate the Mantı, we were served a dish of yaprak sarma, which has grape leaves wrapped around rice and meat and was covered in yoghurt.

At lunch I learned from Pinar that for Turkish Citizens, after you finish medical school, you are required to spend two years working for the government in the health care field, before getting your degree. Albana Ndreu, who is from Albania and has a 3 and a half-year-old son, also explained to me during lunch that Albanians are innately good at languages (she knows English, Turkish, Italian, and Albanian). In general I feel more comfortable with the other graduate students here everyday. I am able to laugh and joke around while I wait for tissue cultures and other experiments.
Anyway, Professor Hasırcı is leaving for Ireland on Wednesday to meet with the other people in Europe who are working in collaboration with him in Tissue Engineering (He is meeting with people from such places as the University of Sheffield and Keele)
After work today I changed and went down to the gymnasium, where I asked the man at the door, “Basketbol, Lutfen?” meaning basketball please?, The people who work behind the desk don’t speak English, so he said what I assumed was “card,” I do not have an ID card here, but instead I have a sheet of paper specifying my existence and my purpose of being here. It is signed by several important people and allows me to enter and exit campus. I handed him the piece of paper, he shook his head ok and pointed for me to take a basketball out of the rows of balls next to him. I did so and went outside to the courts. I shot around by myself for a while and then more and more people began to come. A bunch of kids asked me something in Turkish and I responded… “Engeelezee?,” offering my best pronunciation of the word “English” in the Turkish language. One of them responded to me in English saying, after smiling, that they wanted to play. I soon found out that my new English speaking friend was a month away from finishing his master in, what I think he called logistical studies…but I’m not sure. Anyway we played an initial game, the two of us versus three others. It kind of turned out to be a joke, because for our three opponents it would be a stretch of the imagination to say they even knew what a basketball was (it wasn’t that bad but you get what I’m saying). Anyway the second game we played was pretty competitive. Me, the guy studying or his masters, and a third who had been shooting around with us played three friends that challenged us. I guarded a guy that must have been 6 foot 3, but we still ended up beating them pretty soundly. Afterwards, my new masters friend said that he and a bunch of his friends were going to play again at 7 tomorrow. I will try and join them.
After showering, I ate dinner at what the students here at ODTU call “sunshine” I ate tavuk şiş meaning “skewered chicken” the meal came with carrots, tomatoes, rice, fries, pasta with yoghurt, and salad.