Synchronized Blogging!

BebeMoche and I both recalled our "cultural" anecdotes this evening and decided to both blog them out. Mine begins when I was working as an archaeologist as part of my grad work. I had been working at an ancient Greek site in Turkey and after weeks of hard-core work, we had a stretch of five days off. I spent the time with Naomi, our conservator, and Andy, an architect who had been mapping out the stadium, and the three of us had spent the time travelling around Cappadocia in central Turkey. For the most part, the Turks are like everyone else, enjoying a love-hate relationship with tourists. Some are overly officious, others don't bother to conceal their contempt. One evening, after we had enjoyed a wonderful meal, we were walking back to our hotel. I'm sure that the fact that we were Americans was apparent as we walked past a shopkeeper who wanted us to check out the rugs he was selling. We smiled but shook our heads as we passed by, which apparently wasn't what he'd hoped for. He shouted to us as we were walking away, "What's the difference between an American and yogurt?" The answer popped into my head and I shouted back, "Yogurt has culture!" and we all burst out laughing. I don't think that he was pleased. The entire episode was especially timely, since it had been a topic we had already discussed more than once. The Turks are very proud of living in a land full of such grand history. There are sites which date to prehistory, monuments from the pinnacle of the Greeks and the Romans, churches and other buildings from the Byzantine period. The only problem is, the Turks had next to nothing to do with it. Most of those monuments were over a thousand years old when the Turks first set foot in Turkey. We all knew that this Turk's claim to cultural superiority was nothing other than pretense.