Our Turkish tour guide, Mehmet, has a college degree in English literature. He spent his military service working as a translator. Obviously, his English language skills are outstanding. Having been a tourist guide for twenty years, he has visited these Turkish historical sites hundreds of times. Thus, he has refined his narratives over the years to be immensely content-rich, historically informative, and culturally aware. Therefore, besides my own reading and observations, much of the information I will recount in this blog is derived from what I've learned from Mehmet's daily cultural and historical descriptions.