On the way into Konya we stopped at a bulgur production plant. Since we eat this stuff almost every day we were curious to get some first hand insight into how it is made. (Bulgur is parboiled and polished wheat. Available coarse to fine). The pictures don't show much of the actual process but if you are interested in learning more about this subject, Google would be more than happy to assist you.
We actually did not get to see much of Konya in these days. We were staying with another Warmshowers contact 20km outside of town and we were too lazy to ride to town and back (we just wanted to rest, riding in hot weather is worse than climbing a mountain pass every day), too cheap to pay for public transit, and James had picked up a minor bug somewhere and just wasn't feeling 100%. So I am sure we were the most boring guests this guy has ever hosted because we just sat in our room for most of the time we were there. Our host was actually away until the last day of our stay and the fact that his not overly sociable Dad, who lived with his son as a "guest", occupied the small living room (which served as his bedroom) most of the time made for a very awkward situation. Needless to say we did not feel comfortable and just wanted to leave. We though of just packing our stuff and heading off to Cappadocia when we received a message from our contacts there that their plans had changed and that they will be away for the next ten days thus wont be able to host us unless we delay our arrival. You could almost hear our already low mood barometer plummet at that moment. Shoot. What to do? We REALLY wanted to visit Cappadocia for a few days and exlore the interesting landscape but without a safe place to leave our stuff it would be pointless. We cannot take our loaded bikes hiking and a hotel room in this touristy place is way beyond our budget. Our only option was to delay our arrival in Cappadocia until our contacts return in 10 days. However, this would mean coming up with a lengthy alternate route to Cappadocia since we were already less than three days away. We were frustrated and our discomfort and sense of being unwelcome at our current location only added to the stress. On top of that our host's dad informed us that more Couchsurfers will be arriving the day before we had originally planned to leave so we had to get out of the house. In a way we were relieved to get to go earlier and not appear rude but where to go? None of the other Warmshowers contacts in the area had replied to our messages.
So we just asked God to untangle this situation and show us what to do and where to go. Although we we still felt tense we were curious about how this would play out. As we have experienced many times, the Lord sometimes puts us in messy situations like this just to then solve them in a most unexpected, creative way that leaves us baffled and in awe of His superiority over any situation.
On July 8th we had to get out to make room for the next guests. Our host had returned late the night before so we got to meet him in the morning. He was actually quite nice, appologized for his dad's behaviour and said it is okay for us to hang out here for the day since the other guests would not arrive till the evening. Great, this would give us some more time with internet access so hopefully we will get a reply from some of the other requests we sent. And yes, a young cyclist and music student who lived just a short walk away from where we were staying replied that we are welcome to come stay with him tonight and the following night if we want. Yay, thank you Lord for arranging tonight's accomodation! By now we had also mapped out a fairly interesting ten day detour to Cappadocia. The situation was improving rapidly :-) ....but that is just the warm up of what happened next. We received another message from our Cappadocian contacts and this time it sounded very different. They were still going on their trip as planned but needed someone to water their plants during their absence so they asked us to come a quickly a possible. Wow, what a turn of events! House sitting in Cappadocia! Having a nice apartment to ourselves, living like normal people for a few days with a kitchen, bathroom, shower, fridge etc. That is something to look forward to.
THANK YOU GOD FOR THIS MIRACLE! WHAT A TREAT!
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