Snow day

It hasn't snowed much here this year. It snowed just before Christmas some and Tolga and I were in Istanbul so we missed the worst of it. The city of Ankara has pretty extremely different elevations - I suppose like San Francisco, but much larger. It has an average elevation of 900 meters, but with a population of 4 1/2 million, the city is strangely laid out on the tops of and sides of steep hills, overlooking valleys that are almost like ravines. If you're on a higher point in the city, you can see the surrounding hills of even higher elevations outside the city. It is where the clouds leave their dust of snow on the mountain tops. It is strange to look out at such a heavy popluation, than to see hills and mountains that aren't that far away, but there are no homes on the land. I suppose it has left this city plenty of room to grow. It's on odd clash of modern buildings and old crumbling village houses. You will see these new apartment buildings going up next a old village home, made of cement yet still crumbling and falling to ruins. These village houses are stuck at random points between new construction, or clustered in the ravines far below the big apartments. Days like today, you can smell coal burning from these houses and leaving a black smog in the air.