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Feeling Welcome: Turkish woman impressed by friendliness of the people here - they smile, she says
Journal Photo by David Rolfe
At the Timothy Vogler Gunshop in Old Salem, gunsmith Bill Bailey (in apron) poses for a picture with Turkish visitors Ercan Alguner and his son, Gunay Alguner, along with Aysenur Onat, who is holding a reproduction pistol. Photographing them is Jim North of the Friendship Force.
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Published: October 10, 2008
As a member of a Friendship Force group visiting from Turkey, Ahu Aydinligil ate a Krispy Kreme doughnut and took a tour of Old Salem yesterday.
What made the biggest impression, though, were the expressions on people's faces.
"People smile," she said.
The Friendship Force is a nonprofit organization that organizes visits throughout the world. Visitors stay in the homes of people in the host city.
"Our overall purpose is international peace," said Ralph Cauthen, the president of the Central North Carolina chapter.
On Wednesday night, a group of 10 people from Turkey -- having visited Iowa and seen a lot of corn first -- arrived in the Triad for a weeklong visit. Time spent with individual hosts in Winston-Salem, Oak Ridge, Greensboro and High Point is intended to give them a sense of day-to-day life. That is being spiced with such group activities as the tour of Old Salem, led by Pam Kahl, a member of the Central North Carolina chapter who worked for Old Salem for 15 years.
Aydinligil, 26, a lawyer from Balikesir, Turkey, is staying in Winston-Salem with Judy Greene, who moved back home to North Carolina last year after retiring from the University of Delaware. Thinking that a trip here wouldn't be complete without a trip to Krispy Kreme, Greene took Aydinligil there before meeting up with the group at Old Salem.
"The manager even came out and met her," Greene said.
Asked why she wanted to come to the United States, Aydinligil typed a Turkish word -- the Turkish alphabet has 29 letters, by the way -- into the handy, hand-held translator she was carrying and held it up to show the English word that the translator came up with: "Curiosity."
The Turkish guests took a relaxed approach to the tour, stopping a lot to take pictures. The Timothy Vogler Gunshop was a particularly popular stop, with several of them making sure to get a picture holding a gun while standing next to gunsmith Bill Bailey.
"It's like herding cats, with a few mice around, too," Kahl said and smiled as she stood at a corner waiting for everyone to catch up.
Most of the visitors live in the Cankaya district of Turkey's capital, Ankara.
Aysenur Onat is an architect who works with the ministry of culture and tourism helping to restore and preserve historic structures.
"This place is quite interesting to me because it's my subject," she said.
Although Old Salem's buildings, which date to the latter part of the 1700s, are old by American standards, they're youngsters by Onat's standards. The Trojan War was fought in what is now Turkey about 1200 B.C., and the Hittites were around for hundreds of years before that.
"Big history," was how Onat put it.
Other activities that Greene planned for her guest included a trip to Krankies Coffee, a potluck dinner with neighbors, driving over to see the historic Shell station on Sprague Street, a visit to the Dixie Classic Fair and taking in the Piedmont Opera Theatre's Light in the Piazza.
They might even take in a high-school football game.
■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.
■ More information about the Friendship Force of Central North Carolina is available at www.ffcnc.org.
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