Shaking in my custom made baby seal leather. . . jackets

Last year we arrived just before our stretch of birthdays and I was scrambling to try to make each birthday special with little advance planning. This year we had lots of time to plan for birthdays - and then plans changed. So once again, my kids' birthdays are sneaking up on me and happening right in the middle of moving chaos.

Delaney's birthday was this past weekend- sandwiched between agricultural customs inspections, the boys' boar hunt and lots of lots of pre-packing, out-processing stress. And it's her sweet sixteen. I wish we could have made it more special for her. She's such a great girl and deserves to have a wonderful celebration. But life is life.  We did the best we could. Berry breakfast cake in bed, some presents from each of her brothers,  chicken alfredo for dinner and peanut butter cake with peanut butter frosting for dessert. A long game of farkle in the evening with me, her dad and brothers.

It was SUPER YUMMY!

I felt like I was fighting anxiety/panic all day and not as joyful as I would have liked to be on her special day. But we must have done okay because just before going to bed she came in our room to thank us for making it such a wonderful day for her.  Actually, that is probably more a reflection of her kind, thankful heart than our mediocre efforts.

But I did have one epiphany about these birthdays that turned out rather fantastic. One of the things you can get here in Turkey is leather. And the place to get it is Pop's Leather. They've been around forever and all the pilots know them. You can get flight jackets here but they also do purses, bags, cowhide rugs, holsters,  and leather jackets.  They have plenty of jackets to buy off the rack but if you want something different or one to fit just right, you can have a jacket custom made.  So I took Delaney there about a week before her birthday to pick a jacket.

Brannick came along too. His birthday is next week - the day we move out of the house and into the temporary lodging. Great timing for his big 18th, huh?

After trying on nearly every ladies jacket in the store, Delaney found one she liked. Well, she found one zipper style and a different waist style and a third leather color. And because its Pop's, she could have all of those combined into her very own unique jacket.

Doesn't it look fantastic?

Brannick had been eyeing a cowhide rug and I had planned on that being his birthday present. But then he saw a Harley Davidson jacket that just called to him.  After some debate, he chose the jacket over the rug. I think it was a good choice. Girls aren't all that impressed with a dead animal skin on the floor but we are going to have to drive them away with a stick when he wears this:

Shorter sleeves were all the adjustments he needed for his jacket.

We picked up the jackets the day after Delaney's birthday. And because the kids couldn't bear to let the movers pack them, we kept them out. It's still deathly hot here and will be in Arizona and Nevada but we will mail them to Las Vegas on the off chance that it will cool down before our HHG shipment arrives lest they miss a chance to look this cool.

And although my birthday isn't for another two months, I decided to get myself a jacket as well. After all, I won't be here in October. Here is mine being modeled by Delaney:

It has a zip out hood that I totally love. And frankly, it looks way better on me since my short hair is framed nicely by the hood rather than being pushed up in my face like Delaney's is.

Geoffrey also got a jacket, along with having the knit cuffs on his flight jacket changed to leather ones and buying a fur snap on collar for his flight jacket as well. His birthday is long past so I don't know what his excuse is.

Here's Brannick showing off Geoff's. Again, this jacket is nice on Brannick but my hubby rocks it!! It's just his style and looks so classy.  He had it tailored to his measurements and it fits him like a glove!

The cool part about having your jacket custom made (or altered) at Pops is that they sew a label inside that says:

Custom Made for Ida Ewing by Pops Leather

Pretty awesome, huh?  And when I went to pay for our purchases (feeling slightly guilty that my family is solely responsible for the deaths of a small herd of bovine), they had discounted the total to the equivalent of one whole jacket. Happy birthday to my checkbook! The owner called it a going away gift. Very nice of him.

One last photo - my favorite one.  I love these two kids. I love that they are good friends. I love that they are good people.  I don't claim to have much mothering wisdom but somehow I figured out years ago that while these two dislike being told what to do, they will leap over tall buildings if I ask them to help me. So through the years of deployments and homeschooling and moves and all the other craziness of military life, we have become a pretty great team.  Delaney is my assistant mother, cook, organizer and everything else. I could not manage this family without her. Most of it she can now do better than I can. Brannick is my strong man, my lifter, mover and reacher. He has been the man of the house through many dad absences and fills that role well. He never allows the younger kids to be disrespectful to me.  I know without a doubt that he has my back.  They both do. And there have been times when that fact is what has allowed me to sleep at night. They are a blessing I don't deserve.

Moments of a Move - and a Big Dead Pig

A few snapshots of life inside a military move.

Friday and Saturday we spend all day outside in the muggy heat - pressure washing everything that had been stored on the porch, in the shed or in the outside storage room. Monday we have a customs inspection and everything must be free of dirt, spider webs and snails. We put it all on the driveway and back porch and surround it with a thick line of salt.

While emptying the storage room, Geoffrey remarks, "I've learned something from this move. I need to stop trying to make every house we live in into a homestead." Bwa Ha Ha Ha!!  If you knew how many pre-moves I have spent suggesting, begging and encouraging him to get rid of his stuff you would understand how funny this was. I try to contain my laughter long enough to give him a hug and tell him that I am proud of his epiphany.

 In Geoffrey's heart of hearts, he would like to live on a farm with large animals and a big garden and a huge workshop. He would have every tool and keep everything that might be useful again someday. He would spend hours teaching his children the many practical skills he knows. He would be prepared for any type of apocalypse the world could throw at him. It kills him that he can't be that dad.

Three hours after that admission, he took the oldest two boys boar hunting with a Turkish friend named Mustafa. At 1:30 am in the Tarsus Mountains near Pozanti, his sons shot a boar. He teaches them how to gut the beast and they spend the night with their friend, coming home the next morning with coolers of meat, puffed out chests and big cheesy grins.

 So he gets to be that dad.

Saturday evening after the boys left Delaney is sitting at the computer planning the menu and shopping list for her birthday dinner the next day. We have been too busy to do this before but the commissary is open for another two hours so we can still make it. She is singing along to a Montgomery Gentry song.
     Yeah, this is my town.
      Where I was born
       Where I was raised
      Where I keep all my yesterdays. 
This kills me a little.  This proud, grounding sentiment won't ever apply to her.  When someone asks my children where they are from they hesitate and look at me for the answer. Where are we from? It should be an easy question to answer but it's not. They have no hometown. Their identities are not tied to one place of permanence but to many places of experience.

Sunday morning Evan and Rory wait with me in the kitchen for the breakfast cake to finish baking.  They woke me this morning determined to keep up the birthday-breakfast-in-bed tradition for their older sister. Evan talks about the move.
"The bad thing about moving is having to unpack everything again and again.
 But it would get really boring to stay in the same house your whole life in the same town."
(Pause)
"I'm really glad we got to live in Turkey."

Kizkalesi Castle in the sea - a Turkish fairy tale

 
   Once upon a time a king lived in a beautiful castle by the sea. (See above). Eventually, he was blessed with a lovely little daughter. But a prophecy told of a tragic future for the princess. Someday she would be bitten by a serpent and die.  Even the king himself could not change this fate said the soothsayer.

     But the loving father was determined to try and so he built another castle out in the ocean (see above) and sent his daughter to live in it. The two castles were close enough that the father could visit his daughter and bring provisions to satisfy her every need and whim.  All went well for many years. But one day, the princess received a basket of delicious looking grapes from the mainland.  As she reached in to pluck a grape she was bitten by the snake hiding inside. And because this isn't a Disneyfied version she died, leaving behind a heartbroken father and two magnificent castles.

    If you didn't like the snake bitten maiden story there is another one involving pirates.  And a third, and possibly more accurate one about the castle being built after the First Crusade.  Whatever version you choose, it's a great place to visit. These castles are about 2 hours from where we live. We've been there twice before but never had the chance to get out to the maiden's castle.
  But recently when a new friend came to visit, a group of us went back again for a day at the beach. A Turkish beach is an interesting place to people watch. You see everything from bikinis to full Islamic swimsuits. The beach itself was shallow and calm, a perfect place for the little kids to splash and the older kids to play frisbee. And while we were there, we rented a couple of paddle boats and paddled out to the maiden's castle.

 Due to illness and other commitments, I only had my oldest and youngest with me. But we had brought along some darling young ladies. So my 17 yr old son found himself sharing a paddle boat with three cuties! He did not complain.

 In fact, here he is doing a happy dance on top of the castle wall.

                                                               The boy has moves!

   And here he is with his harem. They were all a lot of fun and had a great time.  I managed to suggest that we put all the little kids in one car and all the big kids in  my the other car.  So if you know my son at all, you can imagine that he had us laughing all the way back to the base.
     We had a wonderful day in a wonderful place with good company. I love the ocean and I'm up for a day at the beach any day.  But I have to admit that when its the Mediterranean ocean and there is an ancient sea castle to explore, that does up the coolness factor by several notches. So I was doing the happy dance too.

Bond Girl for a Day

Happy Military Spouse Appreciation Month! A big thank you for all the fellow military wives who have helped me keep my sanity over the last 12 years. And another big thank you to all those non-military wives (and their husbands) who have been my friends and my support in so many ways.  If heaven is as I expect, then someday you will all understand what an impact you have had on my life.

So today was a pretty good day. There was a trip organized for military spouses to go visit the James Bond Bridge and hike in a nearby Karaisali canyon. It's called the James Bond Bridge because scenes from the latest Bond movie, Skyfall, were filmed on the bridge. To the locals it is known as the Varda Köprüsü bridge, the German bridge, or the Devil Bridge. Whatever you want to call it, it's a pretty awesome bridge.

 Built in 1909 by the Germans (hence the name), it was part of the Istanbul-Baghdad railway line which connected Berlin to Basra enabling the direct shipment of oil to Germany.  So this bridge is over 100 years old and its still in use! 

 Here's me, pretending I'm a Bond girl. Not really. To be honest, I'm not that much of a Bond fan. It always bothered me that one night in bed with him would make the sexy Soviet spies change sides. Yeah, right. Go peddle your sexist drivel somewhere else. But the bridge was impressive.

I've always wanted to do one of these trick shots.

Here is me standing in the middle of the bridge. My leg bones are only hurting a little. (Does this happen to anyone else when they are on a height?)

Last one of the bridge, I promise. But it really was cool. Oh, and if you have seen the movie and are wondering where the tunnel into the mountain at the end of the bridge is, that was movie magic. No tunnel. No mountain.

After the bridge we hiked the Karaisali Canyon. The canyon has sheer rock walls with a river at the bottom and looks very much like something you'd see in southern Utah or even near the Grand Canyon.

 After hiking an easy 45 minutes we could see this waterfall. It was on the opposite side of the river from the trail but there was a nice picnic area where we could stop and eat our lunches in the shade. There were newly built covered wooden platforms that were lovely.

 The water was cold but felt good! I freaked out some of my fellow spouses by hopping stepping carefully out to this rock. (The water around me is quite deep.) But I didn't fall in and we made it safely back to the bus.

All in all it was a great day to get off base and see something new and a wonderful chance to get to know some of the spouses better.  It's such a small base and you see the same faces all over the place but don't always have a chance to get to know people.

Being gone all day on this trip meant typing up History exams for child 3 and 4 last night, rushing through an Algebra lesson for 1 and 2 this morning, throwing a roast into the crockpot for chimichangas 15 minutes before I left, hoping someone would remember to go pick up number 5 from the bus this afternoon, and leaving quite a few things undone that needed to get done. But I'm so glad I decided to go anyway. Sometimes its nice to get away from all the responsibilities and just have some fun. And it's nice to be appreciated!

Being a military spouse has lead me down roads I never would have dreamed of, both literally and figuratively. It has tested me, tried me, and strengthened me and occasionally come close to breaking my heart.  I am a different kind of person than I would have been without these experiences. I hope a better one but maybe just a more flexible one. And one who is grown accustomed to saying goodbye, both to my husband and friends, far more often that I'd like to.  One thing I do know is that I have a closer relationship to my children than I would have had in a civilian life.  I'd say that is pretty great perk.

Mother of Five Evades Death and Celebrates with Sushi

Today I screwed my courage to the sticking place and ventured out to downtown Adana. My goal was to practice driving to the places I would need/want to visit while my parents are here. I took along my good friend Karen who has lived here for nearly two years and will be leaving this summer.

The first place we drove to was the airport, which I will have to go to in the middle of the night so I wanted to be very comfortable with the route. Luckily the construction detour that made it tricky is now mostly finished so getting there is fairly easy.

Next we drove to the Roman bridge. Along with the big mosque, this is one of the places I have seen from the road but haven't actually visited yet.  I do want to be able to take my parents to both places though. We didn't go to the mosque today because it is Friday, the Muslim sabbath so it was packed. But I know where to park now and think I can do that one on my own as well.

The bridge dates from 384 AD and until 2007 was one of the oldest bridges in the world open to motorized traffic. Since then its only used as a pedestrian bridge and a venue for events. Karen showed me where to park at the Hilton to be able to walk across the bridge.  Instead of parking there we drove down one more block so we could get some pictures of the bridge and the mosque.

As we walked we came across this:

 And this:

 That's a sheep carcass hanging from the tree. Just to the right is a sheep market. I'm sure the sheep was purchased there, then killed and skinned right there. The skin is on the ground to the left.

Once past all the lifestock, we were in position to take some great photos.

 Pretty great, huh? The Turkish name for this bridge is Taskopru which translates as stone bridge.

Next we drove to Old Adana which was terrifying. Friday must be a big shopping day because the whole district was packed with people, cars, and buses. All the cars and buses were trying to kill me and all the pedestrians were trying to jump in front of my van. Seriously. Everybody was honking and merging lanes and Karen was trying to tell me places I could park and which streets had which shops on them but all I could think was "We're going to die, we're going to die!" After driving through twice and still feeling like nothing she said was sinking in and there was no way I was ever going to be able to navigate this on my own, I cried uncle and we left.  Maybe in another year I will be able to do that one on my own but for now I'm still going to need some kind friend to take me.

Our next goal was more successful. I wanted to be able to drive to the women's market by myself. I sort of remembered the way and after Karen's coaching the first time through I was able to drive it without her help a second time. On the way home she showed me where the sushi restaurant up by the university is. Since we hadn't eaten lunch we stopped in. It felt so good to be out of the car and out of the traffic. By this time I had a splitting headache but a soda and some sushi were just the ticket!

YUM!!!

I like Turkish food but it was fabulous to have something that wasn't turkish food or base BX food court fare. And I happen to love sushi.
 
Right outside the restaurant was this beautiful tree which along with the lunch and great conversation, help calm my spirit and my blood pressure.

Little by little I feel like I'm getting better at getting around here. Its still challenging but there's hope. (Except for Old Adana on a Friday.)

Missing you

          I have found myself homesick this week. At odd times and unexpected ways.  This morning I had a berry smoothie after getting home from the gym. It was thick and icy and good and tasted almost but not quite as good as a Jamba Juice from my favorite shopping center.  And there was no orange cranberry roll to go with it. :(

 Earlier this week I was driving the Excursion (which used to be my vehicle and is now Geoffrey's) at a whopping 18 mph and a country music song from Brannick's burned CD started playing.  I had one of those sensory memories that comes from a smell or a sound - that of flying up highway 281 towards Canyon Lake every Thursday driving my daughter to piano lessons listening to a country music station. Passing that ridiculous and enormous metal bull parked on the side of the road in its own trailer and an advertisement strapped to its back. Taking the left turn at the corner of that wildlife ranch where we would often spot zebras or the critters we dubbed 'gazantelopes' for lack of any idea of the actual name.

We were only in Texas for two years.  But by the time we left, it felt like home. I guess it has seemed like that with each place we've lived.  Maybe it will happen here as well and three or so years from now I will be missing the sights and sounds of tastes of Turkey.

There are some things I love already. Like the salad. Is that a goofy thing to love? Its called salata here, shepherd salad, and has lettuce, peeled and chopped tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, green onions, and parsley on it.  I have Aytin make it every week. She doesn't use a bowl but puts it instead in a 9x13 glass baking pan with the lettuce on the bottom and all the other vegetables on top. Then she drizzles it with olive oil and something called nar eksili sos. That's pomegranate syrup. Oh. My. Goodness. This stuff has ruined American salad dressings for me forever. Nar is light and tangy and slightly sweet and brings out the flavor of the vegetables so much better than nasty old Ranch or Italian does. Thursday nights I eat as much as I can (give me a break, its salad!) and then whatever is left becomes Friday lunch. Yum.

The other thing I love is how there are good people around. I have always felt that Texans are good people, helpful people. I have thought this since the first time we were stationed there way back in 2001 and I had to drive back from Arizona with three little kids and a spasming back. But Turkish people are kind and helpful too.

There is a toll highway here in this part of Turkey. Before January we could buy $20 toll cards here on base to use whenever we traveled. But there is now a new system which requires the purchase of a sticker to go on your car. Purchasing this sticker involved figuring out where they were sold, when these places might or might not have them in stock and when the computer system involved in setting up the new account might or might not be operational. Then there was a form, all in Turkish that had to be filled out correctly and the proper documention shown. All during business hours, of course, which precluded my husband handling it.

We would need the sticker for my parents' upcoming visit but I was rather at a loss as to how I was going to accomplish its purchase.  But as of this morning I can cross that off my to do list! The owner of one of the shops in the alley graciously took me to an office where he had comfirmed the stickers were available, helped me fill in the form and handled the transaction for me. What a blessing! (He will be getting some banana bread this weekend.) 

Life for a military family involves a lot of hellos and goodbyes. Honestly, I would hate to live in the same place my whole life.  I do like the adventure. And I like collecting good memories and favorite things in each place we live.  Even if that does make me homesick sometimes.

A date to the mall - keeping it real

Today was a family day - which means a day off work for all active duty personnel. It was not, however, a day off of school. Which kind of defeats the purpose of calling it a family day, don'tcha think? Anyway, these last couple of months have been uber stressful for Geoffrey so this day off was a blessing for him.  He spent the morning golfing with one of his work friends. The golf course here on base is quite nice, and very cheap. So he's been trying to do a bit more golfing. He even talked me into going last Saturday. It was my second time golfing in 13 years but I did okay and enjoyed it.

After lunch Geoff and I headed off base. We stopped at the furniture store in the alley to check on the bookcase we are having repaired and looked at some bedroom furniture we need to have made. No decision yet but we are close. It would be great to have it done before my parents get here next month so we'd better hurry up.

Then we drove across town to the M1 mall.  I had been there before but Geoffrey hadn't. It's a large very modern mall with some pretty pricey stores in it.  The Turks you see there tend to look a bit more affluent and European in dress than the ones you see in Old Adana although there is a mix. I enjoyed myself but was at times a bit uncomfortable. And I realized today why living here seems easier for Geoffrey than it is for me (aside from his stressful job).

First, he is not a rule follower. If a rule makes sense he follows it. But if it doesn't, he won't. (This doesn't apply in his professional life, of course.) And he doesn't expect others around him to automatically follow rules either. So the traffic here doesn't surprise or alarm him. Another odd unique thing about Geoffrey's driving is that if there aren't enough things going on to warrant his attention, he doesn't pay attention. At all.  On deserted or familiar streets he will run red lights, miss turns and blow through stop signs simply because he wasn't paying attention and missed them. But in complete traffic chaos in a strange place he constantly knows where every other car around us is and can find places based on horrible directions and his own innate map. And since he has complete confidence in those abilities he never feels alarmed or nervous.

I, on the other hand, like to know exactly where I am going and how to get back at all times. I get lost easily and feel very anxious if I don't know where I am. I am a devout rule follower and I'm always surprised when other people aren't.

Second, Geoffrey is not afraid to look stupid. I know that sounds cruel but it's true. One of the things you have to get used to here is that there is no such thing as browsing. As soon as you walk into a store, there are people trying to 'help' you. In the alley where the shop keepers speak English this can be annoying. But at the malls very few people speak English.  So it's a different ballgame there. When I walk into a store and ascertain that the clerk doesn't speak English, that is the end of the conversation.  I respond to their greeting in my limited Turkish, of course, but if they don't speak English I'm not going to ask them if they have the shirt in a different color or if they know where I can buy a particular item they don't sell.  Geoffrey will. He will carry on a long monologue way past the point at which it became obvious that no one understands a single word he is saying.  He will use primitive sign language and speak in short, loud words until he looks like every caricature of an American tourist you have ever seen.

And somehow it works. Today at the mall we went into Praktikar, the equivalent of Home Depot, and Geoffrey wanted some polishing compound to use with his buffer to clean off a metal door. The two clerks he asked had no idea what he was talking about. Ten minutes later he has 5 clerks around him who all still have no idea what he is saying.  Twenty minutes later he is in the back office on the computer with five different people trying to find some place in Old Adana where one of them thought he could purchase it.  And a half an hour later, he is finally leaving the store with the polishing compound he needed.  The manager had found it in a different department.

I hate looking stupid. I hate not knowing what I'm supposed to do or how things work. I'm not a control freak. I am generally a flexible person. But I like to know what is going on. Today before we left the base we stopped at the Turkish cantina to turn in our empty 5 gallon water bottles and get new ones.  I've done this several times since we got a water cooler. But today the clerk asked me if the empty ones I had turned in were the Hayat brand or the Evril brand. I had no idea. I hadn't even noticed there was two brands of water. Apparently one is more expensive that the other and if I bought the more expensive kind without having returned empties of that same brand I would have to pay a deposit. I was completely flummoxed and feeling so stupid to not know which type of water I had purchased the 3 or 4 other times I had done this. Finally the clerk I had given the empties to outside came in and told us which brand it was.  I was so grateful I could have hugged him.  So not being able to read signs or ask questions or understand what people are saying to me puts me completely out of my comfort zone.

Finally, although Geoffrey hates having people he knows pay attention to him (think birthday parties, congratulations, awards, etc.) he doesn't mind it when complete strangers stare at him.  I am the opposite. Bring on the singing telegrams and the standing ovations. But let me be invisible in a crowd. I know people don't mean to be rude or menacing. I know that I look, dress and speak very differently than what they are used to seeing. But I hate being stared at.  It makes me want to go hide in a closet. And when I am in Adana it seems like everyone is staring at me. It's disconcerting to say the least.

Anyway, we did stop in the Gap store at the mall. My favorite jeans in the world are Gap jeans and I wanted to see if they had them. We found these great Gap T-shirts that had various cities stitched underneath the GAP logo. Cities like London, San Francisco, New York and. . .

Okay so its not Adana but its still in Turkey. And someday we will get to Instanbul.

They did have my jeans. Since the sizes are different here I tried on two sizes. I was about to buy the larger one but let the clerk (who did speak some English) talk me into the smaller of the two. She reminded me that they stretch quite a bit when you wear them. I am still debating whether or not I should've purchased the other pair. I'm a cheapskate at heart but I will pay full price for these jeans (they are that awesome). Oh, if you're curious I'm referring to their 1969 curvy cut jeans. If you have a curvy figure, you should try them. Your tush will thank you. The only problem I have with these jeans (and it has happened 3 times now) is that they wear through in the inner thighs. Yes, I have tree trunk legs and that is the problem. The solution is to iron denim patches on the inside of the thighs as soon as you buy them so when they wear, they won't tear.

So in the states they cost $75 full price and they hardly ever go on sale. Today I paid 149.99 TL for them. With the current exchange rate that is $83. Ouch!!! But we did get a coupon for 30 TL off our next purchase, which we immediately used on a sweater for Geoffrey. All the same I really hope I picked the right size.

I hope that with time I will feel more comfortable here. Honestly I had hoped that after 7 months I would feel more relaxed and confident venturing off base than I do. It has been more of a challenge than I thought it would be. So for those of you who have remarked that my life seems so exciting and adventurous here I thought a little candor was in order.  There are many times when I realize that I left my comfort zone 7000 miles away in Texas and it's the thing I miss the most.

Women's Market Visit

    I've already blogged about our great local market here when we can buy fruits and vegetables that taste so much better than the produce in the states. But there is another kind of market you can visit called the Women's Market.  At a produce market the vendors will all be men. But at the Women's Market the products are all created and sold by women. It's a much different experience.
   My daughter Delaney has been dying to go to the Women's Market but since the market is held on Wednesday, her school classes prevented her from going. And then miraculously, there was a Wednesday with no school. So off we went.
   I drove with my trusty friend Karen navigating. I even brought my GPS so I could mark the spot and possibly get back there on my own.  I have to admit though, I'm still rather terrified of driving here in Turkey and it hasn't improved much in the 7 months we've been here.  For many years I have considered myself a brave person. The kind of brave that will drive from Florida to Arizona by herself with four children because hubby was in Korea and I wanted to see my family for the summer. The kind of brave that can evacuate due to a hurricane (sans deployed hubby) and not stress too much about it.
     I thought that strength and independence would serve me well living in a foreign country. But driving in Turkey takes a different kind of brave. Roller Coaster brave. Dirt bike riding brave. Snow skiing downhill at high speed brave. Basically, adrenaline junkie brave. And if you know me at all, you know I am not that kind of brave. I am a mouse. A timid one.
   Nevertheless, we made it and I even found a place to park. The Women's Market is divided into two sections: handmade items and homemade food.

Aren't we cute?  I ended up buying the one Delaney is wearing. And I LOVE it.

 This time of year you can find a lot of knit and crochet hats and scarves. All colors, patterns and yarn types.  The skills of these ladies are unbelievable. I ended up buying a hat and two scarves. Delaney bought a hat.  One of the scarves I bought is the softest yarn I have ever felt. Its orange and fuzzy and I walked around petting it the whole time. Seriously.  I'm not a cat person but it was like wearing a kitten around your neck (without the bitty claws).  We paid from 5-10 Lira for each item. That's about 4-7 dollars. Incredibly cheap. When I was in Germany last week and saw similar scarves for 20 Euro, I appreciated all the more how inexpensive things are here in Turkey.

Here is the hat Delaney bought. The cute flowers on the side are a bit hard to see but they are darling.

 You can also buy jewelry there. These funny mustaches necklaces cracked us up. You could also buy a mustache ring or earrings.  Delaney and I both purchased necklaces and Delaney got some matching earrings as well. Not of mustaches. These had crocheted chains with large metal flower pendants. Very cool.
   Behind Delaney is our friend Melody. She just moved here recently so it was fun to take her along. She has a great attitude and is loving the adventure of Turkey. 

There are also lots of scarves of the type used to cover hair for sale here, often with intricate crochet around the edges. Tablecloths, doilies and darling crocheted baby clothes are also offered. And because the women vendors are not as pushy persistent as male vendors tend to be, shopping there is a much more relaxed and enjoyable experience.

Once we finished the handmade section, it was time to check out the food. Nearly all the food is made right there so you can watch it being created. The most fascinating was these little nut filled fried pastries.

This older Turkish woman starts with a small blob of dough then rolls it out with a thin dowel to an impossibly thinness.

 Then she puts small piles of chopped nuts in a line down the middle of the dough, fold the dough over a couple of times and then pinches in between each mound.

 She then cuts them apart into these little boat shapes and they are fried and then dipped into the sugar syrup that nearly every Turkish dessert includes.

They are good but you can only eat one of them before you are overwhelmed by the sweetness. We bought some of these and some tiny donut holes that looked delicious but were way too syrupy. My favorite is the scone fry bread that is filled with a potato and cheese mixture. Yum!

So now you know what a trip to the Women's Market in Adana is like. Come visit me and I'll work up the courage to drive you there myself!

Mud, Fish and Camels

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Hope you felt loved today.

This holiday is double duty at my house because my husband was a Valentine's baby. He is one who doesn't like a lot of fuss. Three years ago I threw a surprise party for his 40th and I'm not sure he has recovered from the shock yet. Today I took him to lunch and recited the names of all the people he works with that I have seen in the last few days to whom I could've mentioned that his birthday was today but didn't.  He said that my restraint was the best present I could've given him. That's a good thing since Amazon has once again proved that prime doesn't apply to Turkey and the golf bag he picked out for his gift has not yet arrived.  And since the gate is still closed our romantic dinner out will be at the bowling alley. meh.

I spent most of today taking Rory to apply for his new tourist passport and then taking all the rest of the kids to apply for new residency permits which had expired when our military passports had. Its amazing how much paperwork is involved in living overseas! But as least I can check those important things off my hanging over my head to do list.

Today I wanted to post some pics of some of the crazy things they do here on base to keep us all from going well,  crazy.  I have to say that the base does a great job in providing family friendly activities.

This is the before picture.

This was the Dirty Dash. My 2nd and 3rd decided to participate and Delaney made their great T-shirts with cut out letters and a spray bottle of bleach.

The after picture!! They came in last but they finished!

The race turned out to be a bit more challenging than they realized but they both had a great time with the mud pits. They were a complete mess when they finished.

Here is a shot of some friends from our church group. The team on the left is the "Mormon Mafia" and the pretty girls in the middle are the "Dirty Dancers."

The Fall Festival was a great event as well. It included some great Turkish food, a camel ride -

or a ride on this contraption.  I almost lost my lunch just watching but Carson loved it.

Most recently, they filled the base pool with fresh water and brought in a bunch of trout. It's hard to see them in this photo but they are there, swimming in a tight circle in the deep end and mostly ignoring the corn and shrimp skewered on the hooks.

Here you can see the fish better. Brannick caught one but it flipped off the hook before he could haul it up over the side of the pool.

Delaney is the only one of my five who managed to get a fish all the way out of the pool. Here she is with her gutted and cleaned fish. She was pretty excited. Not excited enough to eat it though when we cooked it that night. She's not a fish fan.

So there you have it. Life on base can be a bit surreal - like that show with Jim Carrey where he's on a TV set and doesn't know it? Everything here is controlled and contained and very very small. Sometimes its nonsensical. Just this week they changed the speed limit from 40 kmh to 25kmh. That's a drop from 25mph to about 18. It kills me to drive that slow. And I can't really see how dropping from sloth pace to snail pace is going to save any lives. But there are a lot of good things. With people constantly leaving and arriving, the base expends great effort to create a sense of community here. As part of that community, I appreciate that.

In the details

May you live in interesting times. Ever heard that Chinese blessing/curse? Well, here in Turkey we are living in interesting times. Too much to talk about but the upshot is we are all safe and we are all restricted to base for the foreseeable future. Of course, that limits my ability to have Turkish travel adventures and share them with loved ones through this blog. But that's okay.  We are safe and have a great community here on base and everything we need.

When things get challenging its so easy to complain, isn't it? As a family I think we've been handling everything great but this morning I had an experience that I feel was a little tender mercy. It was very windy today so I offered to drive Delaney to school so her hair wouldn't get messed up. (She is singing the national anthem in an assembly today and wanted to look nice.) I needed to go to the commissary to get a bag of gumdrops to build molecule models anyway. Evan wanted to come along so he hopped in the back.  We dropped Delaney off, navigating the inconvenient construction road closures, and headed to the commissary. Just before we turned into the parking lot I saw an older Turkish woman sitting on a corner waiting for the shuttle bus. I had met her once before at my neighbor's house so I waved to her.  She came over to the car to say hello.  I asked if she needed a ride. She said she needed to go clean a house in Phantom housing, back near the school where we had just come from. But we weren't in a hurry and I hated for her to wait in the wind so I offered to drive her.

On the way I asked her how she had learned her very good English. From working on base she said. She also liked to watch the English news because they spoke proper English with no accent or slang. Then she began to tell me about her life. How she had worked since the age of 10. Before that age she cared for younger siblings while her mother worked. They were very very poor and she had never had the chance to go to school. She used to cry and ask God to allow her to attend school but she never was able to and felt embarrassed that she couldn't read and write.  She didn't tell it as a lament. None of the martyr 3 miles in the snow barefoot uphill both ways pathos. She was cheerful and happy as she spoke.

As an adult she would buy small candies and chocolate so the neighborhood children would come to her house to do their homework. Then she would learn along with them.  She eventually learned to read and write and was able to get her driver's license. She also taught herself Arabic so she could read the Koran. She kept saying how she wasn't very smart but was grateful to God to have the chance to learn to read and write.  As if a person who taught themselves Turkish, Arabic and English with no formal schooling or tutoring could ever be considered 'not smart'!

As she got out of the car she turned to Evan and told him to work hard in school. This is the child who complains if he has to write more than a sentence a day!! He had been listening attentively to her story and I had been silently thanking God that he was with me to hear it.

Remember I had only met this woman once. She had, in fact, mistaken me for someone else who drives a white mini-van which was the only reason she came over to the car.  The house cleaning appointment was for an inspection and she had a dead-line in the early afternoon. She said that she had been praying and wondering how she was going to get to the house in time to finish the cleaning. And then I drove up because God sent me to her.

God is there in the details of our lives. My son needed to hear her story. I needed to hear it. And God wanted to bless a faithful woman who has worked so hard to improve herself.  Remember that Geoge Strait song, "I saw God today"? Well, me too.

Mountain Retreat

Just a day after our castle hunting trip, we had another opportunity to do a short day jaunt. This time with a Turkish man who works here on the base with Geoffrey. His name is Orhan and he had offered to take us up to his summer palace in the mountains.

Delaney and Carson had a youth laser-tag outing that day and Brannick was still in Austria (still not jealous) so we just took the youngest two boys with us.

It was wonderful to spend the day with Orhan, who was educated as a translator and speaks perfect English. He taught us to call him Orhan Bey. Bey, or hanim for a woman, is a term attached to the first name. It indicates great respect and affection.

His summer palace was up in the mountains just above a village. It was in a gated neighborhood of about 30 homes. To our American eyes it looked more like a condo than a cabin. He was obviously very proud of it, hence the palace nomiker, and showed us every thought-out detail he had planned into its building.  He has saved most of his career, first to buy the land and then to have a house built on it. Being able to have his grandaughter and his friends visit his palace is a dream for him.

Like most residents of Adana, he and his family live in an apartment. So they don't have yards.  Having a back yard to garden in was a real treat for Orhan and he had planted 30 fruit trees in the last couple of years. There are all small now but he is going to have quite an orchard eventually.

 Here is the front of Orhan's palace. It has three bedrooms and a European bathroom upstairs. Downstairs is a living/dining room, a kitchen and a Turkish bathroom.

 This is the view from his large back patio. That and all the fruit trees. It's very beautiful.

While they were out inspecting his trees, Geoffrey noticed that one of them was slightly out of alignment with the others in the same row. So the two of them dug up the sapling and moved it.  Four inches.  Those of you who know my husband well aren't surprised by this. The boys and I stayed inside where it was warm and ate Chocolate Chex Mix.

After the fruit tree was moved we decided to drive up farther in to the mountains. We had brought a tire tube with us in hopes that the boys could sled but we didn't see any significant snow. We did see a lot of goats.

  Just after I took this picture, a man came running toward our van waving his arms at us.  We stopped and Orhan asked how we could help. It turned out that this man, a teacher, and his children had gone hiking to try and find some snow. As we were now really far above the village it was obvious that they had hiked a long time and a long way.  The younger children, who had to be 6 or 7 at the most, were exhausted and they wondered if we could give them a ride.

We had taken the mom bomb mini-van on this trip and already had five people in the seven passenger vehicle. But Evan sat on Geoffrey's lap and Rory sat on mine and we crammed six more people in the van for a very cozy drive down the mountain.  Turks don't seem to worry much about seatbelts or car capacity so we felt very Turkish and just went with it- glad to do a good deed.

After a nice dinner during which the waiter tried to convince Rory to stay and go live with him, we drove back to Adana and dropped Orhan off at his apartment.  On our way back to the autobahn we passed an ice cream shop.  Geoffrey decided that we should stop and get some Turkish treats. We each got a single scoop of ice cream and then a variety of other treats to sample.

This is like shredded wheat and pistachios soaked in honey. Yummy!

Cookies and truffles.

As usual, Geoffrey was joking with the salesclerks, who didn't understand a word he was saying but thought he was hilarious.  He does tend to resort to some interesting sign language when trying to surmount a language barrier. As we got up to leave they came over with their phones and wanted a picture of themselves with our family.  I'd love to know what caption went under that facebook post. It will possibly include the words, "Crazy Americans".

We got back fairly late, tired but happy.  I put the kids to bed and then set my alarm for 3:30 am before going to bed myself to grab a few hours of sleep before going to pick up Brannick from his trip!