I love pazar day!

The Akbuk pazar takes place on Friday mornings.  We do our main shopping at the pazar each week.  The bulk of our food comes from there because it is farm fresh and much cheaper than in the grocery stores.  We take our pazar arabası, a cart we pull behind us, and walk or ride when Abla has the car, about a mile away to where all of the fresh food stands are set up.

They have improved the pazar since three years ago when we shopped last.  Now it is paved with more coverings and it is much larger than before.  You can buy almost anything there: farm fresh vegetables and fruits, eggs, cheese and olives, packaged goods, clothing, toys, housewares, bedding, shoes, tablecloths, the list goes on and on.

At the pazar, Nev does all of the talking and I just follow him from stand to stand.  I do understand some Turkish and can ask how much something is.  The trouble is I can't understand the answer.  Everyone speaks so quickly.  Nev was talking to one vendor and an old man smiled at him and said, "Your Turkish is very good." 

On our first trip to the pazar we bought 1 kilo (2.2 lbs) of Turkish peppers, 1/2 kilo of cheese, 1/2 kilo of black olives, 1/2 kilo of thick yogurt, 4 kilos of tomatoes, 1 kilo of cherries, 1 kilo of apples, 1/2 kilo of carrots, 1 kilo of peaches, 1 kilo of apricots, 2 kilos of cucumbers, 1 bunch of parsley and 1 bunch of dill for $14.

Kubi's watch broke, so we went to the pazar to get a new one.  He is really happy with his new watch.

Amanda, the Muhtar

Our sitesi or housing development is totally enclosed by a pretty white picket fence and is very safe, so Amanda has the run of the place.  She likes to go and visit the neighbors and everyone seems to know her.  Yesterday she came and showed me a necklace that someone had given her.  I learned that one of the families had just arrived from Germany within the hour and Amanda had already befriended them.  They have 3 older sons and a daughter her age.   Nev likened her to the muhtar of our sitesi.   The muhtar is the head civil servant of the town.  When we bought our house three years ago, Raif Abi took Nev to meet the muhtar within the first week of our arrival.

Exercising in Akbük

I can't go to Curves in Akbük, but there are some exercise machines at the park on the waterfront near the Pizza Pansiyon.  Amanda calls it the Pizza Park because of it's location.  There are swings and slides, etc., but there are also some "toys" for the adults.  They don't have resistance, but they are a little fun to use.  I don't know how much real good they do, though.

Nev and Amanda and I were at the Pizza Park at the same time that an older couple were there with their two grandsons.  The older man looked at Nev pushing Amanda on the swings and asked, "Is that your granddaughter?"

The Loudspeaker Guy

Our house is next door to the mosque so the morning call to prayer at 4:45 AM takes a little getting used to.  Amanda is trying to figure it out.  She thought that a man got a new loudspeaker and was driving around town trying it out.  Later she got tired of waking up so early and said, "I don't like that loudspeaker guy."  At dinner a few days later, she heard the call to prayer and got all excited and said, "Hey, I know that song."

Now the kids have adjusted to the first call in the morning and don't even wake up.  I still wake up, but it really doesn't bother me.  I just go back to sleep.  I don't mind the ezan or call to prayer which takes place 5 times a day.  It helps me keep track of time.

How Lale got her name

Amanda has a doll that she named Kuku.  I don't know how she came up with that name, but it was the first doll that she named herself and it was the baby that she brought with her to Turkey.

On our first night here, we introduced Kuku to Amanda's two aunts Necla and Nuray.  Necla's eyes opened wide and she said, "Oh, that name means danger.  Dangerous name for a girl."

Wow.  I didnt' know the Turkish word for danger was kuku.  I mentioned it to Nev and he said he didn't either.  Then he said something to Necla in Turkish and she explained what she meant.  The word kuku is a slang term for a part of a woman's body that is below her waist.

Nev and I agreed that we must find another name for Amanda's baby while we are in Turkey, so we chose the name Lale (pronounced "lah-lay") which means tulip in Turkish.

29 Hours

It took us 29 hours from door to door.  We left by airport shuttle to PDX.  We gave ourselves close to 3 hours, but this time the airport wasn't too busy, so we didn't have to wait in a single line until it was time to board the plane.  My mom came over before we left and helped with last minute details, like washing dishes, etc.  She's also getting our mail and checking on the house for us.  I don't know what I would do without her.

Our first flight was to Chicago.  We took an American airline with no free frills any more, like food, so we brought our own.  We didn't pay $14 extra/person for extra leg room and it was fine.  We actually had more leg room than I remembered.  We had a 5-hour layover, which was great because we had time to eat and Amanda had time to play in a small play area near our gate.   Since Amanda is such a live-wire, I tied her to myself whenever we weren't on the plane.  It kind of reminded me of walking a dog.  If she tried to get too far away, I just pulled on the string and she came bouncing back.

I love Turkish Airlines.  Our longest flight was from Chicago to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines from 10:00PM Chicago time to 5PM Istanbul time, though we were actually on the plane for only 11 hours or so.  Turkish Airlines still feeds you and they also give you little gift bags with socks, eye masks, lip balm, toothbrush and toothpaste and earplugs.  I only used the lip balm during the flight, but the earplugs have come in handy since we've arrived when trying to sleep with the windows open at night.  The other nice thing about Turkish Airlines is that every person has a personal monitor on the seatback in front of them with access to a dozen or so new release movies, around 50 older movies and TV show episodes, tons of music "CDs" in both English and Turkish as well as documentaries and info about your destination.  There was something for everyone and enough to keep us all occupied for the long flight. 

Surprisingly I was able to sleep for most of the flight, but this was actually a bad thing, I found out.  When we landed I discovered that my feet had swollen to almost twice their regular size because since I was sleeping, I wasn't walking around or drinking anything. 

Originally we were supposed to have a 5-hour layover in Istanbul before our next flight to Bodrum.  We now had only one hour before we needed to check in for our next flight.  It took 20 minutes just to disembark the plane.  Then we had to get our visas.  We got in the passport line and after 20 minutes of moving slowly up through the line, we discovered that we were in the wrong line.  We needed to be in the visa line.  It's good having a Turkish speaker in the group.  Nev was able to explain that we were in a hurry to make our next flight and the official had the kids and I wait at the side while Nev ran over to the long visa line.  Once he had our 3-month visas, we got to go to the front of the line to have our passports stamped.

Next was baggage claim.  We quickly found our bags.  I had stuck monkey stickers on all of our bags so we could find them quickly.  On to Customs with about 20 minutes until we were supposed to check in.  This part was amazing.  I didn't even know we were there when a couple of our bags fell off our cart.  An official helped Nev put them back on the cart and that was it.  We were through Customs. Now we needed to check our bags.  Problem.  We went to the wrong line again.  The clerk tried very hard to find our flight but we had changed it and didn't have a paper receipt, so she couldn't find it.  We needed to go to another line to get it settled.  Now we were past the check-in time, so I thought we were going to miss our flight.  We finally got the tickets straightened out and got our boarding passes, raced through security--they didn't even make me take anything out of my backpack because we were about to miss our flight--and boarded the plane with about ten minutes before takeoff.  Whew!

This flight was only about an hour and seemed like less.  We were in Bodrum!  While we were waiting for our luggage, Nev went to the Duty Free shop for Raki, and an airport guy called out, "Okyay!"  He wanted us to follow him because our luggage was in a different place because we got on the plane so late.  We got Nev and our luggage and now we had to figure out how to get to Akbük.  The plan was to find a shuttle for the 45-minute ride.  Raif to the rescue!  Nev's brother-in-law Raif had hired Ali, the plumber who had a van, to drive us and Raif to Akbük.

29 Hours.  Home at last!

We have Internet!

We've been here for 9 days now and we just got the Internet working last night.  What a relief.  We still don't have our Vonage set up, so I can't make calls home, but it feels so good to be back in communication with everyone again.

It's absolutely wonderful here.  It just started getting hot yesterday.  When we first arrived it was downright cool, in the low 80s.  Not what I was expecting at all.  It even rained one day.  Today it's close to 100, but there is a nice breeze from the sea, so it doesn't feel that hot.  We haven't had to use the air conditioning yet, but I suspect we may use it tonight.

Please feel free to comment on any of these posts.  I have no idea if anyone is even reading them.  I will post pictures later.  It's just rather busy at the moment.