Spice Pazar

We went to the Spice pazar a few days ago. It is just a covered market. It is a tourist place, but many locals go there to buy things as well. They sell all types of things like scarves, dishes, gardening tools, bracelets, turkish delight, kitchen utensils, tshirts, of course spices, and so much more. The streets just go on and on and are filled with people. Here are a few pictures of the vendors.












You can see the scarves above and the spices to the left and the hand painted dishes on the right.

The vendors always try to get you to buy things. I just ignore them because I dont like talking to them. They like practicing their english on everyone who walks by. They say interesting things like 'yes please' asking you to come into their store. It took us forever to figure out what they were talking about. We finally figured out that people probably walk by and say 'no thank you' so that is just the opposite. You never really know what they are going to say to you.

5 times a day

This is a video of the call to prayer that comes from the speakers of every mosque five times a day. You can usually hear multiple ones going at the same time. It eventually becomes normal and you dont really notice it anymore. This is from the balcony at my office. The other side of the office has a much better view, but you can see a big mall to the right of the mosque, a basketball court, and a whole lot of apartments.

Where do tulips come from?

Contrary to popular belief, tulips do not come from Holland. Here I am with my sister in the tulip fields in Holland. Living there made me love tulips. It turns out that they actually originated from Central Asian countries like Turkey, Iran, and Afganistan. I know, who would have thought. Well they have tulip festivals here, and the parks are all decorated in tulips this time of year. We went to the park yesterday. It was an adventure in it self to get there including two hours on two buses and a ferry. It was a very fun and relaxing day out in the beautiful weather Father blessed us with. We sat and read and of course enjoyed some ice cream. Here are a few pictures of our visit to the park.

Many of the tulips were planted in the shape of flowers and other designs like rainbows or animals.


Here are the Olympic rings.

Squatty Potty

I am sure many of you have seen these before, but for those that haven't I thought I would show a little picture of our beloved toilets here in Asia. Most houses have two bathrooms, one with a western toilet and one with a squatty. We use our squatty room as a storage closet. Also, a lot of newer public places will have 1 stall with the squatty and the others western style. For instance, this picture was taken at the airport, which had a western toilet in the other stalls. Most smaller public areas in Asia will only have the squatty and usually no toilet paper. These toilets have plumbing just like the western toilets. And no, I have no idea why someone would ever prefer to use a squatty. :)

Lets go to the movies

We finally had a free night on Friday and decided to go to the movies. We met a few friends there. One of them is Turkish. Thank goodness she was there. The movie theater was in an outside mall. We went to a restaurant before the movie called Num Num. Aparently that translates to yum yum in English. We were told that this place had real bacon and not the beef bacon that tastes like beef jerkey. We got our barbeque bacon cheese burgers and they were fantastic. The menu even had little pigs next to the item to show it was made from pork. With advice from our friend, we bought our tickets to the movie before dinner because you have to pick your seats on the screen when you buy them. The movie theater was huge and really nice. It seemed just like it would be in the states except we had assigned seats. The movie quality wasnt so good though. We saw Marley and Me. We really loved it. It just seemed so real. There were at least 57 TV commercials before the movie in Turkish. They were so funny. We were dying laughing at them. The commercials here are very cheesy and crazy. Of course we didnt understand much, but still they were still hilarious. Finally the movie started. It was in English with subtitles. We just start enjoying the movie and it cut off like in the middle of a sentence, a little cartoon played, and then the lights turned on. We were thinking okay maybe the film is messed up, but it turns out that every movie has an intermission for a smoke break. Twenty minutes late it started back up. It was a very interesting night.

Marley and Me was such a sad movie. We talked about the dog and how dogs are always so loyal and protective. This reminded me a story of a sweet little dog in Greece. We went to Greece a few weeks ago on vacation and well my purse and passport got stolen. On the way home from the police station I was still really stressed because we were supposed to be going back to my country the next day and I had no passport, and I didnt know if it would be possible to get one in time. My mom and I were walking to our hotel and this very concerned dog followed us walking by my side the whole way. We didnt think much of it, but he the same dog laid on the front porch of the hotel in the rain for the rest of the night. We woke up the next morning and there was the dog waiting for me. I was still very stressed and worried because at this point we were headed to the US embassy to hopefully get a new passport, which we did by the way. The dog followed us to the metro station and went down with us. He kept his eye on us even though they were violently shoo-ing him out of the station. He stayed until we went down the excelator and then went on his way. It is so interesting how dogs sense what you are thinking and know when you are stressed.

Here I am at the US embassy in Athens, so thankful that Father provided a new passport in a little over an hour.

Only in America!

We met a girl on the bus a few weeks ago. She speaks english very well and teaches english here. She invited us to her house for tea and dinner tonight. It was incredible food. The tea was actually good too. :) There were 3 ladies there. We had so much fun. They asked us about the things we missed from America and how things were different. Two of the ladies studied at universities and got their masters in the states, so knew about the culture differences. We brought brownies that we made without a box, and they commented on the fact that we are learning to do things different than in the states, like cooking from scratch. We some how started talking about the things they thought were unusual in America. They started saying "Only in America..." We talked about silly things like drive thru banks, cup holders in cars, rushing water in your bath tub so you can swim against a current (seen on commercials, rats in houses, and buying homemade items at the store. They made some of the things I know to be normal in America seem weird. It was humorous to me, because all of us foreigners here talk about things that happen and say "Only in Turkey." It was so easy to talk to these ladies. I am very thankful at how comfortable and how real I was able to be with them. Hopefully we will be able to have a good friendship with these ladies.

We used to live with a lady from Scotland. It was so good to live with her and a blessing that she took care of us. She was an amazing lady. She moved back home last month. Anyway, she would talk about how they dont know what cooking from scratch is because everything is that way. One day she saw the apple slicer we have. They do sell them here, but not many people use them. She was just amazed by this and we taught her how it worked. She always thought it was crazy that we have something to make anything we want, like an omelet maker, or a grilled cheese maker, or a s'more maker. It was so funny. It is amazing how lazy people are in America and how living in another country makes you realize how ridiculous some things are that you once thought to be normal.