I couldn't resist

I'm sure I will get in trouble for posting this picture about 13 years from now when Owen sees it, but I just couldn't resist.

What he is saying as he carefully arranges his letters and numbers... O-W-E-N, that spells Owen!

Just a super cute picture! You gotta love McDonalds happy meal toys!

Our Neighbors

I took this plate of dessert to our neighbors earlier this week. We wrote a little note (a little note that took us 30 minutes to write in a different language) with it just thanking them for welcoming us to the building and that we are excited to get to know them. Please think about them often. It is tradition in this culture to return a plate full, so we are hoping this will begin a relationship with them. We told them we would have them over as soon as we get our couch :)

My personal kapici

Every apartment has a hired doorman called the kapici. He usually lives in the basement apartment and is responsible for taking care of the daily needs of the tenants and keeping shared areas of the building clean and running. Our kapici brings us bread and collects our garbage every night. The kapici is usually pretty handy and can help with basic maintenance and repairs.
Well, I have recently discovered that I have my own personal kapici. His name is Ryan.

Here are a few examples of how Ryan has creatively jerry-rigged a few things in our apartment.


This is a picture of our shower curtain. Apparently they only make a one-size-fits-all shower curtain and you are supposed to just saw the metal rod to the desired length. The way our shower is set up, we needed to have a curtain that curved. Well, after drilling for what seemed like hours into the concrete ceiling with no success, Ryan found this lovely purple flower hook that was already on the wall in our bathroom, pulled it off and super-glued it to the ceiling to hold our shower curtain up. I was doubtful, but it's been up there for 2 weeks with no signs of falling.

In our last post, Ryan told you about the new dishwasher he bought me for our anniversary. What he failed to tell you is that when we got it and tried to slide it into it's space under the counter, it was too tall by about a centimeter. The delivery guy just looked at us and basically said, good luck with that, and walked out. So Ryan spent the next hour shaving off the wood counter with little more than a nail file, just enough to wedge the dishwater into place. Let's just say that I hope we never move because I don't think that dishwasher will ever come out.


I love my handsome kapici!

Terlik

It is customary here to keep a basket full of slippers at your door to offer your guests when they arrive, since everyone removes their shoes upon entering the house. We have quickly taken to wearing house shoes around the house all day. We even found little slippers for Owen which are the colors of the local soccer team. Here is a pic of us in our terlik.


This leads me to a story my friend was telling me yesterday. They were expecting the cable guy to come between 5 and 8pm that evening. Instead they got a call at 10:50am that he would be there in 10 minutes. My friend had just finished mopping and had left her small girly slippers near the front door so that she didn't leave marks on the wet floor. A few minutes later, the cable guy rang the doorbell and entered the house. Without even hesitating he removed his shoes and stepped directly into my friend's slippers. He proceeded to walk all over the house with his toes squeezed into her fluffy slippers and his heels hanging out the back. She said the funniest part was seeing him standing on the roof in her slippers installing the satellite dish. I so wish I could see a picture of that!

Happy Anniversary!

Two Sundays ago, Tara and I were in Ikea (aka - 2nd home) in the middle of the afternoon and I looked at her and said "Oh yeah, Happy Anniversary!" In all the craziness of life we had let the date slip by (it's #6, by the way). Needless to say, once we spent hours at Ikea, we weren't really up for celebrating! But by the beginning of this week we had recovered and I went and did something that you're warned never to do in Husbanding 101...I bought Tara a dishwasher. But, that was a big deal.

Dishwashers are just starting to become common here - last time we were here you rarely saw them, but it seems they are growing in popularity and the price has come down some. It's nothing fancy, but it does the job. Tara is very happy...as am I since I was slated to be the dishwasher!

Ryan

We live on the 4th floor of our apartment building. Thankfully, our building has an elevator. When we first arrived, Owen wanted to push the button to call it, but he couldn't reach, which lead to some frustration. So, we told him that he needed to call the elevator by saying it's name. So he started yelling "Elevator!" When it didn't come (we were still waiting for it), we told him the elevator didn't know English and told him to say "Asansor," the local word for elevator. Well, that caught on, so now he yells it every time we go out the door, but with his own twist. He says "A-san-sword!" It's great.

If only everything could be so simple

Yemek Sepeti is my new best friend. It is a website that lists over 100 restaurants that will deliver food to my apartment door. I just go online, place my order with the restaurant of my choice and within 30 minutes I have food that I didn't have to cook! So on those days that I feel like I couldn't possibly get another Turkish word out of my mouth, I will be calling on my friend Yemek Sepeti.
The days of a $5 large pizza are no more. It cost about $18 for 2 small pizzas and 4 breadsticks. But it sure tasted good!

Not everything is as simple as Yemek Sepeti though. Yesterday we decided to visit an international church that meets on the other side of the water. So at 7:45am we started our journey to make the 9:30 service. It started with a bus ride and then a beautiful 20 minute boat ride. From there we took a train up the hill and then walked the final 10 minutes to the church. The service was great and at the time seemed like it was worth the trip. But by 11am we had a hungry 2 year old with a wet diaper and another 1 1/2 hours to get back home. We grabbed a quick bite on the street and then started our journey home. We walked in our door at 1:15 and all collapsed in bed for a Sunday afternoon nap. All in all it was a good day and a wonderful time of worship, but I think we'll be visiting a church on this side next week. If only Yemek Sepeti could deliver church to my door :)

The Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace in the background

So long America, Merhaba Yeni Evimiz

Yeah! We are finally here and doing great! We've been here for a little over 2 weeks and getting settled. We've done enough shopping to satisfy me for a lifetime. It's amazing what actually goes into furnishing a house from scratch. And when I say scratch, I mean scratch. No light fixtures, just wires hanging from the ceiling. No appliances, not even a stove. And no curtains or curtain rods. So needless to say we have spent a total of about 17 hours at Ikea in the past few weeks. It took us a few weeks to get internet, which is the reason for the lack of communication and blogging, but we got that a few days ago, along with our satellite TV, so we are in business. It's starting to feel like home, but we are really anxious to get our couch and living room chairs, which will still be a few more weeks. We really love our 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 1 squatty-potty apartment. Our neighbors are great and seem to be happy to have us as neighbors. I have a little grocery store just 1 mintue walk from our house and there's a little kids park just a few steps beyond that, so Owen is thrilled with that.
We love our new home and are excited that you'll be able to discover it with us. Here are pics from our trip here and our first few days.


Goodbyes with family
Checking in with our 13 bags, 1 car seat, 2 carry ons and 1 stroller, we were quite the site! Ryan and I weighed and reweighed our bags a zillion times to make sure they were not over the 51 lbs. limit. This was the moment of truth and we didn't have a single bag overweight. We did have one weigh in at 50 lbs. 14 oz. We definitely got our money's worth.

Owen eating his kids meal on the plane. We are new fans of British Airways. They had special kids meals, kids movies and even a Paddington Bear welcome backpack full of activities for the long plane ride. Owen was an angel on the plane. He slept about 4 hours the first leg and 2 hours the second leg.

All of our bags made it safe and sound and again we were quite the spectacle at the airport, but we breezed through customs and our friends were there waiting to pick us up with their van to take us to our new home!
My new kitchen- Here's a picture of me cooking our first meal, grilled cheese sandwiches. I think it will take me awhile to get all of the kitchen things I need, not to mention figure out what to buy at the grocery stores. But I just found a big grocery store today that's about a 10 minute walk, so they seem to have a few more familiar looking things.
I made cookies last night. They turned out ok, but the process was quite the chore. It started with hard butter and no microwave or mixer. So in order to soften the butter in order to cream it, I decided to just put it in the oven for a few minutes in it's original packaging. Well, 10 minutes later when I forgot about the butter, I found it dripping into my new clean oven. But, my butter was soft. Then I had to figure out what 350 F is in Celcius (it's 180 if you want to know). After that I spent forever creaming the butter and sugar. It's hard to do with a wooden spoon. The rest of the mixing and baking went pretty well, but the house now smells like burnt butter :)

So far we have purchased a total of 19 pieces from Ikea. If you aren't familiar with Ikea then I should tell you that everything from the store comes in nice compact boxes and all of the instructions you need to assemble the inexpensive but quality furniture. It's really great until you have to put an 8 foot tall wardrobe together with glass mirrored doors and you are still assembling your purchases a week later. Ryan's thumb (which is now blistered) will be happy if it never meets a screwdriver again.
These are pictures from Ozgurluk Park. It's a huge park about 15 mins. from us on foot. It has tennis courts, a tea garden, walking trails and lots of play equipment for Owen.


We got our satellite just 2 days ago so here's a picture of Owen sitting on a plastic patio chair in our living room watching Dora and Blues Clues. They have all of his favorite cartoons in English, so he is all set!
I bought this super cute fabric at Ikea and I found this lady in my neighborhood to make my living room curtains for me. Her name is Serifey and we have had a lot of fun this week trying to communicate about curtains, pillows and table clothes. At one point I think there were 5 ladies in her small shop watching me as I used charades to describe what I wanted the curtains to look like. She made the curtains for me in 2 days and they are perfect! It's been fun to get to know some of the ladies in my neighborhood and Serifey made me promise to come back to see her soon.

Going, going...

Almost gone...we leave around 5:30 tomorrow (Wednesday afternoon). Both sets of parents are making the trip to the airport with us. Only a 15 hour trip - not too bad, but we're really hoping that Owen does well with sleeping and transitioning to a new time zone.

Ok, talk to you after we're there!

Internet Stinks...

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Our internet situation has been far from ideal. We'll get something up for you soon. Keep coming back.