Swan Park

Today we visited a small, but really lovely park in the downtown district of Ankara called Swan Park (Kuğulu Park). So named because there's a pond with swans (and geese and ducks).

They have little houses on islands in the middle of the pond for nesting birds. The man was feeding the ones in this picture, so we got to peek inside. It was a mother goose with a nest of goslings in there! I guess they keep them shut in houses to protect the babies?

Elias checking out a swan. If you zoom in on the upper right of this picture, you can see a pair of black swans that was also there.

There was a trough on that cement block that was just full of moldy bread for the pigeons!

 

It's a really picturesque park with flowers and fountains and playgrounds. The waterfowl aren't the only avian attractions there, either. They have a special area that is the pigeon-feeding area, and they flock there by the hundreds! There is also a man there selling little cups of bird seed in case you aren't prepared with bread of your own.

We took some old bread with us, and the pigeons were pleased to enjoy it! Elias didn't enjoy feeding the pigeons as much as I thought he would. He just didn't get the concept. He just had a slice of bread in his hand and was running around trying to get the pigeons to take it. When I explained to him that you had to put it down and then walk away and watch from far away so you didn't scare the pigeons, he didn't think that sounded like much fun. So he went to play on the playground while I fed the pigeons. Ah well.

Then after we played for a while, we walked down the street to a little street cafe where we got lunch. We're still learning about Turkish food, but we all seemed to enjoy our lunches!

Elias' cheeseburger had peas and carrots on it, and my baked potato (It was actually twice-baked. They scooped out the flesh and mashed it up with butter and cheese, then returned it to the skin and topped it!) came with olives, pickles, corn, mushrooms, and cheese! Umm, ok! By the way, that's not a side salad next to my potato. That's the gigantic lettuce leaf that came on Elias' burger!

Roses!

I can't speak for all of Ankara, but I have been so pleased to see that our neighborhood is completely covered with rosebushes! Although nobody has a yard, it seems that people are pretty serious about landscaping, so every building has a garden that someone keeps, and the public trail that I walk to/from Elias' school is beautifully landscaped by the city. I've been watching with great joy through the spring as buds are coming out on all the bushes, and now they're finally beginning to bloom! Our building has an arch covered in climbing roses that are just beginning to bloom out a gorgeous red.

Little buddy is waiting patiently on the doorstep for Mommy to take the picture!

 

The public trail has rosebushes at every gap where there's a sidewalk out to the road, and those are completely covered in buds, which are blooming out a bright and beautiful pink!

So thankful for the natural beauty I get to see every day even living in an apartment in the middle of a huge city!

Elias' Birthday Party at School

Yesterday, Elias' school had a party for him, and it was so precious!! Justin and I both went, and we're so glad to have been there. It was a lot of fun, and Elias felt very special! The first thing we saw was his name and picture on the door when we arrived wishing him a happy birthday! (The literal translation is "It's good that you were born.")

The first thing they did was give all the kids a crown hat, and then they brought out the cake I had made and sang happy birthday in Turkish - the same phrase that was on the door. It was the same tune as the English version, though, so Elias knew what they were saying!

Truthfully, I was surprised and pleased that he managed to blow out the candle himself - I was leaning in to help, but he did it himself!

Then they turned on some music and had a dance party! It was so adorable seeing the kids boogie!

Then they played Musical Chairs, and they arranged it so Elias would win. Umm, happy birthday!

Then came what I think was the sweetest part. The kids all lined up and one by one came to give Elias a birthday greeting! Justin sat by him so he could translate. They all said some variation of happy birthday, but several of them gave him a birthday kiss too! (I was pleased that he let them!)

They also gave him a card with greetings from his classmates, and a present - a mug from the school.

Then it was lunchtime - the kiddos had to eat their lunch before they got cake. Except Elias, since he still refuses to eat the school food. So he sat with his school lunch for a few minutes and then got cake anyway - only because it was his birthday!

So he had a very special birthday party at school! Happy birthday, my big 4-year-old!!

Somebody's Turning 4!

Elias' 4th birthday is tomorrow (May 21), and we like to make celebrations last at least a week! So we've already begun celebrating! With package delivery not being reliable here, we had family members send money so we could buy Elias presents for them. We've been opening up one every day or two for the past week, and he's having so much fun with the new toys! I'll post a photo album soon with pictures and videos of him with his new toys so that those who gave them can see his joy!

We also had a little mini-party last week with just one other family, some friends we knew in Missouri who moved here just a couple months before we did. We had originally planned to meet in the park for a picnic, but that got rained out so they just came over to our house and we had our picnic anyway!

Elias reading a story with Abby and Drew

Abby trying on Elias' birthday hat he made a school this week. This was appropriate, since Abby's birthday is just a few days before Elias', in fact the day before we had this party.

One of the major reasons I wanted to have this party early is because I wanted to practice making a birthday cake from scratch! He'll be having a party at school tomorrow that I need to take a cake for, but I wanted to make one first to make sure I could have something good to take to school. So our friends were very willing guinea pigs to try out my first attempt, which was pretty good!

The chocolate cake was stellar, but the buttercream frosting was a little weird. For the school cake tomorrow, I'm going to do a whipped cream frosting instead. So we're having fun figuring out how to do a birthday in Turkey. More to come tomorrow!

Big Fun Day, Part 3: Kite Flying

Click here for Part 1 and Part 2 of our Big Fun Day!

Then in the afternoon we went out to give Elias' new kite a try. We took advantage of the beautiful, windy weather, and it worked really well! Elias was SOOO excited to go out and see his kite fly in the sky!

Elias picked a kite with a hot air balloon on it - he said he wanted to fly in it! You can see another kite in the background. Another family had the same idea!

So that's the big fun day we had yesterday! We are so thankful to have that time together and to be finding our way as a family here!

Big Fun Day, Part 2: Cinnamon Critters

Elias isn't a very crafty guy, but one creative thing he loves to do is cooking! A child after my own heart! He gets a preschool magazine called Highlights High Five (which we LOVE - thanks to Nana for sending it to us from the States so he can still read it!), and each issue has a kid-friendly recipe in the back. One of the recipes last Fall was for Cinnamon Critters, and we finally got around to attempting it! Elias was so excited!! You just take bread dough, roll it in cinnamon/sugar into long wormy critters, add chocolate chips for eyes, and bake. Yummo!

The recipe

We can't buy prepackaged dough like in the States, but we have a bread bakery right across the street, and they sell balls of their bread dough.

A view of the bakery from my bedroom window. Not only is it convenient, but their bread is 37 cents a loaf. Yes, indeed.

This dough was stickier than it needed to be, so it didn't roll well. So we had more like long dough lumps instead of worms.

Notice Elias clutching the box of chocolate chips - we know which part he was most excited about!

But hey, they still ended up looking like critters!

Can you guess which ones Elias put the chips on?!?!

Elias definitely approved. They really were tasty!!

A mommy just can't resist an adorable chocolate face. :)

Big Fun Day, Part 1: Bike Riding

Today was another holiday in Turkey! Honestly, to me the holidays here seem to have no rhyme or reason, but maybe I'll get used to them the longer we live here! I already wrote about Children's Day, which was in April, and now Youth Day is in May. Why? I don't really know. We had a really fun family day today, but it wasn't really in celebration of the holiday. It was just Saturday and we were glad for the weekend! So I'll post about our big fun day together in several parts.

The first big fun thing is Justin took Elias out bike riding this morning! As I've said before, our apartment came furnished with some great toys for Elias to play with, and one of them was a bike! This is a real bike with training wheels, not a tricycle. So that's a step up for my big boy! But he's getting the hang of it and he's definitely big enough for it.

These pictures are from last month, but I never got around to posting them. And since I wasn't with Justin & Elias this morning to take pictures, I'll post these ones instead to commemorate our big fun day. Imagine this but with them in short sleeves and riding at a park instead of on the patio! :)

Commuting to OSTİM

(Justin) My commute to Kifas is a large part of most of my week, worth writing about.

Kifas is located in the İvedik Organize Sanayi Bölgeleri of OSTİM, which is considered to be one of the largest industrial parks in the Middle East (the name is an acronym: Middle East Industry and Trade Center). There are 5,000 firms in the area, most of which are factories producing every small to medium-sized piece of equipment that you can think of. Everything from nuts and bolts to tractor parts to building materials to wheelchairs. You don't wear a suit and tie to OSTİM unless you work for the government or are trying to land a contract. This is a place you roll up your sleeves. 


If it's not peak rush hour, it takes a little over an hour for me to get across town to Kifas including a metro (subway) ride and two buses. When you emerge from the metro at OSTİM, you are in a sea of hundreds of rough-looking men. If you approach by car or bus you can see hitchhikers trying to find rides in. You also start to hear languages other than Turkish, namely Arabic and Farsi. This is because many low-skilled immigrants work here, most of whom are probably doing so illegally. The cheap cellphone I'm using here doesn't leave me a good way to get pictures and I don't want to be the guy in the crowd of commuters taking pictures. The OSTİM Facebook page has some great pictures of workers.

OSTİM is quite different from the rest of Ankara. The layout was centrally planned, the buildings all look identical, and it reminds me of the former USSR. There is nothing fancy here. It is about 90% men and always noisy, dusty, grimy, busy, and somewhat dangerous. The jobs people are doing are hazardous, without all the Western safety precautions taken. Last February, a factory across from Kifas that housed canisters of various flammable gases exploded, killing over a dozen people and destroying several shops. This is what I can look out the window and see every day, it still looks like this. 

This is a picture of Kifas after the explosion, the top floor was completely destroyed. No workers were at Kifas at the time, but the clean-up and emotional blow linger to this day. The "Has Emek" means "Pure Labor," which is the area of OSTİM the factory is located in.

Most of the businesses either contract with local restaurants to cater food to their buildings or to serve their workers lunch. The business next door to Kifas has hired a woman to cook their meals in-house. Every business has tea breaks, that's a welcome part of the day as well. On Fridays, there is usually a fairly large procession to the local mosque for Friday prayers. That's also something you don't see as much of in the rest of Ankara.

I need to put some pictures up of the daily work at Kifas, those will come soon. On a busy day, there is welding, metal-bending, grinding, upholstering, assembling, packing, and more. It's quite a bit different than any factory I've worked in and a world away from the sterile classroom environment I've worked in the last few years. I enjoy the commute.

Turkish Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day, and Turkey celebrates Mother's Day on the same day we do. So we have been seeing signs everywhere about appreciating mothers, and we saw a LOT of people buying flowers for their mothers today! Elias' school had the kids make some really cute things to send home for their mothers on Friday.

There was a card that Elias (I'm sure with LOTS of help from his teachers) glued the beans and ribbons on to make flowers. Then he glued together the paper butterfly. And he painted the gold ceramic angel. I know he did this one himself because I remember the day a couple weeks ago he came home covered in gold paint! I didn't know what it was for then! It's still in it's cellophane because the gold paint comes off when you touch it - I need to figure out some way to either shellac it or find a clear case to display it in. The printed card in the back is a Happy Mother's Day card from the school itself. So that was neat to get so many goodies from the school for Mother's Day!

But even more special is the card Justin and Elias made for me this morning. Justin wrote and Elias illustrated. Justin says Elias chose the colors himself and even helped Daddy spell the words on the card! :) Proud and thankful to be my boy's mommy!

 

This afternoon we went to the mall to do some shopping and eat out for dinner. Sunday is the one true weekend day in Turkey, since many people work on Saturday too. So we rarely go out on Sundays because everyplace is PACKED! The mall indeed was packed, but we still enjoyed our time out and I enjoyed my Mother's Day with my family!