Our Turkish world visits us in Tennessee!

Last week, we had the privilege of hosting some of Justin's former teaching colleagues from Büyük Kolej at Justin's parents' home in Tennessee. A group of high schoolers competed in Destination Imagination's Global Finals in Knoxville. It was fun to host a group in a real American neighborhood so they could see houses and grassy yards (instead of apartments) in the suburbs.

The team competed in the Fine Arts Challenge and did a great job, finishing 17th out of 49 other international teams. Their skit was a play on Mario Bros., very well done!

We grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, and lots of trimmings and dessert. (Along with hot tea afterwards, of course.) It was wonderful to speak and hear Turkish again and be able to repay some of the hospitality we had experienced from them.

Antalya Part 3: Museum and Falez

(Justin) After the previous day's adventure, we went to Antalya city as an entire family. This was about a 30 minute ride on the bus which came by our resort every 20 minutes. We met Gülnur, my friend and long-time language helper, who wanted to show us her city. First stop was the Antalya Museum, which houses a very large collection of artifacts from around the area-- from prehistoric fossils and cave dwelling artifacts to Greco-Roman statues and early Ottoman period pieces. Here are a few random pics from the museum, so much to see:

The Tapp family in front of the museum

The museum is located in Konyaaltı, and from the nearby bluffs you get a good view of the mountains and rocky beach below.

Next, Gülnur drove us to Lara, her side of town, for lunch at a great kebap place. This was my parents' first good Turkish food experience, they approved!

After lunch, we got some spectacular views of the waterfalls above the "falez" (from the French: falaise, meaning "cliff"). The falls are named Düden and Antalya has built some beautiful parks there. Antalya is to Turkey what Florida is to the U.S. After being in frigid/snowy Ankara all winter, we were happy to walk about like it was a warm spring day! Plenty of people were in the park area barbecuing and picnicking.

At the top of the falls you can see a walkway/gazebo above the river.

A tour boat down below.

Last stop was sandy Lara Plajı ("Plaj" from the Russian word for "beach"). Antalya is remarkable for its sandy beaches in the east and its rocky/pebbly beaches in the west (and down the coast to our resort).

It's not hard to see why this place is a tourism magnet. Beaches and resorts, ancient ruins and artifacts, forests and mountains--something for everyone. German and Russian tourists and immigrants were everywhere. The traffic was a bit difficult to navigate, and I can't imagine what it's like in the summer when the population swells.

We were definitely thankful that we had Gülnur to drive us around town! We made note of other places in town we wanted to see when we came back another day.

Celebrating the Winter Holiday in Turkey

(Joni) As I mentioned in my previous post, the vast majority of Turks don't celebrate Christmas. However, many of them do celebrate the New Year, and they do it very similarly to the way Americans celebrate Christmas - tree with lights and decorations, giving presents, even Santa (Noel Baba, which means Father Christmas in Turkish) comes on New Year's Eve here! This is why I said Winter Holiday in my post title... Even though in our house, we were very much celebrating Christmas, a lot of the lights/decorations/festivities we are seeing around us are because of New Year!

Karum Mall in the town center has some beautiful star/snowflake decorations.

Since we believe in celebrating Christmas as the birth of Christ and not just a winter holiday, we tried to maintain our family traditions that would help us keep that in mind. So we did our Advent Tree (where we read a short Bible story and put up an ornament every day of December) again this year, and we enjoyed that a lot!

Elias next to our tree in his Phineas & Ferb Christmas jammies that Grandma & Grandpa brought when they visited in the Fall. It's Christmas Eve, so there's only one spot left at the top of the tree for the Christmas Day ornament!

We also threw our own little birthday party for Jesus on Christmas Day, which I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of. But we had a yummy dinner and birthday cake!

Since the postal system between the US and Turkey is expensive and unreliable, rather than mailing gifts to us, our family just gave us money and we did our own shopping for gifts... Elias got so many trains - he's a happy camper! We also had one gift that Grandma & Grandpa had brought when they were here, and it had been sitting in my closet since September! So that was fun for Elias to finally open it!

It was the Toy Story movie and some Toy Story figures. He loved them!

Since Elias had so many days off school, I tried to fill them with fun Christmas-y things like watching Christmas movies (His favorite is the old claymation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!) and making Christmas cookies!

My favorite Christmas cookies - peanut butter blossoms! Elias liked the melted Kisses more than the cookie part - he definitely comes by his love of chocolate honestly. :)

We were also able to Skype with our families on Christmas, which was a blessing. Thanks to modern technology, we were able to watch all of them open the Turkish gifts we had sent, which was so much fun! :) So we had a nice first Christmas in Turkey, and we get to keep celebrating since the holiday the Turks are celebrating is yet to come! We're looking forward to seeing how they celebrate the New Year!

Long-Distance Family Photo

(Joni) My family traditionally takes a large group photo every Christmas, but this year we're in Turkey and my family is in two different US states, so that makes taking a photo together rather difficult. However, my sister ran across this cute idea on Pinterest, and she tweaked the idea to work for us. So we made letters to spell out the word FAMILY, and we took different photos to fit, then patched them together into what turned out to be an ADORABLE group photo! (Click to enlarge.)

F-Us
A-Our son, Elias
M-My parents
I-My nephew
L-My other nephew
Y-My sister and her family

A really funny thing about this photo is that my sister and her family live in Georgia, so it was 70 degrees (F) the day they took their photos... They were sweating in their long sleeves! On the other hand, it was absolutely freezing in Ankara when we took ours - we stripped off our hats and coats just to quickly snap our photos before putting them back on! In fact, the morning after we took ours, we woke up to a layer of snow!

But it was fun to be able to collaborate on this "family photo" together, and it helps me still feel connected to them even from far away.

Bayram Vacation, Part 2: FOOD!

(Read Part 1.)

As I said in the previous post, the food at Aqua Fantasy was all-you-can-eat-and-drink. The buffets were incredible! Besides traditional Turkish food, they also offered more Western-style food than I had ever seen in Turkey before: things like fried chicken fingers, cheesy garlic bread, Italian pastas, rich desserts, and they even served sweet potatoes one day! This is the buffet room:

The four islands in the center were for Turkish salads, fresh veggies, soups/breads, and hot dishes. Then along the left side was a series of cooks making fresh items (like omelets for breakfast), and along the right side was a ridiculous dessert buffet.

They really worked hard to make the displays both beautiful and tasty!

I took this picture on Friday, the day they celebrated Kurban Bayram (the Sacrifice Holiday), and they had this whole roasted lamb there on the counter, and the guy was serving lamb meat there. I said it looked like "roast beast!"

Justin was exceptionally happy to be able to find foods he loved that I would never cook at home. I took this picture of him with the plate below on Friday, the day they served the Bayram lamb.

On his plate are rice pilaf, roast lamb, fried crab meat, sardines, and fried chicken livers. Hey, he was happy!

Then as if all the savory dishes weren't enough, we discovered a guy making fried ice cream for dessert!!

So in addition to the ridiculous buffets for three meals a day, there were also snack bars near all of the pools that were open in the afternoons. Every day for Elias' afternoon snack, we went to the one right outside our room and he got waffles with honey!

That is one happy, sticky boy. :)

This snack bar also served the best pizza I've ever had in Turkey, so I always enjoyed a slice of that for afternoon snack! So thankful for being provided this complimentary week of great food!!

Click to read more: Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Bayram Vacation, Part 1: Aqua Fantasy

Justin mentioned in a previous post that although his job is difficult, it also has some amazing perks. Last week we received the ultimate of all perks - the school sent their faculty and families on a 5-day vacation to the Western coast of Turkey (a place called Kuşadası, near the large city of Izmir) over the holiday! All we had to do was purchase our airfare, and EVERYTHING else was covered for us. What a blessing!

Like father like son on the flight from Ankara to Izmir (both reading the in-flight magazine). It was just a 1-hour flight, then there was a 1-hour bus ride to get to the resort. Not bad at all!

We weren't sure exactly what to expect, but it turns out that this place was called Aqua Fantasy, and that is an apt name for it. This place really was beyond our wildest dreams! It's an all-inclusive resort where you wear a wristband that enables you access to everything the resort offers: hotel room, all-you-can-eat-and-drink buffet for all three meals and snacks, 10 pools (indoor, outdoor, kiddie, etc.) with water slides, one of the largest waterparks in Europe, a beach (on the Mediterranean Sea), live entertainment, and much more. This resort is obviously geared toward foreigners - all the signage was in English, and almost all of the staff there spoke English as well.

There will be a long series of blog posts showing our vacation, so I thought I'd start with the accommodations.

Our hotel. (Image borrowed from here.) We actually never swam in this pool because the water was COLD and there were plenty of other options.

The place was just massive. It was a fair hike to get from one end to the other, and you can see in the photo above that there was a handy bridge across the center of the pool that took us from our building into the dining hall.

Justin & Elias on the bridge

We were given a Family Room, which means there was an extra bed for Elias, and his part of the room had rolling screens that could close and give privacy between the two sections. That was great!

View from the hall door. You can see the brown sliding doors in the middle.

Elias' section of the room also had a little couch that could've folded out to make another bed to accommodate more people. He just enjoyed playing on it. And there was a little table and cabinet that were perfect for his toys!

You can't see it in the photo, but the bathroom had a full tub, which is actually kind of rare in Turkey. A lot of places (our apartment included) only have showers. So this was a huge treat for Elias to get full baths!

They even had a complimentary fruit plate waiting for us! That's the kind of place this was!

Click to read more: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Mom & Dad's Visit, Part 2

(Joni) Click here to read the first part, then read on for the rest of our adventures with my parents.

On Saturday, we went to one of the huge shopping centers (Anatolium mall & Nata Vega Outlets) that also has a super-cool aquarium which we had never visited.

Forgive me that this picture looks a little off-kilter. It's a printed photo that I just took a picture of... Still lets you see how cute we are!

On Sunday, we took Mom & Dad to visit the international, English-speaking fellowship, and that was fun for them to see. Then, we went out to lunch with some of our dearest friends here.

Then that afternoon we visited our favorite park in the city.

We rode the Ferris Wheel too!

On Monday, Justin was surprised to get the afternoon off, so he took me out on a date while Grandma & Grandpa kept Elias! That was a win for everybody! (Here, American movies are played in English with Turkish subtitles, so we greatly enjoyed The Bourne Legacy!) While we were out, Elias had a great time with Grandma & Grandpa. Grandma snapped this picture of Elias & Grandpa playing on Grandpa's iPhone.

They called it the Turkish-English game. Really it was just the Google Translate app, but Elias thought it was hilarious when Grandpa's phone spoke in Turkish!

Then on Tuesday, we visited Anıtkabir, the mausoleum and museum of Turkey's founder and hero, Atatürk.

It's built on a high hill, so there is an amazing view of the city every way you look!

There is a cool walk leading up to the mausoleum with stone lions on either side, and Elias thought it was funny to put his hand in their mouths. Chomp!

Then Wednesday it was time for them to leave again. We had so much fun together that Elias tried to stow away in Grandma's suitcase!

We are blessed and grateful beyond measure to not only live in such a neat place as this, but also to have family who loves us so much to come visit and enjoy it with us! We had such a great time with them!

Mom & Dad's Visit, Part 1

(Joni) My parents came in from Kentucky for their first visit to Turkey, and we had a STELLAR time with them! Rather than doing a huge blog series with all the pictures, I thought I'd just do a 2-part overview of the highlights.

We gave them a great overview of life in Turkey, including the delicious Turkish food!

We had dinner at our favorite restaurant in our neighborhood, just around the corner from our house. They got the full treatment with several courses and delicious food!

Dad is a coffee-lover, so Justin took him to try Turkish coffee. Wow, that stuff is strong! I think Dad enjoyed the home-brewed coffee from our French press more.

Trying Turkish maraş ice cream. Yum! Elias definitely comes by his love of ice cream honestly... from Grandma!

We even discovered a new dessert while they were here! We thought we were ordering plain ice cream, but instead we got Dondurmali Irmik Helvasi. Once we adjusted our expectations, it was tasty!

And public transportation!

They were troopers to stand in the overcrowded mini-buses!

When we all squeezed into a taxi, Elias always wanted to sit on Grandma's lap!

My Turkish language tutor and a friend of hers offered to take us on a tour of the city's castle and adjoining Anatolian Civilizations Museum. Those things were neat, but we had the most fun just visiting with the two Turkish girls!

After the tour, we stopped at a cafe, and we had the best time just hanging out together!

Click here to read Part 2!

A Picnic in the Woods

(Justin) If you live in Çankaya and don't have a car you can easily visit lots of neat parks, but it seems like actual wild nature is discouragingly out-of-reach. But luckily we live on the edge of town where a steep valley with walking trails, a woods with a couple of springs, and a great view of the valley and lake below is just a short walk from our apartment. One of the entrances is just outside Elias' Turkish preschool so I explored it a bit before today, but then decided to bring the whole family on a picnic to the woods. It's nice because even though the city is just a couple hundred yards away you can't hear it and you can breathe plenty of fresh air and the smell of pine trees.

View from up on the road. The tall trees in the middle are where our picnic was.

The city has made it a picnic/camping area by piping up some of the springs

Elias splashing in the spring water.

Elias thinks peanut butter & jelly sandwiches are great no matter where we are.

There are lots of quartz rocks to find, and plenty of turtles on the roads.

The roads have been dug and grated for cars, but it's not clear where there's any entrance or exit for them. Some of the roads are just dead ends on the side of the cliff. This is a view of the lake below. On the other side of the valley you can see shepherds tending sheep. It's quite steep.

Unfortunately, some of the nicer spots are littered with trash, part of life here. But there are plenty of green trees, fresh air, and wild flowers.

Not terribly far by taxi there is another larger woods and lake that's more touristy that we hope to explore next week when Joni's parents come for a visit.