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.

Special Delivery: Present from New School

(Joni) This morning we had an unexpected knock on the door. I don't usually answer the door when Justin isn't home, because I probably won't have the language to talk to the person on the other side. However, through the peephole I could see this was a deliveryman with a small box, so I opened the door. It was a small present addressed to Elias, and the crest on the envelope was from his new English school, which he will start on Thursday!

Elias was VERY excited to get a present, and he eagerly opened it up!

It was a cute inflatable penguin that you put water in the bottom section so when you hit it it stands back up! There was also a sweet note from the principal saying how much they were looking forward to having him in their school this year.

What's really funny is Justin had found a toy like this for Elias last week, so he already had a tiger. Now his tiger has a friend!

Elias loves them both and is excited to have them "play" together. In celebration of his new penguin friend, we put in the Go, Diego, Go! episode about Pepito the Emperor Penguin, and Elias put his two friends on the couch with him to watch the episode together!

I thought that was such a sweet gesture from his new school, and we're looking forward to him going there and benefiting from their care!

Turkish Preschool

Today was Elias' last day at Turkish Preschool. The Fall Semester begins next week, and we have decided to send him to an English-speaking preschool instead. We feel like his social and English language development will do better in a place where he understands the language. However, we are so grateful for the opportunity to send him to the Turkish Preschool last year! The ladies there were so kind and patient with him, and he absolutely loved going there. He got to take all kinds of field trips to fun places we've not been. We wouldn't hesitate for a minute to recommend this school to any other expats considering sending their children there. So in honor of his last day, I thought I'd post some pictures from the school's end-of-year celebration that happened in June but I never got around to posting pictures on here.

Elias' 4-year-old class. He is on the far right standing with the teacher's assistant. The head teacher for his class is standing on the opposite side.

They sang a song with pom pom choreography!

His class singing a song while dressed in duck costume! Elias only went in the mornings, so he wasn't there for music class in the afternoons, and so he didn't participate in this part of the presentation. We enjoyed it anyway, though!

Celebrating Our Anniversary

Our 7th wedding anniversary was last Monday, but being so busy and tired with VBS, we decided to wait until this weekend to celebrate. We got a babysitter for Elias; this was the first time we'd done that since coming to Turkey, but Elias did great with Miss Brooke. :) Then we went out for an afternoon adventure and dinner. We took the bus out to a district on the northeast side of Ankara called Keçiören. Justin had been out there a couple times, but Joni never had. Like the rest of Ankara, it is a very hilly district, but they have a really neat section where they built amazing waterfalls in the cliffs lining the roadside. It was gorgeous! (In the picture you can make out five different wedding parties getting their pictures made.)

 

Then directly across the street from the waterfalls is this cool building that houses a Turkish history museum and an authentic Ottoman restaurant. The museum is free and houses cool Ottoman artifacts.

Although this isn't a historic building, it was built to look like an ancient Ottoman fortress. Yes, those are stairs going up from the street, and yes, we climbed them all.

 

Behind this building was another series of ethnic restaurants including Turkmen, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz. We decided to try the Uzbek place, and it was cool! Very reasonably priced, Justin had a sampler platter and Joni had chicken kebab. Both were fantastic and served fast, we highly recommend it.

The restaurant is made to look like an Uzbek tent. Most of the tables were on platforms so you're seated on the floor Uzbek style - we wanted the full experience so we sat that way too!

After our delicious dinner, including the best künefe we've ever had, we decided to ride the cable car that crosses over the district. (You can see it going along the top left of the photo with the white building above.)

 

Looking down on the restaurant where we ate dinner (left side)

Looking down on the same waterfall pictured above

So we had a really neat time exploring a new district, and we were so thankful to find a great babysitter for Elias! Happy anniversary to us!

VBS Week

(Joni) This week Elias and I, along with 80+ other kids, participated in a VBS hosted by the U.S. Chaplain's office here. The program they did was called Sky, and we had a lot of fun learning about how everything is possible with God! Elias was in the Preschool class, and I was a "Flight Crew Leader" for a group of 1st & 2nd graders - my group was all girls! They were talkative and giggly, but we had fun anyway. :) I was too busy to take pictures most of the week, but I did snap a couple shots of Elias having fun.

Elias' preschool class

He was so excited!

As a Crew Leader, I got to wear a propeller beanie, which Elias called my "Helicopter Hat." Although he doesn't look like it in this picture (It was a little too early in the morning yet.), he thought the hat was hilarious!

While we were on the compound, we also took advantage of the American Cafe they have there... Real pizza and Baskin Robbins ice cream!!! That was a special treat!!!

The pizza had real pork sausage - impossible to find anywhere else but here!

So we're exhausted but it sure was fun to have that special week!