Tuesday, June 30, 2009
A new suit for a trip to Istanbul!
Today Dan's heading back to Istanbul for the European Holstein Convention. Men wear suits here for everyday wear, so we knew we had to get him a suit for the Convention. Here's my handsom husband in his new suit!
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Wedding Continues...
The wedding continued on Sunday morning, with the bride & groom leaving in a procession of honking horns. The bride had another beautiful dress on today (she comes around the back corner of the building on the right & is wearing a white dress with a red head covering)! After the bride & groom get into the care (They decorate cars so much nicer here!), everyone goes to get in theirs to parade around town behind the newly married couple honking their horns! Again, the neighborhood was out on their balconies, like us, enjoying the wedding! Enjoy the video that I took!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wedding Time
Summer is wedding time here, just like it often is in Iowa & Minnesota! Last night we had the privilege of experiencing a wedding reception that took place in our apartment complex court yard. Around 5pm we heard someone doing sound checks & thought maybe there was a concert – but soon we figured out it was a wedding! So fun!
It was the perfect evening for a wedding. We have a few movies of the dancing below. When weddings are going around town they always have long processions & everyone honks & honks & honks! You can’t miss a wedding party! You’ll see in one of the movies the first time the bride & groom, along with some guests arrived. At first there is only a few people dancing & then all of a sudden everyone arrives! They left awhile later & eventually came back with a whole wedding full of guests (as you can see in the last night time video)! In the second movie – you can see the bride (in the beautiful pink dress) and the groom next to her dancing.
They have a lot of great dances, which they do together in a line (kinda like line dancing). Their music has a great beat as well that just makes you want to dance! We heard the music playing late into the night! Hopefully this summer we’ll be able to actually go to a wedding!
It was the perfect evening for a wedding. We have a few movies of the dancing below. When weddings are going around town they always have long processions & everyone honks & honks & honks! You can’t miss a wedding party! You’ll see in one of the movies the first time the bride & groom, along with some guests arrived. At first there is only a few people dancing & then all of a sudden everyone arrives! They left awhile later & eventually came back with a whole wedding full of guests (as you can see in the last night time video)! In the second movie – you can see the bride (in the beautiful pink dress) and the groom next to her dancing.
They have a lot of great dances, which they do together in a line (kinda like line dancing). Their music has a great beat as well that just makes you want to dance! We heard the music playing late into the night! Hopefully this summer we’ll be able to actually go to a wedding!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Lynn's Pick
My friend Steph often does a “Steph’s Pick” on her blog, so I thought I’d do one here & inform you of this great product I found in Turkey! They call it a “Cam Beyzi” or translated “Glass Cleaning Cloth” but it’s so much more!
Having clean windows here is VERY important, but also very hard because Van is a dusty city in the summer & in the winter heats with coal (therefore coating homes inside & out with it!).
3M’s cleaning clothes are great. I use two at a time. The first one I get wet & wipe the windows down & then with the second dry one wipe the wet window off. It gets all the dirt off & leave it streak free! And one of the best parts is when it gets dirty (depending how dirty your windows are), you can throw it in the washing machine to use the next time. How environmentally friendly - being able to clean your windows again & again with just these wipes & water!
I did a little research for you all and I'm not sure you can get them in the states but you can in the UK - click here to find out more!
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Do you want to learn a little Turkish?
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız
That’s one word… yup that’s right – one word!
Do you want to know what it means?
Well, I suppose we can tell you…
Apparently you are one of those we have not been able to Europeanize
Don’t worry, we wouldn’t actually be able to recognize this at all yet, but we found it in our language resources. Hopefully eventually we’ll be able to understand this and much, much more!
Monday, June 22, 2009
Wedding Clothes
While Dan was buying a suit for the European Holstein Convention that he’s going to next week, he met a great guy who invited us over to his house that night for tea. We headed over & ended up eating dinner with them as well. They have 8 kids in their family – pretty typical here. The oldest guy (25) was who Dan met & we hung out with him & the oldest girl (21) for most of the night. At one point she got out her going to a wedding clothes (not being IN the wedding just ATTENDING the wedding) for Lynn to try on. They took pictures & gave us the copies. We tried to take pictures of the pictures – not the best quality but hopefully you can get the idea!
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Shopping...
Most of what we’ve been doing for the past week or so has been shopping for things we need for our house, and meeting people along the way! We’ve had a few adventures, things that have shocked us, and unexpected finds. It’s been a great week overall! Here are some of our highlights…
People here are into fancy things – like glasses that are glass, not plastic. Dan prefers plastic glasses for everyday drinking, so I (Lynn) set off in search of plastic glasses – I mean how hard could they be to find? While a couple stops later and I thought I might be importing some from Target, I couldn’t find them anywhere! Thankfully though, when I thought all was lost, Migros (a grocery store in town) came through for me! They were even the right color for our kitchen & I liked them too!
Since I (Lynn) am taking more of a housewife role than ever before I wanted to print off a cookbook that I’d received electronically from a friend called “Cooking in Turkey” – just what a I need! We stopped at a place recommended to us by a guy we’d met a few days earlier. We got our USB plugged into the computer & then decided to ask how much a black & white copy would be per page… he said 50 curus (which is like 35 cents!). He eventually gave a bit of a discount, but only down to 40 curus, or about 25 cents. To print my cookbook it was going to be 100 lira or $75! Needless to say, we didn’t print it, we figure we can have it printed & imported from the States cheaper! And until then I’ll keep cooking from the copy I have on the computer.
It's great that we have cameras on our phone because we can take pictures of things, even when we don't have our digital camera with us to share with you. Here's a few like that...
It's watermelon season here - can you tell from this picture? And this is only one of the many shops like this that we pass when we're walking around town! Good thing people have big families - it's taken us awhile to eat through even one!
On the way home the other day, this is what we saw in an abandoned lot…
Anywhere there’s grass, I suppose you should let them eat!
People here are into fancy things – like glasses that are glass, not plastic. Dan prefers plastic glasses for everyday drinking, so I (Lynn) set off in search of plastic glasses – I mean how hard could they be to find? While a couple stops later and I thought I might be importing some from Target, I couldn’t find them anywhere! Thankfully though, when I thought all was lost, Migros (a grocery store in town) came through for me! They were even the right color for our kitchen & I liked them too!
Since I (Lynn) am taking more of a housewife role than ever before I wanted to print off a cookbook that I’d received electronically from a friend called “Cooking in Turkey” – just what a I need! We stopped at a place recommended to us by a guy we’d met a few days earlier. We got our USB plugged into the computer & then decided to ask how much a black & white copy would be per page… he said 50 curus (which is like 35 cents!). He eventually gave a bit of a discount, but only down to 40 curus, or about 25 cents. To print my cookbook it was going to be 100 lira or $75! Needless to say, we didn’t print it, we figure we can have it printed & imported from the States cheaper! And until then I’ll keep cooking from the copy I have on the computer.It's great that we have cameras on our phone because we can take pictures of things, even when we don't have our digital camera with us to share with you. Here's a few like that...
It's watermelon season here - can you tell from this picture? And this is only one of the many shops like this that we pass when we're walking around town! Good thing people have big families - it's taken us awhile to eat through even one!
On the way home the other day, this is what we saw in an abandoned lot…Anywhere there’s grass, I suppose you should let them eat!
Monday, June 15, 2009
We're Home!
We’re finally home, we’ve been living with friends & in other people’s homes for the last year or so, but we finally have a place to call home! We moved in a week ago, after we had it painted & cleaned. Lynn’s loved setting up a home for us again, and all the fun that goes with it! We’ve been shopping a lot, both because we need to get things for our home as well as it’s a great way to meet people & practice our Turkish!
Moving day was pretty amazing! We had a group of local guys that we paid come to help us get all of our furniture & appliances up the stairs to our 5th floor apartment. Lynn was impressed! These guys would put the refrigerator, washing machine, wardrobe, couch (as seen below), and more just on their backs & haul it up 5 flights of stairs! And as you can see from these pictures these guys are NOT 20-something former Division 1 linebackers!
We don’t have pictures of all of the rooms but we thought we’d give you a little sampling. Here are photos of the kitchen & the living/dining room.
Another AMAZING feature of our place is that it has a wrap around balcony (like a wrap around porch, except it’s in an apartment building). Outside the kitchen on the balcony is a grill (pictured below). We tried it out this past weekend with some of our American friends – we had classic burgers, chips, watermelon, and brownies w/ ice cream! YUMMY!
Another benefit is that we have a grocery store across the street. It’s not the biggest in town but for most things it’s pretty easy to get too! We can see it from our balcony (as shown here, it's behind the while vehicle).
Even though there’s a grocery store across the street the first night we were here, we realized it was late & we still hadn’t gotten any food at the store. So what did we do? Well thanks to the great people who have sent us care packages we found a pasta dish that was “just add water” as well as some “just add water” muffins! And so we found dinner & breakfast in our American pantry! (Which by the way, just recently grew tremendously!)
So now we’re ready for visitors, we’ve got our guest room all set-up, so let us know if you want to come & visit!
Moving day was pretty amazing! We had a group of local guys that we paid come to help us get all of our furniture & appliances up the stairs to our 5th floor apartment. Lynn was impressed! These guys would put the refrigerator, washing machine, wardrobe, couch (as seen below), and more just on their backs & haul it up 5 flights of stairs! And as you can see from these pictures these guys are NOT 20-something former Division 1 linebackers!
We don’t have pictures of all of the rooms but we thought we’d give you a little sampling. Here are photos of the kitchen & the living/dining room.
Another AMAZING feature of our place is that it has a wrap around balcony (like a wrap around porch, except it’s in an apartment building). Outside the kitchen on the balcony is a grill (pictured below). We tried it out this past weekend with some of our American friends – we had classic burgers, chips, watermelon, and brownies w/ ice cream! YUMMY!
Another benefit is that we have a grocery store across the street. It’s not the biggest in town but for most things it’s pretty easy to get too! We can see it from our balcony (as shown here, it's behind the while vehicle).
Even though there’s a grocery store across the street the first night we were here, we realized it was late & we still hadn’t gotten any food at the store. So what did we do? Well thanks to the great people who have sent us care packages we found a pasta dish that was “just add water” as well as some “just add water” muffins! And so we found dinner & breakfast in our American pantry! (Which by the way, just recently grew tremendously!)
So now we’re ready for visitors, we’ve got our guest room all set-up, so let us know if you want to come & visit!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Spring Festival!
During our first week in Van we headed to the local university for their spring festival. Now, it was no VEISHEA, but was still fun to hear the music, walk on the pier, eat ice cream, watch our friends on the carnival rides, and more. The picture below is looking back from the pier to the university & festival area.
In the distance is the downtown area of Van - the university is about 10 km away from the main city.
The beautiful mountains that surround Lake Van!
Lake Van can only support one type of fish - seen here in this statue!
In the distance is the downtown area of Van - the university is about 10 km away from the main city.
The beautiful mountains that surround Lake Van!
Lake Van can only support one type of fish - seen here in this statue!
Our London Trip
 |
 |
| Make a Smilebox slideshow |
Enjoy feeling like you're there - The Changing of the Guard & the London Eye videos!
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Graduation & Talent Show Program
Before we left we had the joy of going to our language nurturer's niece's first grade graduation/talent show. It was a lot of fun to see all the different things the kids did! Here's some movie clips that we took for our friend that we'll also let you enjoy!
Monday, June 1, 2009
A Penny Saved is A Penny Earned...
They saying goes, “A penny saved is a penny earned”, so in the States we save our change in piggy banks, jars, drawers, couches, etc. Then eventually we take all of our change that we’ve saved to the bank, they sort it out & give us the cash. Then we take it to Disney World for spending money, or get the special thing we’ve been wanting, or take our family to dinner.
We thought we do the same thing when we moved here 4 months ago, so we started saving our change to get waffles! Before we moved we took it to the bank. Well, let’s just say we don’t think people here have ever heard of “A penny saved is a penny earned”. The bank teller looked at us like we were crazy & asked us where we had gotten so much change. We said we had saved it each day, at which she looked at us even stranger! She said they couldn’t do something like that.
But we wanted our waffles, so we still headed to the waffle stand with our change. We had not idea how else we’d get rid of $15 of change before we moved otherwise! We ordered our waffles & started counting out our change for the two teenage boys that were working. We don’t think they were very excited about it, but they had made a sale. The morale of our story is that we will no longer be saving our change, but spending it each day!
We thought we do the same thing when we moved here 4 months ago, so we started saving our change to get waffles! Before we moved we took it to the bank. Well, let’s just say we don’t think people here have ever heard of “A penny saved is a penny earned”. The bank teller looked at us like we were crazy & asked us where we had gotten so much change. We said we had saved it each day, at which she looked at us even stranger! She said they couldn’t do something like that.
But we wanted our waffles, so we still headed to the waffle stand with our change. We had not idea how else we’d get rid of $15 of change before we moved otherwise! We ordered our waffles & started counting out our change for the two teenage boys that were working. We don’t think they were very excited about it, but they had made a sale. The morale of our story is that we will no longer be saving our change, but spending it each day!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
