Random Thoughts on Turkey

Well, I realize I've been pretty awful at blogging ever since moving to Turkey. To be honest, usually the amount of times I post correlates inversely to how much of a life I have. Luckily, life has been busy lately between me starting my own business (details to come at a later date), planning our summer itinerary and winding down the season with playoffs. Here are a few random thoughts from Turkey in bullet form, as their randomness makes it impossible for me to fit them together into any meaningful blog post. 

• The grocery stores (at least the one I go to) have a go-to woman on rollar blades that is responsible for restocking any items that have been misplaced or racing back into the produce section to weigh & tag certain produce that a certain American always forgets to weigh (ahem). I think it's pretty awesome and D and I are very curious who gets the rights to this position. Perhaps they have a race before the shift starts to see who is the fastest? That's the way I decided it goes in my head and I'm going to go with it. 
• At almost every red light in major intersections, there are kids with windex and paper towel that run up to you and clean your windows for tips. These kids start hustling at an early age and I don't hate it.  D always tips the kids crazy amounts to wash his windows and the excitement on their faces makes my day.
• I have absolutely no clue what's up with the school schedule here. We live in between two schools and I can't be more lost as to what's going on. They will have two days off randomly in the middle of the week and then still be at school on Friday at 6 pm. They've even had classes on Sundays sometimes. On that note, I am still dying to be a Turkish school girl in my next life. Today there was a full blown musical in the school next to us where a man was screaming singing into the microphone at the top of his lungs. Last week they were having a dance competition outside when I was walking Tucker. Basically, I would've faked sick A LOT less if I went to school in Turkey.
• Turkish tea. Wow. Life changing. Anyone who knows me knows my obsession with coffee but for some reason I haven't been able to get down with the famous Turkish Coffee here. I think it's because they drink it black and I'm just not that sophisticated yet. Anyways, they are huge into tea and serve it absolutely everywhere. After every meal its customary to drink the tea which is served in this adorable little hourglass shaped shot glass looking thing. It tastes a lot like English Breakfast Tea but about 100x stronger. They even serve it to you in stores, regardless of where you are. We were in the mall in Nike trying on sneakers and they offered us some. Apparently there's a little tea station somewhere in the mall and they run and get it for you from there. It's great. You can literally be anywhere in this city and ask someone for a tea and its 100% normal.
• Going to the movies in a foreign country is always an interesting event. Typically, all the movies are in English with subtitles in the native language (except children's movies which are all translated for each country which is a total bummer for us because we like Disney & Pixar way more than the average 9 year old). In Poland, we always laughed at how the previews were literally 30 minutes long. We would show up to the movie half an hour after the start time and still be early. Here, the cinematic experience is quite different as well. Our first time going we realized ticket purchasing is based purely on the honor system. There has never once been someone there to check our tickets after we buy them and it always makes me laugh. Also, we were caught off guard a bit on our first movie when suddenly half way through it shut off and the lights turned on. We looked around and no one looked shocked so we eventually figured out they do intermission here. After discussing this with my obese friend stuck in a skinny person's body, she had an extremely valid point that it would be the perfect time to re-butter your popcorn (which she does frequently..using straws to get to the bottom of the bag...which should make you nauseous to hear if you're reading this). Unfortunately the popcorn here is butter-less and salt-less and aint no body have time for that but I think America should adopt the intermission policy.
• Still not a lot of English going on. Whenever we go out to eat, we are usually stuck ordering off of a Turkish menu and being too lazy to translate everything, we just randomly point at something and give it a go. Luckily we aren't picky eaters but I can see this being a problem for a lot of people. Whenever we go somewhere and they have an English menu and/or an English speaking waiter, I feel like I hit the lotto. Last week we went out to dinner with some friends and the waiter spoke the best English I've heard yet here. I complimented him on it and told him how impressed I was and he replied "thanks but I'm from New Zealand"...go figure.
• Last but not least, our city does an absolutely amazing job at keeping the surroundings looking beautiful. Bursa is known as the "green city" and come Spring, I can definitely see why. You will be driving down the highway and see thousands upon thousands of roses just planted in the median. Everywhere you look there are gorgeous flowers, parks and trees. It is also unbelievably clean and I love it.

Gorgeous Mudanya, 10 minutes form our house

The Green Tomb, Bursa (but it's blue)

Life has been so good to us in Turkey. The city is beautiful, the people have ben really nice and we are so blessed to have a huge group of friends here to hang out with. We have met so many people and have a little family overseas now: D's team has one American and one Nigerian who is basically American + his brother who is here for an extended time to visit. Then we have an American couple and their daughter who live in our building (the husband plays for another team in our city + his American teammate) and a British/Brazilian couple where the husband is a famous professional soccer player here. It literally makes the world of difference to have a group of people to hang out with over here that share your same struggles and know what it's like to be away from home. I'm so grateful for all of them accepting us into their group the past month and showing us the way here. 

Out to Dinner with some of our crew + D's team manager

I'm so excited D's team made the playoffs and his first game is tomorrow night! Playoffs are always a crazy time because you never know when you will be going home. We're hoping for the best and I can't be more proud of D and what an unbelievable season he's had. This past week has been amazing, between D making playoffs, my grandfather having a successful cancer-removing surgery and my mom getting engaged! God is so good and my heart couldn't be more filled.