I Only Believe In Science

Meghann and her friend have a science project going. They have made a nice little terrarium. Complete with snails.
One snail had other ideas and staged a great escape. We woke up one morning to see a lovely, slimy snail trail all over our dining room wall. Meg just pulled him off and put him back in the plastic container.
Isn't science interesting?
If we ever had any questions why the windshield of our car is covered with little cat-sized prints, now we know for sure.
Penny- caught in the act!

On the other paw-
Spoiled Dinah sleeps peacefully in Sydney's blue pillow. Too cute.

So This Is What They Mean By The Rainy Season

On Monday, March 19, we had a bit of a rain.
I had been out driving Doug back from lunch when the van died. We pulled over in the pouring rain and Doug discovered that a belt had fallen off. So we pulled into a parking lot and Doug ran back to his office. I called a taxi. I arrived home to find that the cab couldn't even make it down our street.
I got home just as the kids were getting off the bus. We all ran inside and found out we had no electricity.
It eventually stopped raining and all the kids in the neighborhood began building boats. Amazingly, all this water was all gone within an hour of the storm ending.
PS. Doug tried for two hours later that night to get the belt back on, but we left the van book in storage. But thanks to the nice men at the Auto Hobby Shop, the van is now running fine.

More Flood Pics

Notice the stop sign? Dur?!
The yard between my house and the neighbors.

The guy with the umbrella is our gardener, Ekram. He said he'd never seen it quite like this.

Where's a canoe when you need one?

Snake Castle: Part 4

This has got to be one of the best pictures Doug took. You could almost be in Germany. (I think, I've never been there.)


Lots of amazing architecture here. The sad end of our trip was when Doug put the camera in his back pocket and then slid down some rocks. Crunch!
But he sure made good use of it before it broke! Wish you were here!

Snake Castle: Part 3

You can't get much higher than this.
Wow!

I am so glad we got to do this and the girls will always have the memory of climbing around on this incredible castle.

Snake Castle: Part 2

One of the women on the tour showed Sydney how to look for pottery shards. You can see her looking around here, she ended up with quite a few. Some still even have paint on them.


When I saw some of the places my kids had climbed, I was glad I wasn't there to see it. You can't have a fear of heights on this tour.

The sheer size of the castle is impressive. Doug said most of was impossible to get to at all.

Snake Castle

The last stop on the trip was here at the Snake Castle. There was no descriptive yellow sign unfortunately to give us any info.
I only climbed to about where you see the telephone wire going into the rocks. I got to see a secret room, complete with a chimney. But I had had it, so I climbed back down, which is an adventure in itself.

I would truly love to go back in time and see how on earth they built that castle up on that mountain.

Worth the view!

Karatepe: Part 2

A pretty scary something. It looks like a big cat to me, but according to the pamphlet we got, it is a bull.
We report, you decide.
This is the statue of the God of the Tempest. Does he look like he's been playing too much PlayStation?
Head of a man, body of ???
This is an interesting shot of the language they used.
We are getting tired and hungry at this point.
While we had been exploring in the open-air museum, our bus driver was preparing lunch for us. He said he was going to barbecue, so I was ready for something yummy from his hibachi. We got back and were greeted with hot dogs. I can't eat hot dogs what with the beef lips and meat byproducts. Everyone else enjoyed them, though. For those of you who are keeping track, you know we have been avoiding the Turkish toilets. Well, we have now officially used the "squatty potty" . I packed tp and lots of hand sanitizer and we lived to blog about it!

Karatepe

The next stop on the tour was the Karatepe Aslantas Open-Air Museum.
This is the Aslantas Dam, it was very beautiful.
The museum, which cost a couple lira each, consisted of lots of Hittite ruins.
These ruins are from the 8th century.

Kastabala: Part 6

You can see the basilica down at the bottom. While I was waiting for them down there, I could see them walking around at the top. They looked like ants.
Is it just me, or can you see the curve of the planet? Hee hee.

Old rooms of the castle.
You can just make out a tall snow-capped peak in the distance. It was huge, we drove quite close by it.


The view is so picturesque, as quiet as it was at the bottom, I bet at the top you could almost believe you had gone back in time.

Kastabala: Part 5

I climbed part of the way up the mountain and then gave up. All I can say is that those Crusaders were hardcore!
How do you think they built that sucker?
They got the location right, though. I bet you could see for miles from up there.

Kastabala: Part 4

This coliseum was so cool. It was just like a modern stadium in that there were rows of seats and every so so often, a stairway.

These seats have these neat curved backs. Were they where the VIPs sat?
I liked the face carved into the stone laying at the bottom of the coliseum.
There were two openings on either side of the seats. Maybe they once led to dressing rooms.