Trip to Cappadocia Part 1

Cappadocia is a region in Turkey where the people have made the most out of a most amazing landscape. Before I got there, I assumed we would be seeing old homes carved into mountains where people USED to live. To my surprise, people still live in them. I am sure there are better words to describe the strange rock formations we saw, but to me, it was like entering another world. Some of the homes are open to tourists, the picture on the left is from inside one of those homes. I loved seeing the satellite dish coming out of a window carved in a rock. Talk about a mix of old with the new. Some people on the tour with us compared Cappadocia to Bedrock of Flintstone fame. It did look like something from a George Lucas movie.

Super Lucky Kids

The last week in June Meghann and Sydney got to take a trip to Italy with the chapel. They met up with youth from all over Europe.
They stayed in tents on an Army base. They went to the beach almost every day. They got a taste of local culture and loved the food. Best of all, in my opinion, was a visit to the leaning tower of Pisa. Now their passports are stamped more than mine.

Still Here

It's been more than a month since I last blogged. Whoops. We are still here and still alive. Summer is in full swing and that means it is hot, so hot that I have coined a new term for heat such as this : violently hot. I am SO thankful for air conditioning. I would be dead otherwise. It never gets below 80, even at night. It was 90 at 9 am the other day. I have seen the thermometer in our van read 1o8. I don't have a lot of time to download pics right now so I will just leave you with a few bullets of info on our fam and life in Incirlik.
* We have a fig tree loaded with figs in our backyard and you don't, so there
* Meghann and Sydney spent a week in Italy the last week of June and had a great time (I will post pics of their trip soon, I promise.)
* Our van has over 131,000 miles on it and is starting to fall apart. The brakes are shot and the driver's side window can't be opened, we are waiting for parts from the states.
* We have a new base wing commander who actually goes home around 6pm and on the weekends, it's like a party.
* Doug will amaze and stun us all by actually taking a week of leave during the month of August
* Our Internet service has been crappy lately and we all want to die if we can't get online
* We live in Turkey, you guys, and we are getting homesick so feel free to drop us a line and let us know you know we are here, still. Still here. In Turkey.

Stuff

Little Milo. Meg and Syd after the last band concert of the year.

Dinah and Sydney, talk about MySpace. Dinah poses on the handmade carpet I got. Both are beautiful.

Re-purposed Cats

Walking past the spare room one day I noticed the fouton looked lumpier than usual, upon closer inspection, it was just Abby doing this thing she does.

Later, walking into my bedroom, I couldn't resist taking a picture of my new throw pillows.

An interesting(?) side story...as I sit here typing, the cats are out in the backyard taking the air. The sun is setting and it is cooling down. They have a new friend, a little skinny kitten we call Milo. He comes over and they visit through the fence. Sometimes he comes in the yard, after watching him carefully, I don't think he and my cats feel anything towards each other but friendship. They all just lay around in the yard napping. Right now though there is a new twist. Milo came over to visit, hopped up on the fence and then jumped up on our shade canopy thing. He meowed loudly a few times and then lay down as if in a hammock. Dinah noticed that this was different and hopped up on the table to get a better look. Nothing good happened, so she lay down. This went on a few minutes then Milo hopped down into our yard. As I type this, all three have sniffed each other cutely on the nose, and are now laying around in various stages of relaxation. It is weird, it's kinda like Milo is just lonely and my cats don't know what to do with him so they just kind of let him do his thing. He is trying to play with Dinah's tail, but he doesn't quite dare. Now they sniffed noses again then Dinah got what we call the "puh" face and asked to come in. Kinda like she got a whiff a stinky little brother and got grossed out.

Life's A Garden, Dig It

When your front yard looks like this it is necessary to take pictures of flowers. I give all the credit to Ekram.

Yet Another Fieldtrip

This field trip we went to a different Turkish school and visited the students. They even put on a small play for us. It was in Turkish, of course, but their costumes, which consisted mostly of fake moles and fake uni brows, were very entertaining.

Walking around Adana is always an eyeful. This trip we found a hair salon that has the same name as Meghann...her Turkish class name anyway, we had to get a picture of Meryem in front of "Meryem's". We also got these pictures of the Burger King Delivery scooters, for when you need a Whopper, but just can't break away from Dawson's Creek reruns.