Lots to See, Lots to Do

               Joe ended up cleaning the oven.  It was a pleasant surprise- but as I had to go into town and explain my name predicament to the bosses (more to follow once I have news one way or the other.) he was put on dinner duty.  I spent a pleasant hour chatting with Habib (the guy who makes tea upstairs- although I am sure he has other responsibilities as well) before wishing daddy-o the best birthday in the world and heading home for meatballs.  We have sort of been cooking more the past few days- but the problem with working evenings, is that you leave the house around lunchtime, and don’t come home until past dinner so a late afternoon meal is the seeming compromise to our situation.     

A selection of vegetables from the market

                Weekdays have become a nice routine.  Wake up early, drink a cup of coffee, try and figure out what to do until it’s time to go to work.  I am still having a hard time adjusting to the relaxing mornings with evening classes as I very much got into a rhythm at the Japanese school, but I managed to download some yoga videos onto my computer at work (we still have no home internet- and won't until our visas come through) so I plan to start adding some exercise into my mornings in order to be more productive than reading and playing cards on my computer with the occasional self-taught Turkish lesson thrown in.

               

The main fountain

              Weekends are a little more hectic- early mornings, lots of classes back to back and finish.  A polar opposite to week days.  It isn’t so bad, busy certainly.  The weather is slowly taking a turn into autumn and you can feel the days getting shorter and the chill seeping through the air.  It makes it harder to wake up in the mornings, but it is a very refreshing change from Jakarta.  After work on Saturday, Joe and I went on a hunt for the pub.  We had looked the day before, but settled on a kebab restaurant when we couldn’t find it.  However, a keen eye of mine managed to put two and two together (they aren’t allowed to advertise alcohol openly in Turkey) and with the help of some internet photos we located the pub.  It is pretty typical of a pub: large, open and reeking of old cigarette smoke- but as they don’t serve food, we had a celebratory beer and moved on, thinking to come back and try and make friends some evening.  The thunder kicked in that night and we lost power, but as my Kindle has a light on it, it made for quite a nice ambiance – although we will be investing in candles shortly.

               

Malatya is well-renowed for its apricot harvest

           The school finally had our carpets cleaned.  They picked them up about 9pm (which I thought was an odd time to be on carpet retrieval) and dropped them off three days later.  Or they were supposed to.  They didn’t.  We talked to Yashar- who is quite a chatterbox- and he called and said they would be by after 9pm that night.  (He said that the women used to clean the carpets, but now they don’t.  Now they (women) don’t do anything.  I said they were doing more important things- I watched three women scrubbing carpets outside that day on my way home from work and thought there was something to the sending them away business)  Again, an odd time in my head, but people here do seem to work quite late.  We waited till 11pm, but due to the power outage, they didn’t show.  The next day we were exhausted, and once again told they drop them off around 9pm.  This time I waited until 11pm.  Still nothing.  The next morning, I was confused and decided to check outside in the hall just in case.  Sure enough, when I opened the door, there they were.  All propped up and cleaned.  It was a lovely discovery as our home now has some colour again.

Autumn is approching!  Umbrellas await!

                We embark on our first holiday this coming weekend.  Eid-al-Adha (in Indonesia) but it is called Bayram here.  No matter what you call it, it is the holiday were the sacrifice a lot of goats and cows to remind them of Abraham and Isaac, but it has much more of a family feel to it here.  One of my co-workers told me they are expected to go visit all their relatives and then have their relatives come around their house.  He works seven days a week so I think he would prefer to sleep, but alas.  Joe and I are using the free holiday to go to Istanbul- a trip we are very much looking forward to and that I can’t wait to share with you all, but that will be next weeks news.