Life with no car

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Geo: 36.9295, 27.1216

Today we start life with no car. In anticipation of this event, we went to the MM Migros yesterday to stock up on heavy food and drinks. It doesn't seem like it will be a big deal to get small and light things, but hauling a lot on the bus will be kind of a pain. There is a small market just down the road in one of the other neighborhoods. We will probably go check that out today. That should do us for a couple visits a week and we will probably go into town twice a week or so for fresh fruit and whatnot. Market day in Gundogan is Tuesdays when all the local produce is out on display. We may have to go in to get internet as well. Our service remains very spotty, but I'm happy to report that we've had a little time online both yesterday and today. In fact, I think we'd be at the beach right now, except I wanted to get this typed up before the connection went again. It's funny that at home beach time is incredibly rare and internet is plentiful. Here it is the exact reverse. We have sunny beach and pool time available to us 7 days a week, roughly 18 hours a day and internet connection is a cause for celebration. Mostly we just need it to feel connected to home at this point.

Yesterday, as I think I've said, we dropped Lucy off at the airport and I'm pleased to report that she has gotten home safely. She will be pleased to hear that I did finally stop at one of the very large numbers of fig stands by the side of the road and picked up a bag of fresh figs. We were trying to figure out how anyone made money at this, given that there is a fig stand every 50 meters or so along some roads. Of course, there are also a lot of sut misir (corn on the cob stands) around too. Another interesting note, "sut misir" is "milk corn," not the "sweet corn" that we are used to. Theirs is a little more starchy tasting and definitely less sweet. A little dryer too, I think.

Since time at the beach is plentiful, the children do not appreciate it and are upstairs right now entertaining themselves with very little. The bed linens have all been pulled up, but as today is cleaning day, I don't think that matters. As soon as the woman who does the cleaning arrives, I'll haul them down to the beach. I have packed some sandwiches already and we will probably buy some French fries down there as that is a big treat.

The puppies continue to travel around the development. Kate tracked them down yesterday to show to her new French friend Leia. I have to laugh that I thought French wouldn't help me out much and so I chose to study Spanish in high school in college, and it keep running into all of these situations where French would be really helpful. At this point even my pitiful Turkish is better than my French. Kate and Leia went to Leia's house for a while yesterday and Leia showed Kate a French DVD that she could play in English with French subtitles. They enjoyed that. Leia came over here after our post-dinner dip in the pool and we finished off the chocolate cake from Kate's birthday and they listened to some of Kate's music on her iPod. I met Maryanne, Leia's mother yesterday. Luckily, she speaks some English. They will be here until the end of August as well, so that is good for Kate. I pointed out to her yesterday that all of the board games I brought with me can be played without reading or speaking English, so hopefully they will be able to enjoy those as well. It may just take a little time to get the rules straight.

I managed to get a few TV shows on my computer and have been enjoying infrequent episods of Eureka and Weeds, both shows I never watched at home. Both are pretty good and I don't think that's just my English-deprivation speaking out. We do get excellent international news coverage on the TV here, but it is much more broad than deep and I miss NPR. I thought I would be able to stream it here over the computer but the internet thing has gotten in the way. Oh well. It never rains here. That's the up-side!

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