Maren was invited to go to Blake and Eli's (a pair of friends in Maren's K5 class) Birthday party after school, so I met her and Lacey at Oasis, walked her to the party, and got some advice on finding "a group of stores somewhere up here on the hill" from Eli's mom. She assumed I meant the Atrium, and that seemed just as good as anything to fill the time for Lacey and me, so we headed off (back to the school, take a right on that road, then go left, then go right--I'm getting more used to those kind of directions and figured that we had to kill some time anyway...).
We found it, and had a ball browsing the aisles of our first MakroMarket. It is about the same size as the Carrefour Express right near our house, but had a better produce area and a different mix and prices on other things. And we found Turkish peanut butter for only 3.45 YTL per jar! I bought 3 jars :-) After paying 10 YTL for Jif I had to celebrate not needing to be so stingy with the peanut butter! Lacey recognized a drink, Link, that she had seen someone at school drinking with their lunch and wanted to try some. Doritos and Ruffles were cheaper here. It was great!
But then the real find of the day: pocket folders! I learned from Miss Newcomer on the walk to the party that the pocket folders that we had purchased were not even available in Turkey until last year, and that that is probably why there was the confusion. We had purchased what we know as pocket folders, but "pocket folders" here means a plastic envelope with a snap closure. So Lacey and Maren had the wrong type of folders and this was causing daily comments about when we would ever find real pocket folders.
We saw a little toy and "fotokopi" store and investigated and after the clerk sorted through just about everything he had, polled the customers for someone who spoke English (found one, but that still didn't help), and finally...he produced a pocket folder with Woody Woodpecker on it and we all celebrated. Lacey was ecstatic, but I then learned that she didn't know who Woody Woodpecker is. Whoa. We picked out 4 folders for Lacey and 2 for Maren, some envelopes ("zart"), and some Turkish flag pins to add to their pin collections. What a find for this tiny little store!
We waited back at Oasis for Maren to come back after the party...here she is with the other party-goers:
We walked home to meet up with Brian for pizza and movies at Paul and Becky's house. Paul and Becky (and their daughters Catherine, 8th grade, and Emma, 11th grade) arrived in Ankara the same day we did, but came from England. Paul is teaching English at TED, Catherine goes to Oasis, and Emma goes to TED. Tim and his wife (forgive me, the Turkish name and spelling are eluding me), along with their daughters, Meggie and Lizzie (about 8 and 5), were there for movie night too. Tim is from England as well, but they've lived here for years. It was fun to sit and chat and hear English expressions being used, like "Crikey".
Paul has an upstairs like we do, but instead of two bedrooms it is just a giant open space...so there is a 20 foot blank wall for the projector to make a pretty good movie night. The kids watched Monsters, Inc., the adults chatted and played Phase 10 (a card game), and I switched between the two with Aeden as he explored. Tim commented that Lizzie had never been to a cinema yet, and couldn't believe the movie on the wall. Let the hypnosis begin!
We had Domino's Pizza delivered and discovered a "typical" Turkish pizza: Mozzarella peyniri (mozzarella cheese), pepperoni, sosis (sausage), misir (corn), mantar (mushroom), and yesil biber (green pepper). We set a new record and stayed up until 9:45 PM!
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