We left our home in Olympia to come to Ankara on Friday, September 26th, in a hired car at 3 AM. We somehow fit ourselves and the luggage into the SUV and headed off to SeaTac. 
Here are Lacey and Maren with our line-up of luggage, waiting while I was purchasing Aeden's ticket at the counter. The Delta rep was wonderful, and I believe he arranged for us to have kids and baby meals on both of our flights, and assigned us to bulkhead seats on our flight to New York, which gave us room for Aeden to roam a bit, and plenty of room to sleep on the floor. I'm sure the first class passengers were REALLY excited by us, but oh well :-) All in all, our flights went very smoothly and the kids were wonderful. Little bit of Nintendo DS and a lot of Avatar DVDs on the laptop kept the girls busy. Aeden on the other hand, was a handful, but never just sat and screamed or cried, so I was grateful. Just always on the move...and I was tired after not even sleeping the night before as we finished packing up.
We did enjoy some perks on the plane, most notably the free eye masks that were distributed shortly after take-off from New York. It was more popular to wear them backwards in our family though...
Saturday, September 27
We arrived in Ankara in the early afternoon. After our Delta flight to Istanbul, we had to get our luggage and re-check it into a domestic Turkish Airlines flight to Ankara. Not a minor undertaking, with ramps so steep I could barely push one of the luggage carts and Maren literally asleep as she was walking. Oh, and our (un)carefully packed carry-on suitcases had to be checked for the last flight, and I was so dazed that it was too late when I realized that I had just checked "the notebook" with all our documentation and details, as well as our prescription meds. But all of us and all of our luggage arrived, with only a few minor damages to luggage and no other problems.
There was quite a culture shock at the restroom in Istanbul, which turned out to be avoidable! Lacey and I went into a women's restroom and there was a lady inside primping at the mirror. She said all were open, so we took the first stall. It had a squat toilet instead of a pedestal toilet. Lacey was OK with it, took off her pants so she wouldn't "overshoot" and peed. It went fine. When we were leaving, the lady was gone, and I looked into the other stalls...normal toilets. Hmm. I didn't tell Lacey until we were out of the restroom and then we got to laugh about it when we told Brian.
The Turkish Air flight was literally only 20 minutes from takeoff to landing and they served a sandwich and beverages. Unbelievable for current US flights!
No, we didn't pick up a new kid on the trip, but Aeden was already busy making new friends as we waited for our luggage. And Maren was out cold on the floor anytime we stopped walking!
When we arrived in Ankara at about 2 PM we did not see anyone waiting for us, so we became a bit concerned. We tried all of the 3 cell phones various people had given us to bring along, and none would work. Brian had me make a sign that said "TED/Fulbright Teacher/Brian Wright Family" on a piece of paper and hold it to the glass so those outside the airport could see it (we could not exit and then re-enter, so we were hesitant to go out to find someone). One of the hovering people noticed it and motioned to go with him. He had an assistant as well, but neither of them spoke English. We were glad that the bus/van that they loaded us into was marked TED Ankara College so we could at least know they were affiliated with the school. We didn't even know our address so we were quite worried about what to do if we could not find our ride. But all worked out fine with our ride.
We arrived at our building (A-Blok) and were met by another foreign teacher who spoke English and let us into our apartment. The good: it is beautiful, (will be) clean, has new furniture and appliances, and secure. The bad: no water, no gas, and dust and packing styrofoam beads everywhere. And most notable at that moment: no mattress on the master bedroom bed. Oh, and only one other twin bed. So after 25 hours of traveling, we didn't have beds. I wasn't pleased. The other foreign teacher seemed to chew out the apartment representative about the mess and missing matress and other furniture...and it turns out that more was to be delivered that afternoon. So we got our bed (which is hard as a rock...making sleeping on the floor of my family room OK), we figured out how to set up Lacey on a couch to sleep, and we were introduced to Nancy on the 10th floor. Thank goodness.
Nancy is American but has been living in Australia for the last 15 years. She has two sons (11 and 13), and her ex-husband works for the Australian embassy here. She is teaching at TED this year. She speaks English. And she took me to the grocery store for food and toilet paper, loaned us some towels and a blanket for the first night, and was generally just what I needed to know that we would OK here in our building.
We went to bed by 8 and I was so glad to lay down. We all slept the night through.
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