Thursday, October 9 "Maren's Broken Nose"
7:55 Waiting for the school bus
8:05 Wave goodbye to the girls and head upstairs
8:25 Answer my phone, "Hello Mrs. Wright, this is Mrs. Martin at Oasis. Maren has managed to fall down and land on her nose first, and it is pretty swollen, you might want to have her looked at in case anything is broken. She's starting to calm down a bit now."
8:30 Walking up the hill as fast as I can to go check out Maren. Where do I take her to be "looked at"? How do I get there? Oh my.
9:00 Maren sitting calmly in the office with a big purple fat lip. She's doing pretty good, not crying anymore at all, but there's dried blood on her nose and a little on her shirt and sweater. I push on her nose all over the place and she doesn't scream, so I figure she's going to be OK (it is not noticeably crooked or anything). Her teeth and gums don't hurt. So I sit with her a little bit, then we clean her up the rest of the way and I bring her back to her classroom.

I went back home wondering if I'd get another call to come pick up Maren, but it never came. She showed up in the afternoon on the bus as usual and was fine. Later on I had Brian check out her nose and we agreed that it might be broken, but it was not crooked, she was breathing fine through both sides, and her eyes were not black, so it was doubtful that a visit to the doctor would result in anything. Brian's broken his nose a few times in martial arts sparring, so he's been through the drill.

Lacey came home with a birthday party invitation for Saturday for "Cherry", a little girl from South Korea. That should be interesting.

I ironed. I haven't ironed in a few years. On the rare occassions that Brian has had to wear a tie, he's just worn a freshly laundered and pressed shirt, and I've just had them laundered again to avoid the cleaning and pressing myself. Few clothes of mine need to be ironed, and if they do, I just don't wear them. So anyway, I reintroduced myself to "up for steam" "cotton" and "de-mineralized water only" notations in Turkish and got Brian squared away with a shirt and undershirt for Friday straight from our drying rack. How handy I am! Maybe the maid will come sooner than later...

Brian committed his first known Turkish faux pas with his department head. Mustafa invited us to go shopping on Saturday and see some of the city, and Brian responded back that it sounded great, let him check with his wife and get back to him. Mustafa said, "No, let's get this decided now". Asli said something to Mustafa in Turkish, and then he said to Brian, "OK, you let me know tomorrow." Brian and I both wondered exactly what Asli said, and we had to chuckle. Imagine, a husband conferring with his wife before making plans!