Thursday, April 2

I'm behind on the blog updating since I've been working on a project for school. After spring break we are having "Around the World" for our theme for a few weeks and we're helping the kids to make a book of flags with icons from each of their countries on them. So I spent a few hours each night surfing the internet for images to use for the preschool flag books for 14 different countries, all with students currently at our school. Dare I say I had fun with the project? I learned some very basic information about the countries (things you'd think I might already know) and some not so basic, as I was searching for images and information to use. Example: I didn't know the capital of Malaysia. Did you? Now I do. And now I know why it says Kuala Lumpur on Uzeir's RoboCon cap! I also didn't know that the most common Arabic hello is Marhaba. So every time Lacey mispronounces the Turkish "merhaba" she just sounds like an Arab. Or maybe not :-) But today I turned in my "homework" so I can get back to doing more fun things like reading books and updating our blog.

I had a little triumph today. Brian needed a bus ticket to get to Istanbul. I wanted to take care of it without help from a Turkish-speaker (all the books say it is "so simple" to get bus tickets...). So I ventured out to the bus station I've walked by so many times on my way to Armada, walked in with my slip of paper with names, dates, and destinations, and walked out with my bus tickets. Amazing. The first clerk passed me off on someone who spoke some English, but still, I got the tickets on my own. Whew. The simplest of things can take so much energy here it is just crazy. But it does give a better sense of accomplishment than, oh, grocery shopping at home or buying something online from a website that works properly.

I also learned today that the Turks will refer to the two sides of Istanbul as "European Side" and "Anatolian Side", not to be confused with "European Side" and "Asian Side". Little labels make all the difference I guess.

Triumph #2 was finding a travel agency to get us a minivan rental for the weekend and a hotel in Cappadocia. I had been poking around on TurkeyTravelPlanner.com (as I often do) and found a recommendation for Argeus Travel in Cappadocia. I emailed them, and within 45 minutes received a telephone call back from an English speaker quoting me rental car prices and telling me he'd call back in about 30 more minutes with hotel information. It was a miracle to get such fast and complete service! I only hope I don't have to report problems with our trip, but so far, so good, and I can only say good things about the agency.