Last day in Alanya

I'm sitting in our hotel 'lobby' which is all open to the air and listening to Kurdish music and the call to prayer with a hot sleeping baby on my chest. We took a long walk this morning before breakfast and then each had half an hour to ourselves--I spent mine collapsed on a beach chair as a human pancake pretending that I wasn't anyone's mother. It was delightful.
Then we collected our laundry which was still damp and smelled like cigarette smoke--I'm told that there are no laundramats here and the laundry doesn't have dryers and apparently the laundry ladys husband smokes, yum.
We went for lunch at the journalists club with a fabulous view of the bay and then drove up to the castle that we've been seeing from our hotel. The castle had a jail in it at some point and k showed me, with obvious relish, where they used to throw the prisoners over the edge of the cliffs into the water. It was breathtaking.
Then we went to a cave at the base of the hill that was equally breathtaking, from moldiness--but the stalactites were amazing--it felt like a cathedral. I keep imagining how gorgeous this must have been with no or fewer people.

More lunch photos

By the sea in Alanya

We arrived in Alanya somewhat exhausted to a tiny but beautiful room right over the sparkling Mediterranean. K has some lovely friends here who have generously provided us with a gorgeous room for a few days. A fantastic lightening storm was swirling around over the water for hours last night, during and after the sunset.

We explored a little last night. Alanya and this part of turkey is really different from the southeast--it's like Florida except, much, much better. Orange trees and banana trees are everywhere but its green and lush and not flat. Alanya itself is a huge tourist destination apparently, I was expecting a little village but it's more hotel after hotel if Russian tourists. Interesting times on the beach.

This morning we brought Mina to the doctor--she has something like baby bronchitis apparently, but we got some antibiotics and are hoping for a quick recovery. Then K's friend brought us to a fantastic traditional Alanyan food restaurant--I am posting extensive photos to drool over below. Lots of vegetables which I love. We ate outside under the trees. First a wedding soup with mint, wheat, chicken and lamb. Then plates kept coming-- black-eyed peas with dill and tomatoes, stuffed cabbage and grape leaves, spinach with yogurt, eggplant with yogurt, zucchini cooked in garlic and walnut paste-amazing, eggplant stuffed with lamb,  pickled cabbage, greens and rice and okra stewed with tomatoes--not slimy at all. Finishing with dessert of squash stewed in syrup and halva, which is not at all like halvah and I was completely unable to figure out what it was made of, and thyme tea, in the glass. We laughed because after all that food, before dessert, they asked us what we wanted for the main course--luckily they allowed us to decline a main course.

In Ankara there were 3 hailstorms in the day we were there and in Alanya everyone is at the beach swimming.

I missed some kind of amazing dinner, Kahraman went but Mina fell asleep early and we didn't want to wake her by hauling her around.   

Leaving the village for Ankara

Last night I was awake and counting our good luck in all escaping getting sick in the village. Unfortunately today we all got sick after leaving the village, hopefully it will be quick and relatively painless. We left the village at 6ish in the morning, catching the fantastic sunrise. We drove to Siverek to have breakfast at k's uncles house. I've written before about my general dislike of Siverek, it's very conservative, like a big village of 100,000 people but where the village always feels safe Siverek feels dangerous and looks like news photos of Iraq--they're not so far apart I guess. But this was a new Siverek experience--K's uncles house was a nice 4-story stucco apartment building like others on the street, with, wait for it---cows in the first floor instead of an apartment! So upstairs having breakfast we could hear cattle lowing and bumping and metal clnging. Very strange for me, apparently ver normal for Siverek.
I'm combining a few days worth of posts since we didn't do much in Ankara--K worked but Mina and I stayed in the hotel and appreciated running water and room service. (Room service had delicious and cheap Turkish food!) I've included a photo of the airport in Diyarbakir, which used to be a military base and is not supposed to be photographed. Also a photo of the weapons retrieval counter in Ankara--as you can see there is a line. Currently we are on another plane to Antalya, in the Mediterranean and we will be staying nearby in Alanya for a few days.
This is a photo of the large evil eye charm, called a boncuk, that was imbedded in the front wall if our airplane. I'm pretty sure that our international flight didn't have one of these. I'm not sure if I feel safer that this flight is protected from the evil eye.

Day 5

More bread making today and this time I got photos. Sofia is K's oldest sister, in front, rolling out the dough, particularly wanted to be named in the photo. I helped knead the dough but the rest of it is beyond my skillset, and really hard work. Tuba, youngest sister, 15, is cooking the bread--she turns it with a flat wooden stick. With the last pieces of bread they made gozleme for lunch--sprinkled homemade cheese and butter and folded the bread into a package and toasted the whole thing and we ate outside under the tree. K's mama and Deniz are in the background. Below is the stacked bread.

In the afternoon, the grown-ups and babies walked to the gardens again with the donkey to pick pomegranates and figs. K's sisters were fearless, climbing trees for figs in the heat wearing long skirts and scarves.

That's a field of cotton on the left. Minor fracases with sofias son parking the donkey in the wrong place and then falling off of it or getting bucked off. I missed that last action as I was climbing into a delightfully frigid pool of water with all my hot heavy clothes on, which may have been the highlight of the day. And no, I'm not posting photos of my outfit, suffice to say far too much clothing for a 90 degree walk and fruit picking. K says the ladies get used to wearing so much clothing, I have my doubts. I think they are more long suffering and very strong, physically and mentally.
A truly incredible amount of people and baggage piled into one car to leave when we got back to the village--4 adults, 7 children, luggage for all, 3 sacks of pomegranates, 4 buckets of figs and 2 buckets of fresh yogurt. And the car was a normal sized 4-door sedan.
K's mama unexpectedly asked me to cook dinner which sent me into a complete panic. Limited ingredients, time and facilities combined with cooking for 8 people that are eagerly waiting to see what the strange daughter-in-law can do in the kitchen equals a hectic Becky. I made risotto with onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes and thyme and k's mama made chicken and eggplant kabobs baked, I think she was worried that my rice might not be eatable. Everyone was pretty concerned that I was putting cheese into the rice and the neighbor lady who walked into the kitchen was openly horrified by the risotto. She also  told me I was serving too much when I dished it out. Everyone said they liked it and most people finished their plates so hopefully they liked it. Next visit, if I ever consent to come to the village again, I will be prepared for this and bring ingredients for something.
With all the children gone it was blissfully quiet and I anticipated a great sleep, which would have happened except for the huge beetle that crawled on my nose and woke me--gah!!! I didn't really sleep much after that.

Day 4

I have some kind of culture shock when I get to the village, maybe it's combined with timezone and language issues, but I always feel like there's no way I can possibly survive however many days we've planned to be here. The past visits I thought this would resolve with knowing everyone or being fluent in Turkish but I'm thinking it may just be 'normal' for being dropped into an alternate universe. Not that I'm fluent or even passable in Turkish, everyone is very disappointed and urges me to study--I tell them I am very lazy, which is true about Turkish. Today I felt a little better.

I didn't take many photos today--a few on Mina and her cousin, chewing on raw eggplants. Mina stole half of Elif's eggplant, as she steals anything the Elif is playing with--fast handed baby. I'm not sure if raw eggplant is the best for babies to eat but there are only so many times I can protest and I figure that it's better for her than chewing on the cell phone.

Day 3 in the village

A calm and relaxing morning followed by complete madness. We didn't do much during the daytime and got enough sleep so we are all feeling halfway to normal. Kahraman's grandmother is still visiting--in this photo Mina chews on her cane.

Mina has somehow switched her schedule so she takes 4 short naps a day and goes to bed at 10:30pm. Bizarre, but it actually works for the village as the festivities run late. Especially since 4 of K's brothers and sisters showed up with 6 more kids and we gathered about 5 more from the neighbors. I'm not sure how anything gets done but everything gets done, in spite of much yelling and playing and incidents like the exploding-lighter-that-was-left-on-top-of-the-oven.
This photo shows about half the kids--I think dinner was served to around 20-24 people. Mina is in the back looking out the window.
K and his brothers had a quick snack in the kitchen--Deniz, the one who is a school principal was horrified that I took this photo because he said they look like savages.
Mina finally got to meet her cousin Elif who is 1 or 2 weeks younger than Mina. I discovered today what I suspected which is that most babies move less than Mina. Elif sits quietly on the floor and plays or gets fed. Mina crawls into the vegetables and immediately bites the melons and eggplants or crawls off to chew on the electric cord if not completely restrained. All babies do not do this apparently.
One more note, since K likes to get my reaction I haven't been paying very much attention but he has pointing out when f16s fly over, apparently on their way to bomb Iraq. He also noted that a big pkk guy was on our plane and that this was good as it meant the plane was unlikely to blow up. Luckily he waited until we landed to tell me. The f16s flew low over the airport right after we landed, apparently this is a tactic to intimidate the local pkk. Mildly horrifying.