From the easy life...to the busy busy busy life!

We started our formal language classes on Monday and our heads are already swimming. Our teacher told the class yesterday that there was no time in class to learn vocabulary, so she is just giving us monstrous vocab sheets each night (100+ words) and telling us to learn them at home! We are feeling pretty good so far as the grammar is a review of what we learned with our tutor. We are going to be scrambling by the end of next week when it is all new though. To change things up a bit and help us study our opposite adjectives, we decided to make a photo slideshow. See if you can guess the opposites below! ;-)
Micah also learned something new this past week: point to your teeth! (he points to ours instead, but he gets the idea).

Happy Easter!

What a beautiful day today! It was a little chilly for the son-rise service, but the music and chasing Micah around the garden warmed us up. Miraculously, Micah made it through three morning services, breakfast, and a special Filipino lunch of spring rolls, rice, etc before collapsing for his afternoon nap. We had a leisurely evening talking with family on Skype and playing with Micah's cars. Yesterday, we went to another park near the Blue Mosque and took photos of tulips! We have heard there is a huge park hill 25 min. north of us that is covered in tulips...so we'll have to try to scout that out this week before they finish blooming.


Micah schmoozed some teenagers with his budding Turkish skills and proved that he will be an adventurer just like his parents as he adventured through the park practicing his mad walking skills w/o worrying if Mom and Dad could keep up.


And another unexpected delight....we have CornNuts!

Field trips

Here are our latest discoveries...

The gate to the palace we went to last Saturday. Imagine the inside! (Cameras prohibited).

Micah's first soccer ball ("top" in Turkish) and the monkey backpack he's fallen in love with.

The first time Micah kept his cap and shades on long enough for a photo - his "tourist outfit".

Two guys that work at the park cafe near our apartment. Micah loved the guy on the left...he kind of looks like Uncle David? We're not sure why they took such a liking to each other, but Micah ran right up to him and Ali gave him lots of love. Turks love little kids and to our surprise, Micah loved this guy right back!

DDR

We have been busy, so busy (to quote Thomas the Tank Engine). Here are some of Micah's latest dance grooves. It's nearly midnight Wednesday night - the latest we've been up (on purpose) since we've gotten here. We hosted some lovely new friends for dinner and attempted to pick out the Turkish words we knew from their animated conversation. We are exhausted, but excited to learn more so that we can more actively participate in conversation. Tomorrow is our last tutor lesson before we start official classes next Monday. We are supposed to have our average day memorized in present and past tense. Good thing we have a long bus commute to work on it!

emerging from the sick bed

Well...the whole family had a case of the runs this week and the blog author is the last to come out of it. The joys of adjusting to a new country...in more ways than one.

We decided to celebrate a potentially healed family and a beautiful day with a trip to the palace that the Father of Modern Turkey once lived in. $14 for everyone except students...who pay $.80. Are we ever glad we signed up for our university language classes this week!

We weren't allowed to take photos inside, so here's a glimpse into what it was like from a 15 month old's point of view...

"Wow! That light thing they call a shand-y-leer in the ceiling is sooooooooooo big. This room is great. I can run up and down the red carpets and nobody gets in my way....plenty of space for everyone!"

10 minutes later...

"This room looks a lot like that last room. Who could sit on this furniture? I like looking at all these pretty colors though."

3 minutes later...

"Why are we still here?? How do we get out of here? Where is my snack? Where is my crib? Why don't mommy and daddy take me home?"

And that was the end of our nice family trip to the palace. Rick stayed for part 2 of the tour and Micah & Steph fled home for a mutual nap.

Tulip Time?

What day is it?

Indeed, the tulips are already blooming here! It is way too cold for Micah to put on a little Dutch-boy outfit, but we can still take our annual tulip photos.

We did get our furniture this week! Hooray! We immediately hosted a cultural orientation for some short term folk and ourselves with our friend who has been here 9 years. An excellent opportunity to break in the new couches, dining room table, and a couple recipes from my 'how to survive with metric and foreign products cookbook'. Awesome.

How can you not love this face? Micah is cracking us up daily. It is so fun.

We also received our first package today! It took 10 days to get here and arrived right to our door. Micah now has magnets to hide under the fridge. Hopefully I can keep enough hidden to still be able to spell things when he gets to that phase of development. For now, we'll be excited about Q, Z, and W...letters we don't use often in age 2 vocab.

Okay...I had to take this photo because it made me laugh...daBears daBulls DaCubs dahill. There are Chicagoans even here! (The park we went to is on a hill.)

First haircut!

To the tune of Thomas the Tank Engine, a kazoo, and a tube of orajel to suck on, Micah had his first ever haircut. We all survived without blood and he looks like a cute little man now.