Rumeli Palace

Well, this is my third time trying to post this message...so I may keep it short and add more later. We went and visited this castle last weekend. It was a beautiful day and the panorama was awesome. Micah tried to climb all the steps, but his nervous parents drew the line at the outer wall stairs. Too scary without railings! This was built in the late 1400s. Wild!

Tulip Festival

Wow...a river made out of tulips and grape hyacinth!

Beautiful flowers

Micah getting tickle time...the only way to guarantee a smile in front of flowers.

Easter comes late

It came a week late, but Micah got his Easter eggs in the mail and Mom and Dad ate all his candy. (choking hazards, you know). He played for an hour straight without even looking at us. It is amazing how big he is getting and independent. We can't believe it.

In our language class, we have 2 teachers-in-training. All three teachers love Micah....they dream about him and have photos of him on their cell phones that they show to their friends. It is crazy. (We took him to class on Tuesday for 10 minutes.) It is a borderline obsession. I'm sure our classmates are tired of hearing examples with Micah in them.

Today our teachers surprised one of our classmates with a birthday cake! Her b-day is on Sunday and they pooled together to get a cake and chai for the whole class. Wow! The cake had a sparkler and candles on it. Very fun. We all enjoyed a delicious reward to the end of a long week of cramming grammar. This week we had to learn 120+ adjectives and 150 verbs. Our minds are melting. Next week, we will have to start writing compositions. We've only been in class 10 days! It is exciting that we are recognizing more and more words on store signs and billboards. It is also impossible to fathom what else we could learn in the next 12 months! We've learned so much in 2 weeks....surely we'll run out of new things to learn in 5 months??? Or is there that much to learn? We are scared of the complicatedness! ;-)

çok kısa saçlı

Rick got his first Turkish haircut today! Pictures to come.

We figured out how to add Turkish letters to our keyboard...so we can type in Turkish! It takes some getting used to as some of the English keys get shifted over, but it is all in all a great thing. We have officially survived one full week (20 hours) of language and we are ready for bed at 8pm on a Friday night. Sad! This is supposedly the easy stuff? I'm trying to envision a whole year of this studious life. With daylight savings time adjusted now, Micah is ready to play for another 5 hours after we get home from our 6 hours of school and commuting. It makes for a loooong day. But, we are having fun. Tomorrow, we will attempt to find this amazing hill full of tulips. We have to find it before all the tulips lose their petals! Yikes! Time crunch.

Answers to yesterday's adjective quiz:

mutsuz ve mutlu (sad and happy)

çalışkan ve tembel (hardworking and lazy)

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!