June 8th

Wednesday is the produce Bazaar (pronounced with a p instead of the b) it was the plan for Christine and I to meet Belgin over there to buy the necessary supplies to make a good dinner for Wednesday because we were having a lot of guests. Well plans never quite work out :-)

Tressa came over in the morning and we started to work on what we were going to teach at the English Speaking camp in Duden village for the Turkish youth. We decided that because Christine and my names are so similar that needed knick names. Yesterday while we were at Old Town when people would ask what our names were we would tell them and they would go “oh same name!” Also the double constant at the start of my name is hard for them to pronounce so my name is usual pronounced Karista (soft s).

After this Christine decided she would like to stay home and get the house ready for the evening festivities. Tressa volunteered to go with me to the Bazaar and the grocery store.

We first went to the post office and mailed a lot of postcards and a letter. It is always a little funny to go to the post office because the guy that is normally working there makes funny (exasperated to have to deal with me) faces. Well today it was a lady and instead of making faces and taking my stuff she handed us a pile of stamps and a wet sponge. So Tressa and I spent the next 10 minutes adding all the postage to the mail.

We then headed to the big bazaar and Migros. You all should be proud we found it without getting lost and with no adventures! We looked around for a few minutes and then met Belgin. She does not speak English and as you are all aware Tressa and I don’t speak Turkish, but we were still able to communicate fairly well. After our shopping Tressa and I had a few more items we needed to get, Belgin was just helping us shop for dinner supplies. So we waved bye to Belgin and she then gave us a weird look and signaled we were to go with her. Since we did not know how to communicate the need for her to take what we had so we could get some more stuff, also no way to transport what we got if she took the cart, we went with her.

So we walked home and dropped off all of the stuff and then we were saying good bye when she stopped us because we were out of Margarine. After Tressa further investigated, hand motions and pointing, we learned she needed it right then. We were walking out of the kitchen to go to the corner store and get the margarine when she noticed we were out of eggs, one of the items we had planned on getting already. So we headed to the corner market and picked up those items. Then we were off again to the bazaar and Migros. We picked up a lot of really good fruit and the rest of our missing items and headed home. Tressa took her leave after dropping all of this stuff off at our house.

Christine and Belgin in the mean time had made a really good tart with olives, dried tomatoes, and cheese. I was rather tired and went and took a quick nap, since they did not want me in the kitchen. When I came down they just discovered we were out of cream and a certain type of cheese. Off I went again, after some great detective work I figured out which of the white cheeses Belgin was referring to and found the cream. I got a thumbs up when I arrived home! Although I think the cheese would work but was not her first pick…

After this Reneta and James arrived home and they had also picked up some fruit at the bazaar. We all finished setting the table and then had a great evening of fellowship with some real yummy food.

Oh something interesting about the Turkish green salads is that they shop everything up into tiny pieces even the lettuce so it is more like s coleslaw than a salad. They also add a TON of green onions, dill, and parsley.