Back in the Saddle

Shopping With Ercan & His Posse

Yep...we are back in the saddle and thanks to SRJ's comment we are now expected to produce something other than sympathy and whines for our vast contingency of 6. We arrived in Istanbul about 10 days ago and were immediately smothered in love and affection from our Istanbulu family and neighbors.
Since we had been away for 4 weeks we all needed to catch up and make up for the "visiting time" that we had lost. Our first few days our friends were inseparable, even to the point of hanging with us as we went grocery shopping to fill our empty cupboards.
Before we knew it New Year's Eve was upon us and we were expected to be at Levent's house for a celebration that started at 6pm and ended somewhere around 5am New Year's Day...we bailed about 3am after exhausting our Turkish and dancing skills.
New Year's Eve at Levent's

Things have now settled back to normal and we are grateful for the chance we had to turn our Turkish off and power down for a bit in the UK.
Now, we are busy preparing for our first trip to the states in almost 3 years and keeping up with our normal schedule of hanging with the locals. Yesterday we pounded out an agreement with our landlord that allows us a discount if we keep our Istanbul apartment while we are in the states for 2009...the neighbors said we needed to keep the apartment while away...otherwise, they worry we would never come back.
Even though things get pretty smothering...it kinda nice to be loved to death sometimes.Levent and His Anne