1 Week Down 103 to Go

Following in the tradition of some other great FSO bloggers I am going to record my first impressions of Istanbul here while they are nice and fresh! Oh what a difference a week makes! First main impression- WE LOVE IT HERE! We think we have officially been spoiled rotten. Any future post we go to is going to have a lot to live up to! Of course, we kind of knew that going in I guess. Istanbul is a pretty amazing city, there is just no way around it-and we knew we were lucky the minute they called our name! Istanbul is quite a mix we have decided. It truly is where East meets West. One day in Turkey was enough motivation to make me want to learn Turkish-and fast! We've been bumbling our way through I guess, but the sooner we get better at it the better! We did successfully manage to buy me a cell phone and pay as you go sim card without the aid of anyone along with us, so I was very proud of us for that. I do have to say though-THANK GOODNESS for other friends at the Consulate who DID get language training:) We have made some awesome friends already, and had quite a busy week in fact full of dinner invites! Everyone we have met have just been awesome, and we are truly considering ourselves ultra lucky to be here with these folks. I can now say hello, goodbye, thank you, yes, no, good, "no, don't need" (that one I learned from our neighbor who took us to the local market), and "imza" (meaning we need to sign for it, they always try to run our card with a pin number-and that only works at ATMs here) We have used our card a bit here, but are planning to just go to a more "cash only" mentality. I also can now successfully call for a taxi to our door, and have learned to just write where you want to go on a little piece of paper for the driver-no Turkish needed! Also, taxi drivers drive much faster after dark!! I don't know why, but there was a large difference it seemed to us! We have also discovered another potentially useful thing to us-and that is, if they don't speak English, there is a slightly higher chance that they might speak French. This did help us out last week when a guy came to set up our phone line. The English/Turkish/Handgesture language we were trying wasn't quite cutting it, so he asked me if I spoke French. Aha! I said no, but I would call my husband who DID!! yay!! They worked it out brilliantly on the phone, and we were all set! phew. Noah saves the day again:) We are getting used to cooking our clothes and dishes at 70 degrees Celsius for 3 hours each, and I am trying to remember to empty the water that collects from the dryer after each use! They have mopeds that deliver food for EVERYTHING it seems, and they zoom in and out-I'll have to be very careful to watch out for them. We even saw that McDonalds delivers this way! (unfortunately, McDonalds does not taste the same here though. Their chicken nuggets have a different coating and texture entirely. But, at least we won't be motivated to eat there nearly so often! We've eaten our fair share there this year! Turks LOVE children, and the boys have gotten plenty of attention! They have not been too overly touchy with them though-which I've heard is a problem in other parts of the world, so that's been great. Mostly, everyone just likes to play with them, like peekaboo and give lots of verbal ooos and awes, and what I can only assume are "your children are beautiful" comments. Oh yes, and they also give them food and toys they minute they walk in the door:) Not too shabby! Well, I think that is enough of my thoughts for now. I'm tired of typing, so I'm sure you all are tired of reading! More to come another time though...life is good. We are happy and grateful. We are where we are supposed to be, living in this beautiful city full of fantastic food, history, beaches, sights and sounds.