Sunset over the Aegean in Izmir
Aside from this beautiful sunset,
the city of Izmir was a great stop on our agenda for another reason.
the city of Izmir was a great stop on our agenda for another reason.
Now, for those of you not in "the know",
getting posted to Turkey has been exciting for us-
for other family reasons.
As it turns out, Noah's great grandparents were born and bred in Turkey, for multiple generations!
They moved to France before Noah's grandmother was born-
but, Izmir was where they came from.
Now, Entry Level assignments are directed; meaning we really had no actual say in the matter.
They asked us our opinions, but really it was in no way up to us where we were posted.
The CDO's (the people who do the assignments) smiled on us though, and gave us Istanbul!
We were feeling very citicard commercial though,
and were thrilled to get to take our children to "the land of their ancestors".
A place they may not ever have seen otherwise.
Priceless.
getting posted to Turkey has been exciting for us-
for other family reasons.
As it turns out, Noah's great grandparents were born and bred in Turkey, for multiple generations!
They moved to France before Noah's grandmother was born-
but, Izmir was where they came from.
Now, Entry Level assignments are directed; meaning we really had no actual say in the matter.
They asked us our opinions, but really it was in no way up to us where we were posted.
The CDO's (the people who do the assignments) smiled on us though, and gave us Istanbul!
We were feeling very citicard commercial though,
and were thrilled to get to take our children to "the land of their ancestors".
A place they may not ever have seen otherwise.
Priceless.
Now, in this whole family history adventure of the trip I must admit that I wasn't able to find out nearly the amount of info that wanted to. We had birth years and city (Izmir) for numerous relatives, but actually nailing down more info of death records, etc. (I had hoped to possibly find a cemetary) proved to be nearly impossible with my limited Turkish. There is not the same amount of info available from Turkish records, and what I could find was all in Turkish. boo. In anycase though, we did enjoy making sure the kids knew the importance of the city. We took them by the water, and figured that if their ancestors lived in Izmir then and one point, I'm sure they walked along the water too! This was the closest we came to helping them cross paths with their past!
Now, sadly I also didn't do a great job of documenting our time here.
So, just to prove we took them-here is the only shot I got of our family in Izmir!
Out to dinner at one of our favorite Turkish places.
Complete with the following shot of Miles being loved on by all the wait staff! Just another day for him. He is quite used to being adored! I'm not sure what he'll do when we go back to America.
Now to make sure we document the rest of the "flavor" of the trip:
between Izmir and all the other fun sites we saw we did a lot of fun car time-
and some great outlet mall shopping! Who knew the Aegean Coast was so ripe with outlet malls?
They were everywhere! So of course we stopped into a few.
This one even had a great train ride that we let the boys take a spin on. Who said we aren't fun parents?!
As far as roadtrips go, this one was great. The boys, including Miles did an awesome job. I was very impressed with how well behaved all of them were. What a fun memory to have. Also, with all this airplane travel the boys do, I am so glad that we have the opportunity as well for them to get the experience every now and again of "family road trip". I am a firm believer that learning how to ride for hours and hours in a car together is a great skill in life!
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