Christmas come and gone

So, it’s been and gone for another year.  Yesterday I sat and did nothing and it was so nice after the rush of last week.  Here’s the short guide to our Christmas:

We had people round on Sunday for which I made mulled wine (and drank a large quantity myself in the name of quality control.  I also made a large quantity of mince pies, using a little pastry trick that a friend gave me that worked very well (lovely soft dought to roll out and nice crumbly pastry to eat).

We tried a new trick with the gingerbread house too - decorating the pieces BEFORE constucting the house.  It definitely works better as the sweets can’t slide off while the pieces of gingerbread are lying flat but it did feel a bit like cheating!  The finished house lasted until Sunday when various unnamed people started picking off the sweeties!  The cake, on the other hand, has survived in tact as everybody was too full to eat it on Tuesday (and – more importantly – the boys don’t like it).

Cem trying out the 3-d glasses

Fethiye is a pretty awful place for buying presents.  At this age the boys are too old for most toys and they have phones, laptops, i-pods etc. so there isn’t much left except clothes.  I did do quite a bit of shopping online though.  I thought that was supposed to be easy and stress-free?  Many foreign sites won’t post to Turkey so I used Turkish sites;  unfortunately some of them would not accept my UK debit card.  It took me about 3 days and a phone call to one of the companies to place the orders – and I had to pay the cargo company cash on delivery.  So not all that easy and stress-free really!

kitten - just 'cos she's so cute!

On Christmas morning we were pretty lazy – the boys don’t come in at half six any more!  After breakfast Cem and Emre had to go and do a couple of things and I had a chance to get things sorted for the dinner later.  We had that at the hotel with friends and Cem’s mum – only about 12 of us this year.  The turkey apparently tasted good, though it wouldn’t have won any prizes for presentation.  I used a roasting bag for the first time and when I undid it after just 3 hours, everything fell off the turkey!

I had made myself a chestnut casserole and actually remembered to take it to the hotel this year.  Last year I forgot it at home and asked Kaan to collect it.  In the final panic of cooking, stirring and reheating I opened the pot he’d brought me to find it contained stewed apple so I ended up having only veggies!

Turkey has been talking Christmas things this year.  Firstly, a Turkish archeologist has asked Italy to return Saint Nick’s bones (taken from here several centuries ago).  And Turkish scientists have been researching why Rudolf’s nose was red…yes really, and gained quite a lot of attention from all over the world!

And finally…..play the video – isn’t it great?  HappyChristmas and hope you all have a good New Year celebration!

A week of ups and downs

I said this blog was about the ‘ups and downs’ of life here and this week has proved it.

Here is the good stuff.

Despite not very nice weather, the Çalış Christmas fair on Sunday was a festive event.  The committee had worked hard to prepare, putting up awnings in front of the hotels and restaurants so the stalls were in the dry.  It started spitting just as Kaan and I went down there – about 12 o’clock – but the stall owners I talked to said the first hour had been very busy and it let up again for Santa’s arrival.  Some very creative people had been busy making all types of gifts and decorations from hand-made soaps and candles, cakes, pickles and sweets to ceramics and knitted toys.  We got a few bits and pieces and I sampled the mulled wine (had to go back for a second one just to check) – very nice and warming!  It’s also enjoyable because it’s one of those occasions that you bump into people you know; I met up with a friend for a coffee but also saw half my students there and even caught up with some people I hadn’t seen for a couple of years.

The sudden drop in temperature prompted us to bring the wood-burning stove back into the house.  We had ‘stove warming’ party on Saturday night and invited friends round to eat Turkish börek (pie) cooked in the small oven attached to the burner.  We have also been enjoying roast chestnuts – you just put them on the top of it and they cook beautifully –can’t do that with central heating!

Having got in the ‘spirit’ on Sunday, we went on to put up the Christmas tree.  It seemed a bit early to me – I’m sure when we were kids Mum made us wait until a week before Christmas – but it seems that plenty of people beat us to it.  Even our friends in Australia who we had a quick but lovely ‘skype’ with at the weekend had their tree up.  They were also sweltering in the midst of summer in Sidney; I know it has to be summer there when it’s winter here but it still doesn’t seem right to have a hot Christmas!

And now the downs:

Kaan got knocked off his bicycle the other day by a careless motorcyclist. It wasn’t a terrible accident – he has one nasty scrape on his leg and other smaller cuts on his arm.  The worst thing was that the man didn’t even stop to see if he was alright.  He was on his way to the gym at the time; I went there shortly afterwards by car and found him being cleaned up by the nice ladies in the gym.

The next day the hotel flooded – it has been raining a lot and when the pumps on the drainage station failed all the drains backed up.  We are slightly consoled by the fact that the insurance company seem to be being helpful – the expert was round that night to make an initial list, though we still have to check things like the pool pump which we can’t try until it dries out.  The worst thing is just the cleaning up job – once the water subsides it leaves mud and debris everywhere.

But the saddest news this week is the loss of one of our lovely regular guests, far too young and seemingly after a very short illness.  We send all our love and best wishes to his wife and friends.  Sometimes, the hotel and people associated with it really do feel like an extended family; these are people who have SEEN our ups and downs and watched our children grow up and we share their sadness.

Want to finish with happier things… a couple of festive photos to get you in the mood: