Into June already! It’s quiet in
the hotel – eight or ten rooms in – but about what we expect for May. We have had several ‘old’ guests in, as well
as meeting some very nice new ones. We
also have a honeymoon couple and a couple who are celebrating 66 years of
marriage this year!
Down at the beach and in the restaurants along the front it is
noticeably quieter than usual – or so the guests have been telling me! I was down there this morning as it’s carnival
day today and still it was very quiet with few people around and even fewer on
the beach. Hopefully this will change
now as schools are out in Turkey
next Friday. Kaan already has his report
card – mostly 5s with a couple of 4s (grades are 1 to 5) and wants a pair of
Ray Burns as a reward. I don’t think I
need to give my answer to this…!
The end of school doesn’t help Emre who has a two weeks left until his
exams. Rather strangely, they have their
graduation ceremony this weekend so we had to go shopping for a jacket and
trousers for him the other day. Emre is
now 6 foot
1 and finding a jacket whose arms were long enough and that wasn’t huge and
baggy on him was a challenge. We gave up
any idea of looking for shoes in a size 49 (14 or 15)!
There have been various events organized over the last few days as part
of the carnival – beach football, tug-of-war, craft stalls and yesterday
afternoon oil wrestling. I am uploading
a video to give you a taste of this very traditional Turkish sport. I like the posturing of it – it starts (like
most wrestling I suppose) with the competitors sort of teasing each other and
showing off – but the combination of leather trousers, oil and grabbing each
others pants (the only bit they can get a hold on) raises some eyebrows amongst
those seeing it for the first time!
We are going down soon to watch the procession and I hope there are more
people about to support it. Then, this
week, we are looking forward to Frank and Hetty arriving Monday, Grant and Dawn
and also Andy arriving Tuesday and our trip to England in not very long.
