First of February

The weather has been a combination of cold, wet and polluted for the past week and my boy and I have been working our way back to health after suffering from colds. We've been doing a lot of staring at the walls and trying to find fun stuff to do indoors. Our trips outside have been around our place and very brief. So when Friday arrived and we saw that temps would be all the way up to 10 degrees (C, or 50 F), we jumped at the chance for our Bosphorus walk. I invited my very good friend and his daughter along and we had a good time of it.

We stopped at the park, which the boy and I had only visited once, shortly after we first arrived. It was full of dead grass and cigarette butts and beer cans. I took him out reluctantly to change him on the grass and attracted several groups of young girls fawning over him and taking his picture. Now it has been transformed into a pleasant green space with a kids' play area and plenty of benches scattered here and there.

The boy got a kick out of the swings, but was happiest setting off on his own to find leaves. Needless to say, it didn't take him long to find a few good ones.

Running away, always running away.

Showing me his latest "catch". Ah, my, the blue waters of the Bosphorus right behind him.

He was very impressed with his leaf.

There is a restaurant by the park that I've never tried and always seems to be less busy than the more well known one down the way, so we all decided to check it out. It was a little breezy, but we found a nice table on the upstairs terrace out of the wind. And it afforded wonderful views of all the transportation going by. The boy was in heaven watching planes coming in on their final approach and all of the ship traffic as well.

Our breakfast view; sun and ships and planes and helicopters and buses. Oh yeah, and DOLPHINS!

There was something on the sweets menu that caught my eye. Something I'd been wanting to try before arriving here. The tavuk göğsü, a sweet pudding with chicken breast. Yes, you read that correctly. How was it? It was good! The texture is more on the thick side, but the flavor is mild and sweet and the chicken is in extremely fine fibers and not really noticeable. Apparently, it has quite a history. 

tavuk göğsü

Did I mention how much he loved his leaf?

A portion of our breakfast spread.

Our breakfast was good and filling. The picture above is the basic kahvalti, or Turkish breakfast. This one is a little on the thin side, but most items are available a la carte, so it is easy to add items to get the perfect breakfast. We ordered menemen, which is a tomatoey, cheesy egg dish and a borek, which is a pastry with any number of fillings. Ours had a simple white cheese.

In all it was a wonderful day. Then we got the news. It would have been sad no matter which day it fell on, but was especially depressing considering what a wonderful day it had been. I still feel so lucky to be here and everyone (save a few cab drivers) has been absolutely open-hearted and kind. So it felt kind of insulting to see the damage inflicted and unfortunately only ended up hurting the local population. We got the news right as we were walking back home. It felt good to get home and shut the door and be grateful that we were all safe and appreciate each and every member of our family. It is really too bad to think that among all of the smiling faces we see, there may or may not be one in there that means us harm. The best we can do is to stay vigilant and keep love in our own hearts and be appreciative of where we are, who we are and of those around us.