Central Eurasian Mission - Week 4 - April 9-16, 2017

This week will be forever known as the "Week of Jet Lag - and New Beginnings".  I figure this has been the worst ever jet lag carry-over.  It took us from Wednesday  until Friday before we started feeling normal and able to sleep through the night...which was easier when we weren't falling asleep, standing up, at 5:00 PM.  It was also weird to move into a new living place.  The last time we did that was when we moved into Brunner Manor on Sept 1, 1977.  I mean, we've traveled a lot but we never unpacked our suitcases, or set up a kitchen, and had to figure out, "where do we find food?".. But we prevailed.

This is what I looked like when we arrived in Turkey.  Dad wasn't much better.


We were picked up by President Toronto (the mission president) and his wife, Sister Toronto - yep you're right, there are no first names here in the field.  They took us straight to the mission home, fed us dinner, and then we happily cuddled up with our friend, Ambien.





The next day we were in for a Turkish treat - a one day whirlwind tour of Istanbul - which is remarkable considering Istanbul has 14.5 million inhabitants, was a Greek city called Byzantium in the 7th century BC, and covers an area of about 2,000 square miles with a population density of about 2,500 people per square mile. Considering all of that, we only went to three places (four, if you count the lunch restaurant).

It was the week of the Tulip Festival!!!  We went to this ginormous park located on the hillside of the Bosphorus which is the strait of water connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara and, by extension, the Mediterranean Sea. (No, I did not get to put my feet in any of those bodies of water!!)



I have seen fields of commercially grown tulips in Oregon and in Holland, but they were just 'growing', waiting to be dug up and shipped!  But these tulips were displayed magnificently and in so many configurations that I could have take at least a hundred pictures.  Here is just a sample because you'd die of beautifulness if I showed them all.



There were many women and mostly no men in the park.  I loved looking at the clothing of the Muslim women as they wore all degrees of Muslim dress from a simple head scarf to a full, face covered, black garment from head to toe.  I loved these two women who were well covered, and were laughing and playing with their phones, busily taking selfies.  It proves that technology is for all.



Dad and I, along with ALL of the visitors to the park had our picture taken here.



And here are the women in our group on a classic horizontal graphic symbol of a tulip.



Lunch at a Lebanese restaurant (no Turkish cuisine this time) with the Pres and wife, the office couple, and a humanitarian couple who do work with Syrian folks who are taking a sabbatical from their home country.



It seems like we were served a never ending series of plates filled with delicious food.



On our way to catch our flight to Astana we were taken to two places.  The first, Ayasofya, was a Christian cathedral built by Emperor Justinian - in, maybe the 0' Dark Ages.  When the Christians lost the last conflict with the Muslims, it became a mosque, then when Ataturk took over after WWI, it became a museum so no one could fight over it.  It is big and beautiful.











This photo is outside of a mosque where the men are washing and anointing themselves before going inside to pray.  Oh - forgot to mention, but in the morning we could hear the call to prayer drifting out over our part of the city.



Second stop was the Grand Bazaar - my brother said I had to come to this place.  It is one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world (even Wikipedia couldn't say it is the oldest and largest, but I bet it is) with 61 covered streets and over 4,000 shops.  Sister Toronto says that after the recent civil disruptions that tourism is way down and that we were seeing a tiny fraction of the crowds that used to frequent the market.  Google it and look at the images.  It looks just like this photo that I took.

00 Pm

Then to the airport and off to Astana.  We left at 10 pm and arrived at 0'dark thirty just like traveling from Portland to Atlanta.  So tired and hot and sticky and sleepless!!



Out the window I could see a huge black area which I'm sure was the Black Sea and maybe later I saw the Caspian Sea.  Seeing is not as good as dipping feet, but it was as good as could be.

Then in the distance I could see the blazing lights of an overlit city in the middle of the vast steppe.

The young volunteers met us - bright and cherry - tall young Americans in suits and jackets.  We picked them out in a second.  We literally CRAMMED all five of us and our bags into a dilapidated car and drove off into the early morning light to our apartment building.

Ta Dah!  Third floor just to the right of the center white windows.  And now a tour.
































We unpacked and then went to lunch with the young volunteers.





We've done a bunch of shopping at the local grocery store called ANVAR.  We had to buy everything except a package of butter, some spices, tp, and hand soap.  We almost felt like newlyweds giddily furnishing their first apartment.  We also got a bathroom foot stool to act as a rack to elevate the microwave off the kitchen counter.

We needed to get business cards for when we contact potential partners with whom we can do humanitarian projects.  We had directions to find the print shop...."go down the street and just before the hotel on the corner."  But try as hard as we could, we could not find a print shop.  Pretending to be an orphan wasn't working, and we had to ask one of the young volunteers to take us to the store.  He walked right up to one that we had seriously looked at the previous day and was about to take us inside to "help us."  Noooooooooo  We can do this ourselves.  Does this look like a print shop? No!



And we did, the next day after I had looked up the proper vocabulary words and figured out what I wanted to say.  The next day.....voila!  We had business cards.  It was a big deal for us - our first independent transaction.



We found a Doner Kebab food cart.  Almost exactly.  It's like the trailer/cart is placed on the sidewalk and mounted on bricks.  The food is yummy.









There was a fun Branch activity on Saturday night - a circus from Moscow was in town and there were two unclaimed tickets which we got.  It was like an old fashioned eastern European circus -not like Ringling Brothers - which I think is out of business.  It was located in a big building which is called, The Circ - yeah just like the word circus.  I thought it would look like a circus tent, but it looks like an alien flying saucer.





Besides the fact that it was beastly (like animals...maybe circus animals?) hot inside, and smelly, with no ventilation -only very dead air - the circus acts were great.  Animal acts with a dog, a seal, a bunch of bears, monkeys, and flying parrots.  And there were all sorts of acrobatic stunts and trampolines, and swinging from ribbons,  Some dancing which was....... meh.  Here are some pictures.

This cute white puffy dog was memorable because when it was balancing on the person's feet, the band played the first few phrases of The Star Spangled Banner.  Go figure.



Parrots



Bears - I'm suspicious that they were the smelly ones.



The favorite of all us church members were these two pole climbers-or whatever they are called. They were magnificent with incredible strength and balance and agility.  They could be some of the jewel thieves from the movie Topkapi.





These performers were the funniest of all



Today is Dad's birthday?  How to celebrate?????  Well, we did go to the circus last night.  but I made him a homemade card - a rabbit, of course.



And for breakfast I baked a loaf of Artisan Bread, and banana bread in the shape of a sheet cake with a match for a candle.  Poached eggs too.  Imagine a trendy breakfast shoppe in a cute part of town...on the sidewalk.



Next week we fly to Almaty for two days for a Zone Conference. In Kaz there are two districts.  One in Astana with seven young volunteers and a senior couple and one in Almaty with four young volunteers and one senior couple.  The Kaz zone is made up of these two districts.

Then back here for a meeting with our partners who built the greenhouse for which LDS Charities provided monetary assistance.

Till next week...............