at the park

It was another beautiful day today.  I had promised Teoman we would take the car to a "different" park.  This park is about a mile away - it has lots of different play equipment, a big area, and picnic tables.  The whole area is padded with the recycled rubber bits and their is a sand pit which is partially cool and partially gross because of all the stray dogs.

Lozan Park

Zuleyha played with the kids, I mostly sat on the bench with Tuana - periodically nursing her and drinking my mocha.  I actually got sunburnt today - that's how beautiful it was.  It was totally relaxing and perfect.  The kids had a blast and when we got home they ate lunch enthusiastically and then slept fast and hard.

It's sort of like a zip line...

Tolga left for the field today.  I'm not sure when this happened, but between Tolga's travel days starting and his worry for me ... Tolga began looking at flight tickets for the summer.  I hadn't even bothered looking as the prices are typically double, his work is busy, his boss is pretty selfish, I wasn't sure about my job situation, we need Tuana's passport, Tolga needs a visa... and so on.

But then, Tolga found plane ticket for $550-$600 a piece.  I have never found that price even in the wintertime.  Maybe its the recent events that have scared tourists and flights away - but for us, this was a price that couldn't be passed up.

The trick was to buy the tickets before July 1st - I had been looking for end of July/August to time with the family reunion, and technically my last work day is June 30th - which the school loves to be inflexible about.  Tolga and I debate A LOT about when to go - it wasn't an easy decision because we can't predict our work situations for then and I couldn't focus for more than five minutes at a time on the task because of the kids coming in and out, fighting, or with questions, or the baby needing to be changed, nursed, held, etc.  Then my brother FaceTimed me.  Then my parents.  In the midst of all this - we were trying to figure out the best dates, the best city to layover in, whether to fly out of Istanbul or Ankara.

I need a passport!

But, in the end, WE DID IT!  We bought our tickets for June 30th to July 16th, on Air Canada (eh), flying out of Ankara at six in the morning (blah), layover in Toronto (double eh - it's over a ten hour flight from Istanbul to Toronto), a too short connection, and a similar trip back.

But hey, we're going to America, in the summer time, and I am excited.

As Teoman says, "First we're going to Kusadasi, and then America."  He's pretty excited too.