All Grandparents live in Seskkinbakal

On our plane ride from Paris to Istanbul we sat next to a Turkish girl from London. She mentioned at some point that her grandparents live in Seskkinbakal and Atilla realized all of his grandparents live in that area also.

(The picture to the left is right after Atilla's paternal grandparents got married. His paternal grandfather has Russian ancestry hence the light hair, complexion and eyes.)

During our first week here we spent a day in grandparents land. It is astonishing to me that grandparents on either side of the family can live in neighboring apartment complexes. I couldn't believe how close by everyone is to each other!

First we spent the day with Atilla's paternal grandparents. Grandma and I cooked dolmas (stuffed grape leaves) together and then we went with grandfather to go to the nearby market. He is quite a foodie and so he has built strong relationships with local farmers. He goes to different people for different products. He has his milk person, his egg person, his organic veggie person, his honey person. It's pretty amazing how connected he is with the local food

culture.

Afterwards we ate a wonderful meal together and then we went to visit the Atilla's stepmom's mother and grandmother (their picture is below). The great grandmother is so old! She's an incredible woman who can barely breathe and so she sits in her chair and says, "Allah" with every breath. She was so sweet to us. She kept saying how happy she was that we were married and she wanted us to have a baby. Unfortunately, Funda's (Atilla's stepmom) mother fell two nights ago and broke her hip and had to have surgery. We visited her today and she is recovering. It would be wonderful to send your healing thoughts and prayers her way.

Upcoming posts will be of our visit to Baha'u'llah's home in Edirne (Adrianople) and the historic sites of Istanbul. We are going to take a road trip overnight in a few hours to get to a place in central Anatolia called Kapadokia. We send lots of love to all of our friends and family at home and around the world!

Food and Community

To the left are black radishes from Turkiye. After some time I realized that people in Turkey must really love their radishes because there were at least 5 or 6 varieties that I saw. Also much of the produce was labelled according to it's origin, which I thought was pretty impressive. I am, of course, very interested in learning more about how food is grown, shipped, and consumed in Turkiye. Luckily, Atilla's grandfather is very into his food so he's a good example of someone who pays attention to things like eating organic, fresh foods. I will have a whole post dedicated to our day spent with grandparents at a later time :)

Below are a few more pictures from the Tuesday Bazaar in Kadikoy. Fresh bread being made yummyyyyy... local nuts (not crazy people), Amasya apples (I LOVE these apples, they are tiny, crisp, hard, and very watery and sweet, unlike anything I've had) from Amasya in Turkiye. Fresh grape leaves are also plentiful. All of the food is so delicious and amazing!

The geography of Turkiye makes it possible for nearly every food imaginable to be grown in the country. In south western Turkiye you can grow hot weather/tropical foods like bananas, citrus, and tomatoes year round. Apples come from the central region, nuts and figs, apricots etc. seem to come from the coastal regions, radishes are plentiful as well as lettuces, spinach, cucumbers, squash, and I even saw celery root! The cucumbers here are soooooooo good. I don't know what it is but they are very small and so juicy and not bitter at all. They are also very cheap. I'd like to do as much seed saving as possible so I can have all these yummy varieties in my backyard.

It seems that there is a different mentality here about food. People still enjoy fresh food, they enjoy getting foods from nearby villagers and the demand for foreign produce is low. Domestically produced foods are certainly the norm, but they vary in terms of how local they are. Potatoes can come from as far away as Northeastern Turkey which is about 9 or so hours away (not exactly right next door). For the most part, it seems that the food education here will really be about introducing organic farming. It certainly is catching on and I have asked a number of friends here about an organic market in Sisli (an area of Istanbul) and many people seem to know about it, so things are certainly happening. I will have more posts about the food movements here as time goes by.

Atilla and I went to Feast with the Baha'is in this area on Wednesday night. It was so wonderful!! The community is dynamic, upbeat, and loving! We were invited to the Cluster Reflection Gathering on Saturday (they are having their intensive phase Jan 2-Jan 9) so we were very excited about going to experience this Baha'i community organizing elsewhere in the world. It was an amazing gathering, they are on their 19th cycle! The community is huge (750 Baha'is in Istanbul alone) and it is divided into two continents, so they have gatherings in many different places at one time (or else it's just not practical with all the traffic). They have the bounty of having many National Spiritual Assembly members in their cluster as well as 2 Continental Counsellors who live in Istanbul. We met with one of the Counsellors at the Reflection Gathering and she is such an amazing woman!! What a spirit!

We were invited to come to participate in some direct outreach in a neighborhood setting, so we went today and we had an amazing experience. Although I had to have Atilla translate things for me at certain points, I could definitely feel the love and purity of the teacher and so I could understand without really speaking the language. I'm so happy we got to be with the Baha'is here! Tomorrow we will go to Edirne to Baha'u'llah's home there and I'm anticipating it very much. It will also be my first time out of Istanbul.

I'm still learning how to work this blog thing with all the pictures and whatnot, so I am just doing separate posts to make it easier. I will post more later about our other days spent with family and friends. I hope everyone isn't too cold back home! Not to put salt in your wound, but the weather here has been beautiful and sunny, a very nice treat :)