Bazaar Car

Look at me...I mean do I look just like a cute little Turkish girl going to the bazaar or what. We bought this little 'bazaar car', no i don't mean a bizarre car, but it's that too... I don't drive here, so this is as close as it gets, but they really do call them bazaar cars! In our neighborhood, every Thursday and Friday all the ladies and sometimes the men pull their 'cars' to the bazaar and buy fruits and vegetables for the week. They fill the cart up and then pull it home. They buy so many vegetables and some people have to walk such a long way, that little car is nice, let me tell you. Plus, no one ever buys as FEW vegetables as we do. They always look at us funny and then we have to say, no really, that's all we want. They cook with tons of vegetables here. I love feeling like I fit in just a little bit more. We stopped on the way home this week to buy something someone was peddling along the way and the women were so nice. They could not have been more excited to see us practicing our Turkish so well--mind you we have had 3 weeks of full time practice--so excited they gave us an apple for our journey. Just because. Here, have an apple. You never know what kinds of little gifts you'll find along the way just by opening your mouth. They thought we were German, not sure what we thought once we told them we were American. We took our apples and headed home, me driving our bizarre car.
This is my roommate Melissa. I don't think she's been on the blog yet. Welcome to the blog Melissa. Yesterday was her birthday and in good Turkey style her birthday started with a little power outage. It went out while I was in the middle of making birthday treats of course. I had to carry all my pans and bowls over to Katie's house and borrow her oven. Our visitors left yesterday morning. They'll be here in our city for several more weeks of radiation for our friend, but they're staying at an empty house for the remainder of their visit. Of course, the power was still off when they left, so they had to carry their suitcases down the five flights of stairs by candlelight! Melissa has an old fashioned lantern that they used. It came in handy because later in the morning our upstairs neighbors knocked on our door wanting to borrow a flashlight. We didn't have a flashlight to offer, but we surely gave her the lantern. She may have thought we were a little strange, but she gladly borrowed it. This may be a little treat that summer has to offer us. This is the 3rd time our power has gone off this week. Maybe we should invest in a flashlight...