Birthday Party

I always say that everyday while living in Turkey is an adventure. We seem to have an extreme high and an extreme low and everything inbetween daily. Today one of our members invited us to her home to a birthday party that she was giving for her neice Elif. She said there would be several friends, her mother and sister, her two neices and another mother of one of her friends. We were excited all day for this adventure. At 6 pm we decided to leave our apartment and head for the street where Meric (our church member) was going to pick us up to take us to her home. As we were shutting the door I said to Du "Do you have the keys?" He realized he didn't just as the door to our apartment closed locking us out. . . .So begins another adventure. Since Meric was picking us up and the party was at her house we decided to forget it for the time being and hopefully get in somehow when we got home. Du also said that he did have our church keys and if worse came to worse we could sleep at the church. Oh, okay Du! So off to the party we went.

These women welcomed us and were some of the nicest people I have met. This is Meric's Mother and she is so darling. She is also a Dr. and just the nicest person.

This is Meric's beautiful sister and her two beautiful young daughters. The one on the left was just getting over food poisoning and was not to lively this nite. Her name is Zenhep. The girl on the right is Elif and it is her party.

this is me with the sister and her two daughters. I am still the shrimp of the gatherings. Everyone at the party was taller than me again.

Oh yeah! it look likes I am taller than the mother.

This sweet lady put her arm around me and gave me the sweetest hug and of course I got a little teary. It was so sweet, but it also made me homesick for the hugs of my family. I do miss the hugs of everyone.

They celebrate birthdays just like we do. With a birthday cake and candles and singing happy birthday, although it was sung in Turkish. It sounded great.

Meric and Elif

Can you see the beautiful feeling these new friends have in their eyes. I just love them.

I thought this picture of Du and Elif was about as sweet a picture as you can get.

About 9:30 we told Meric that we ought to go home so we could work on getting in our apartment. She helped us call someone to meet us at the apartment. Since we got there before the locksmith Du said he wanted to try to get in by himself. So he borrowed a credit type card from Meric and headed up to the apartment while Meric and I stayed downstairs and waited for the locksmith.

In just a few minutes Du had successfully unlocked the door and got us inside. Hooray for those spy skills he is so good at. So without to much effort we were back in our apartment safe and sound, Meric was on her way home, and a disappointed locksmith had to be turned away. All in all it was a great day.