The kindeness of strangers

Here at Space Camp Turkey, we live in a land of generosity and hospitality. Invitations have been extended to Sarah and I to visit people all over Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, and of course Turkey. Our travel possibilties are endless but our time is not. We normally have only one day off a week, but hopefully we will be able to visit some of our past students who live nearby. The hospitality in a Turkish home is great, and the food will always be the best you have eaten.

Family Visit

Finally the weeks ended and Tom and I had 2 days off because my Mom and Sister were coming to visit. Tom and I went to pick them up from the airport. They finally came out of Customs after an hour........without luggage. We went to give the info needed for the airport to deliver the luggage when it arrived and went to catch a cab to the Hotel Karaca. Once at the hotel Claire laid down to sleep while Tom, Mom, and I went for a walk and ended up at a pub and had a drink. We had been invited to a friends house for dinner so we went back to get Claire and headed back into the center fro dinner. It was a fabulous dinner. We had a yougurt based cucumber soup for starters, eggplant with tomato chicken and cheese topping along with a bean salad, green beans, rolled vine leaves, cooked peppers and zuicinni, and bread. It was a great meal and gave Claire and Mom a real sense of what Turkish food is. It was getting late and Mom and Claire decided to retire because they were tired form the flight. Tom and I then met up with our friends from camp and went out on the town for the night.

The next day the luggage finally arrived from the airport and we went out on a tourist tour. We walked around for hours seeing all the sights and ended up at the elevator thing. This elevator was made for people to get form a low road to the high road. We went up to the top and enjoyed the view and had a drink. Then we went back to the hotel for awhile before heading back to space camp. After giving the tour of space camp we went to a vinyard for dinner. The dinner was excelent. I had, for starters, white asparagus with a holandase-cheese sauce. For the main course I had steak emanse with mushrooms. IT WAS EXCELLENT!!!! And then for dessert we shared cheesecake with raspberry sauce topping and a chocolate parfe/mousse. Along with this dinner we had red wine, I forgot what the name was. When th night was saddly over Tom and I got dropped off at space camp while Mom and Claire went back to the hotel. They would be leaving the next day to go to the Greek island of Samos for a week before coming back to see us. I hope they have a great time and I will update the next exciting weekend of FAMILY SHOPPING.

36 years ago today we landed on the moon! 

Sights and Wines

Sarah's mom and sister came to Turkey to visit us here. They arrived yesterday and are staying at the Hotel Karaca in the city. We took them on a tour today. We ended the night with dinner at a great winery in the countryside. The winery's web site: http://www.sevilengroup.com/eng/

JOKE TIME!

Here's a few good ones for people who like bad jokes (i.e. Mr. Farrell)

What do you call a fly with no wings? A walk

A frog is looking for a loan, so he goes into a bank. He sits down at a desk and the name plate says "Patty Whac". He talks to Patty about the loan and she asks him what he has for collateral. The frog replies well I have this vase. He pulls the vase out of a bag to show her. Patty says "well thats just a cheap knick-knack". Then the owner notices the vase and says to himself "gee that's from the 17th century, it's worth tons of money" So he walks over to patty and says "Thats no knick-knake Patty Whac give the frog a loan".

Two sausages are in a pan. One looks at the other and says "Gee, it's hot in here." and the other sausage says "OH MY GOODNESS IT'S A TALKING SAUSAGE!"

A farmer is milking his cow. As he is milking, a fly comes along and flies into the cows ear. A little bit later, the farmer notices the fly in the milk. The farmer looks up and says, "Hmph. In one ear, out the utter."

A small piece of sodium which lived in a test tube fell in love with a Bunsen burner. "Oh Bunsen, my flame. I melt whenever I see you . . .", the sodium pined."It's just a phase you're going through", replied the Bunsen burner.

Good times

It is late here, about 1 am. I had habitat duty tonight. Habitat duty is when I have to put the children to bed. So I woke up at 8 am today, spent the day teaching and working with the students. Then at 10 pm I start part 2 of my job. Only once or twice a week do I have to do this extra part. At 10 pm, we make the boys shower and get ready for bed. Then, at eleven oclock, the lights are shut off and the boys make fart sounds for a while, then laugh and fall asleep. Sometimes the boys are such angels, and then other times they are, well, not angels. Tonight, a group of boys, some Turkish and some American, wanted to do yoga. It is against the rules to not be in the beds after lights out, however, I told them if they really did yoga and were quiet it was no problem. I checked on them several times in the 30 minutes they did it and they were great. When they were done, they went to bed. Techniques to get twenty boys to be quiet and go to sleep vary greatly with each group. To quiet another group I told them I would sleep in the dorm with them. It's fun getting to know these kids and finding ways to work with them and have them respect you while you discipline them. This week an astronaut, Dr. Drew Gaffney, from a space shuttle mission (STS-40) visited us here and has given several lectures and informal question and answer talks with the students. Good night...

Launch Canceled

The launch was canceled today due to a sensor problem. Maybe next Monday the 18th.

Return to Flight

The shuttle will be returning to space this week on July 13th. The launch is scheduled for 3:31 pm EST.

NASA sight:
http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/main/index.html

Like Baklava?

You will LOVE the recipe of the week (See menu on right) for chocolate baklava. Mmmmm, I can taste it just writing about it!

We are alive, but very busy. Sarah and I are working 13 hour days. Next week we will have more time to keep you updated. I am updating the recipe of the week. We are fine. This week we have students from Israel, Turkey, and America. We miss you all!

2nd Team

This last week was an awesome week. I had my 2nd team this week and we had a blast. I had kids from 4 different countries: Germany, Israel, Bulgaria, and Turkey. During the first couple of days the kids stayed in their respective country groups but they slowly started to mesh and by the end of the week everybody was best friends with everybody else. Alot of kids did not want each other to go and they exchanged e-mails, numbers and addresses. We had lots of fun this week doing simulators and learning all about space. It was really cool to see the change in the groups at the end of camp. It was good to see all the kids get to know each other and set aside their country boundries and have fun with each other. They graduated this morning and are preparign to leave. Tom's group, Sun, won "Best Mission." He was very proud of them. This week was the best week here so far. The next two weeks are E-PAL weeks. We are going to have lots of teams and a very busy schedule. I hope that they go as well as this week went.

Pamukkale and beyond

Last week, Some counselors, Sarah and myself went to Pamukkale which is 3.5 hours from here. We took a bus to Denizli, then a dolmuş to the little town of Pamukkale. The town sits below a very commonly visited tourist attraction, the white travertine pools and the ancient Roman city of Hierapolis. You must accend the hill near the travertine pools without shoes and walk on the calcium bed formed as a sidewalk. We walked the calcuim walkway up the hill, took pictures, and watched the crazy europeans. At the top of the hill is the ruins of an old city named Hierapolis. We looked around, saw a very impressive theater of Hierapolis built into the hillside. After a long day in the hot sun looking at the ruins, we wanted a nice dip in the healing waters of large swimming pool. It cost 18 Yeni Turkish Lira or about $15 USD. We did not swim because of the price. We stayed in a pension with a pool so we swam there. We took a day trip to another Roman ruin site call Aphrodisias. This site is well preserved and is one of the top sites to go to in Turkey, but it is out of the way so it does no get alot of visiters. Now we are back at work.