Promises Promises

Ok well does it count that I did my first posting on November 15th and said I was going to update regularly? Well alas it is January 3 and I haven't kept my promise. Many people have told me that they are disappointed that I haven't kept an online journal like I did in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Poland. What can I say? With two kids life has become increasingly busy and by the time I finish up with working and taking the care of the kids I am too exhausted to write. Its not like I haven't been thinking about how I need really get cracking on fulling writing about our experiences.  I can't capture the full story on facebook right? So I am going to double promise to blog some more this year so if you want you can follow all of the adventures of our family.

So what will 2011 bring? Really not sure yet but we have lots of plans to see Turkey.  Work has gotten increasingly busy and the next few months I will be traveling a lot which will make for some hopefully very entertaining stories.

One of my best trips so far was last month when I went to Trabzon with a visiting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State to look at one of our youth programs.  Each year in a select group of countries, the State Department sends high school students to study in the host country and learn the language. The goal is to teach kids hard languages like Russian, Turkish, Tajik, Arabic, etc. We have kids studying in Trabzon and Samsun.  I was amazed at how great these kids were doing.  In three months they could speak Turkish better then I can after 10 months of Turkish! They are living with host families and attending high school classes completely in Turkish.  I wish such a program existed when I was in high school. 

Yummy hazelnuts!

 Vice Mayor and me with Silver shoes :-)

 Cay field in Rize outside of Trabzon

As with any visit we of course did all of our "protocol" meetings including meetings with the Governor and Mayor of Trabzon.  We received gifts of hazelnuts, cay (tea) and for me I received silver shoes from the Vice Mayor.  I also gave a presentation at Karazeniz Technical University.


What probably was the best experience was the dinner hosted by one of the father's who owns 5 restaurants in Trabzon.  We got a true taste of black sea hospitality.  The food was absolutely amazing..unfortunately I think our experience shocked our guests from washington.
Half way through the dinner they brought out hamsi..a traditional dish from the region. The city is obessed with hamsi and even have a festival in their honor plus statues...

Basically it is anchovies either grilled or fried in batter (they chose to serve us the grilled). When the dishes came out I was a little worried.. i don't like anchovies but i was also smiling because I reminisced about my grandpa who used to eat pizza with no cheese and just anchovies on top.  The various host parents proceeded to show us the proper way to eat hamsi.  They would just rip the little fishes apart and hold it up and drop it into their mouth like it was a worm.  One father even proceeded to feed it by hand into our washington visitor's mouth she graciously decided not to open her mouth.  I on the other hand just smiled and swallowed :-)