Miscellaneous

Things are winding down here in our little corner of the world. Ozayr's undergraduate students have almost all left. A few graduate students from the Cities on Water program remain. I am left wondering what to do with my last few days in town.

Lately we have been hanging out with these guys:

And then, while showing them around our trusted vendors at the Grand Bazaar, we accidentally bought this from these guys: 

All our last minute shopping is getting done - how nice are these prints?

The tulips were here - and they were staggering in number and beauty. On Children's Day in Istanbul this was Gulhane Park:

A week ago two kittens showed up on the roof of the building across from ours:

Worried that they were trapped up there we started throwing food for them across the passageway. We have since seen them safely on the ground, but they still seem to show up on the roof at dinnertime and the facade of the building is a bit stained with oily tuna marks.....

Ozayr went to a Galatasaray/Fenerbahce soccer game - and survived. I found this link under "football hooliganism" on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_hooliganism#Turkey

His pro-Galatasaray hosts had this shirt made for him, even though he is a firm Besiktas team supporter :-)

The children are busy as always, wandering the streets of Ole 'Stamboul and doing what kids do best:

A week from today we will be (inshallah) landing in Paris, where we have scheduled a layover of a few days to show the girls the sights. Maymuna has wanted to go to Paris for years, being a huge Tour de France fan. There was a lot of excitement here last week, when the Tour of Turkey passed through and she got to see some of her favourite riders:

We are lucky to get to hang out with lots of great people here:

So we're looking forward to doing more of that.

And staring at this: 

And so our last week begins. I am off to make the most of it! Will post soon! xo