Bizarre Happenings

1. A couple of Saturdays ago we headed out to Mavi Göl (Blue Lake) to barbeque with our friends that were visiting from the Faroe Islands. The park tends to attract lower class patrons from surrounding villages but we like it and it's not far from our house. While we brought barbeque and buffalo chicken to grill, the family in the pavilion two down from ours brought something much different: A FULL SKINNED SHEEP. Yes, they were hacking off limbs to put onto the grill.

2. Last week, Zach went to eastern Turkey for work while the boys and I stayed in Ankara. One night, Eli was having trouble sleeping so I let him sleep in my bed. He kept rolling out of the bed however, so I moved him to his bed and went back to sleep. Around 1:30a.m. I felt something get onto the bed and I just assumed it was Eli coming back to sleep with me. I cracked my eyes open and saw THE SHADOW OF AN ANIMAL ON MY BED. In absolutely panic, I jumped up, flipped on the lights, and held eye contact with an enormous black and white cat. What!?!? The cat hoppped off the bed and ran up the stairs. I didn't know if it had come from the street and whether or not it was feisty, so I was NOT going to touch it. I also knew that the neighbors have cats so I didn't want to let it out the door in case it was theirs. I used a broom and a bowl of water to lure/scoot it into the bathroom and closed the door. I tried to go back to sleep but the cat kept crying and hitting the door loudly. I was single parenting and I NEEDED to get some sleep so I decided to close every single door (every room has a door in Turkey, even the kitchen) and let it roam so that it would stop crying and I could sleep. At 6am on the dot I rang the neighbors' doorbell, and sure enough, it was theirs. It had climbed over the roof and come in our terrace door earlier in the evening. It had been hiding in my house for hours before it assaulted me. I now dislike cats even more than before.

3. I donated plasma today. You may remember my experience donating blood last year. If not, you can read about it here . Anyway, I was donating plasma for the same Turkish brother who is fighting leukemia. While the process was a bit overwhelming and difficult due to my lack of "medical" Turkish language and the fact that their system isn't set up to accommodate foreigners, it wasn't bizarre. What WAS bizarre, however, was that while I was sitting in the waiting room of this state-run hospital a prisoner in cuffs was brought in. He was accompanied by four Jandarma (the guys that police outside of the city limits) with what appeared to be machine guns. They entered the oncology wing and the police stood guard the whole time.