Fourteenth Post From Türkiye: Christmas Season in Ankara!

1,2,3 Wise-men!

The kids at church acted out the Nativity at the Christmas party. Our branch here in Ankara has a pretty good sized primary, but there are only 5 boys. One of them is only three so he was a shepherd, one was Joseph and so that left these three goofs to be the wise-men. They had excellent costumes though!

 Our Cub-scout Pack held the annual rain-gutter regatta. Trum made a good boat, he probably came in 4th. We can't be sure as there were some objections from some of the other entrants and their crews (parents) as to how many races you had to lose to be eliminated. Frankly, I'd like to eliminate the rain-gutter regatta. It is way too messy to clean up and surely the pinewood derby is plenty to get everybody riled up about each year. Ah, well, this is why I am not in charge of things.

I took my life in my hands in order to take this picture while driving. But I had to! I see these trucks all over. They come to your neighborhood and sell fresh fruit and vegetables. They are great! I just never knew that they drive around with everything just hanging off the back like that. Side-note: look at the size of those leeks! Enormous!

 I was so surprised by how there were Christmas decorations up all over town. It just didn't make sense to me, because obviously the vast majority of Turks don't celebrate Christmas. I was very confused until Jack explained that they were really for New Year and the tradition probably bled into the culture from places like Russia, Macedonia & Bulgaria where they go to church on Christmas and then put the tree up and give presents on New Years. You can read more about a Turkish New Year tree on good ol' wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year_tree 

This is the mall by our house. Notice the angels lining the street. 

This is way blurry, but it's the only picture I got of this enormous reindeer.

Insanely tall tree.

Truman by a creepy robot Santa.

Field trip to the aquarium.

 Annual Rowe Christmas party where we give people good food and then force them to take part in a sing-along (even if English is their second language) and make ginger-bread houses.

Truman's annual insane ginger-bread house. At least this year it looks vaguely like a house. 

View from our apartment with a bit of snow on the ground.

All-in-all a great Holiday Season!