Day to day: getting a hair cut, buying new glasses, window washing

One small disclaimer: I have no idea how getting a hair cut and buying new glasses is supposed to work in Turkey, but I can tell you how it works for us.

Johanna in the chair - surrounded by well - everyone!

Precision work

Nicole, Johanna and I have been getting our hair cuts at the same salon since we got here. Finding someone new to cut your hair, even when you speak the same language can include lots of trial and error. However, when Johanna wanted a hair cut right before Christmas we didn't have any choice but to find someone new.  The shop we usually go to was open, but our hairdresser, a Turkish fellow was, according to his mom, in Canakkale with his son at the doctor's office. (When I went back a week or so ago to get a hair cut, he was still absent.)

Anyway, we walked up the hill to another salon, I'd noticed sometime ago. They waved us in and got busy.  Johanna brought a photo and got just the wash, cut and blow dry she wanted for the princely sum of CAD$7.50.  There are two kinds of women's salon's in Turkey;  many have big uncovered windows and at the other kind, the windows and doors are carefully covered, so you can't see what's going on inside.  As I understand it, religious Muslim women don't allow men to cut their hair or see them with their hair uncovered, so the shuttered shops allow them some privacy.

I have reached that exciting age where I need glasses to read most days. I was so excited when I was at home in Canada over the summer to discover a pair of readers for C$5.00 on sale at Canadian Tire.  Unfortunately, they were my one and only pair so when I broke them before Christmas I was annoyed.  Cam and his English/Turkish speaking colleague took me into a shop selling eye glasses and I took the prescription for readers that my eye doc in Canada had given me in July.  I don't usually buy prescription readers, but the glasses shop doesn't sell readers so this was the next best thing.  The downside is that the glasses with frames new lenses and special tint for computer work cost CAD$60.00 - way more than generic Canadian Tire readers are at full price, but way less than prescription readers would be at home.

Clean windows - no fear