Cam's Birthday

Happy Birthday to Cam!  Nicole took some of these photos and she

did a great job!  I couldn't choose just one.

The cake was yummy but ENORMOUS! It took us a few days but we helped Cam eat every morsel.

He's very respectful when I have a knife!

Opening the presents!

Cam's Day

When the children and I returned to Turkey in August we had to purchase 90 day Visitor's Visas at the airport because our Residence Permits could not be renewed before we left. Between the Gazi Park Riots, and influx of Syrian refugees, the Police, who handle such things were very busy last spring.

Cam has had few days off in the last four months, so our trip to Ankara to apply for new Residence Visas was postponed until the day before our Visitor's Visas expired. This is my take on his day:

7:30 a.m. Makes himself breakfast and coffee.  Tries to help me find a reasonably priced hotel in Istanbul for the weekend.

8:15 a.m. Walks to the highway to catch a ride to the lease because our car is in the shop

8:15 - 12:30 p.m. Supervises operations on location

12:30 Drives home in the rental car that has been dropped off at the lease for our use.

1:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Lunch with us

1:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.  Packs for Ankara and changes from work clothes to travel clothes

2:00 - 5:30 p.m. Drives from home to Ataturk Airport Istanbul

5:30 - 6:30 p.m. Eats a stale muffin and a drinks a bottle of water. Answers a "Where are you?" phone call from work.

6:30 p.m. Takes a bus across the tarmac and boards plane

7:15 - 8:30 p.m. Eats airplane food (eggplant and tomatoes, 1/2 turkey sandwich, vanilla pudding, water)

8:30 p.m. Answers second "Where are you?" phone call from Ankara manager while we are waiting to get off the plane.

8:30 - 9:30 p.m. Collects luggage, connects us to the company driver who is waiting outside the terminal to take us to the hotel, checks into hotel, ensures the kids are settled in their room, prays with them.

9:30 - 10:40 p.m. Writes daily report (work), answers emails (work), and talks to his Canadian boss on the phone (work)

10:40 p.m. Sets alarm for tomorrow 7:30 a.m. and goes to bed.

Fezzes are cool ?

Cam tried on lots of hats while we were in Selcuk and Sirince. The girls bought two of them for his birthday.

He likes the leather ball cap quite a lot, but doesn't he look great in the fez? Not everyone like's fezzes. 

In the gif below even Dr. Who gets grief for his fez. 

There are Mondays here too

We are trying to build some locations. Part of the challenge is upgrading the local public roads which vary widely in construction. Our latest construction project includes roads dating back over 4 regimes, the current republic, the Ottoman empire, the Byzantines, and the Persians before them. It is entirely possible the Apostle Paul walked these roads during his rambling around Thracia and Asia Minor. One stretch on our route would have been old then...

Generally, we try to patch up enough to survive by reshaping and adding stone, or gravel as required.

Today one of our contractors learned one of the ten commandments of dump trucking - namely, Thou shalt endeavor to be on level ground when dumping/spreading material or risk being forever remembered as the guy who laid unit #10 on its' side and bent the frame....

 

The driver will rue this day for quite a while, he broke several ribs in the incident , and may have internal bleeding...

Coulda been worse, he drove under that 7500 volt 3 phase power line with the box up to get to the spot it flopped over.

(posted by Susan ... photos and text by Cam)

Cimpe Kalesi - Part III Family Photos

 Some photos of the kids, Cam and I exploring Cimpe.

Cam

Sam - It's difficult to tell but we're standing at opposite sides of a narrow peninsula of land overlooking the trench. The wind was blowing so hard it was hard to stand still.

Nicole

Johanna - This one makes me laugh.  I took this picture.  Cam has the same photo at about the same distance but from another angle!

Susan - Cam and I are on opposites of the trench.  Saros Bay is behind me.

Following the kids.  They told me it was perfectly safe.

At the end of the passageway turn left or right. Be careful not to get your feet wet!

There's a window at the end of this passageway.

Sam going out and towards the light!

Just as I was considering how strong arches are, I made the mistake of looking up!

This rock seemed just right for posing.

Job Shadowing Cam

     Wednesday I went with Cam to work. First we drove from our house to BB1 so he could check in with the site supervisor.  After we came home, Johanna used Movie Maker to compress the video.  Here's the 6 minute version of that trip.

     After that we went to the D locations so Cam could swap pressure gauges on a couple of wells. The challenge here is to take the gauge off and put it on again without dropping it, the wrench or yourself into the  water filled pit* around the well head. (*It's about 8-10 feet deep and may contain frogs - shudder!)

Cam and the day shift watchman.

After this was finished, Cam spent about 20 minutes transcribing the data collected by the watchman every thirty minutes over the previous 24 hours.  Then we got back into the car and headed for Malkara.

We travelled via Sarkoy so the trip took a little more than an hour. We had lunch there with the surveyor. I made the mistake of ordering soup and doner and couldn't eat it all.  Turkish meals are always served with fresh bread and water.  Doner here unlike home is thinly sliced pieces of meat (lamb) served over a bowl of pilav (rice and small noodles), on top of this was a small pita cut into strips and 4 large soft french fries. I always order Mercimek soup.  It's made from lentils and is commonly available.  It's usually served with a lemon wedge.  It's rare to get a bowl of soup served piping hot here.

After lunch we went with the surveyor back to his office. His office consisted of a room about 20' long and perhaps 12' wide.  Inside there was a desk, credenza, an office chair, a high backed chair, two couches, two arm chairs, a TV, small coffee table and a water cooler. He left the door ajar when we came in. Two men came in while we were there, separately, and shook our hands.  One, Cam told me later, was the surveyor's dad.

After the meeting we tried to get our TOM TOM GPS to direct us to ING Bank ATM.  ATM's here are often in their own little mobile buildings, so it was not a huge surprise to discover that the ATM wasn't where the GPS said it would be. Then we headed for home - however we passed the turn off for home and headed instead for BB1 to check progress there.

We left home about 9 am and gor home abour 4:30 pm. After, we got home, Cam had reports to make and emails to send.  It's not usual for him to spend an hour or so sending emails and completing reports and then some days an hour or two on Skype with the office in Canada which opens about the time we'd like to be having supper and winding down for the evening. Cam's office is in the middle of our living room so we head to other parts of the house when he's working.

Wet Wipes

Turkish people are by nature often quite fastidious. They do not like their hands to be dirty. Turkish

people also like gadgets. Restaurants cater to this by giving out wet wipes at the end of a meal. The

wipes are packaged in various ways. The packaging is typically covered with the restaurant’s name and logo and possibly advertising for an associated business.

The most unique hand wipe we’ve seen so far came in a little puck. The top paper cover was broken and the liquid surrounding the cloth absorbed the liquid and swelled up out of the package dramatically.

Here it is unopened

Press down on the center

Keep pushing

The wipe in side will expand

Good, now take it out

And wipe your hands/face

And then put it back on top of the hockey puck it came in

These are wipes from different restaurants

In most restaurants, a waiter will also stand by the door and squirt a few drops of

scented water (?) into your hands as you leave.