The Christmas Festival

 Merry Christmas!It's December 1st, and time for Christmas. So I thought I would start my Christmas season blogging with my first Christmas activity. This past sunday I went with my mom to the European side to attend Christmas Festival/Bazaar. It is always at a hotel, where there are two floors for the whole festival. On the upper floor there are stands, and people sell different things. On the lower floor there's people selling food from all different countries. So you can eat almost anything, Indian, Chinese, Thai, or Turkish. There's also people selling sweets and delicous Christmas treats. On this floor there is also a a kids play place and trampoline, and several choirs sing at different times. Our friends have a stand at which they sell ceramic jewlrey and ornaments. They sell balls, necklaces, bracelets, earings and crocheted snowflake ornaments. They are all very beautiful and very well done. The last year that we went, we just walked around and shopped. This year though, we both got to be behind the booth and sell the merchandise. It was a new experiance but it was very fun. It was very tiring though. We had to leave our house at 8:00, and we didn’t get home until 7:00 that night, my mom and I were both exhuasted. 



                                                      

Friday

I don't have a schedule for when I do my school during the day. However, on Fridays, I do have somewhat of a schedule. On Fridays I get to wake up a bit later, normally I get up at about  6:30 and start school, but on Fridays I'll wake up about 8:00. Sometimes, I'll get up about 6:40 and go walking with my Mom and my Dad. If I do go walking, then we get back at 8:00, and I'll will usually take a shower. After breakfast, I'll do my chores and then start school at about 9:00. We have really fun and easy school on Fridays. We sing a hymn and a folk-song together and we listen to the story of a music composer. Then my mom reads How to Read a Book, Ourselves by Charlotte Mason and Plutarch's lives to me and my brother. Sometimes I also have a science test, I'm doing Biology this year. That usually takes us all morning, and then I'll usually help my mom get lunch ready. At 1:00 my music teacher comes. She teaches me singing and piano, and she also teaches my brother and sister piano. We have a really fun time on Friday afternoons, first she'll give my sister piano lessons, and the she'll give me my lessons. I do piano first, and then I do singing. Then it's my brother's turn for his piano lessons. After my teacher leaves, I like to go to my room with a snack and a book. Right now I'm reading Lord of the Rings, one of my all time favorites.




                                                   My little sister Lizzie, learning piano.

Spring break

Last week we had our spring break. On Monday me, my Mom, my Aunt, and my two girl cousins went to the European side to the Grand Bazaar. We are going back to the states at the end of June, and so we went to get a bunch of gifts for all of our supporters and friends. I got a bunch of special Istanbul necklaces and and t-shirts for my friends. It took all day, we were gone for 12 hours. First we stopped by an olive oil shop, and my mom and aunt got a bunch of different olive oils for different supporters. Then we parked the car and took a ferry boat over to the European side. Next, we ate lunch at a really good restaurant. The next step was to take the tram up to the Bazaar, in Turkish, the Grand Bazaar is called the Kapalı Çarşı. The Grand Bazaar is very, very, large, you can't walk through the whole place in one day. By the time that we were done, my feet were hurting, and my back and shoulders were hurting from carrying the backpack with all of the presents in it. Later in the week, on Friday, we went to the zoo. We've been to this zoo several times already, and its a really nice zoo. Its not too big, so it's perfect for little kids, which there were four of. We had a really fun time, and we saw lots of different and interesting animals. I didn't take pictures of all of them, but here are a few.

 These are called Coatis. They live in South America, and they are adorable. We were crinkling some paper, and they all came running because they thought that it was food, it was so cute!

 This is a Squirrel Monkey. They are very small and they are hilarious. We saw a couple of them digging in their cage, but we couldn't figure out what they were digging for.

 Marmoset 

 

 Sloth

 The tiger that they had was really big. This is my cousin Rebekah, she loves tigers.

 A closer picture.

 A fox

A panther (I actually edited this picture.)

 Ostrich

 Zebras

 I don't remember what kind of fish this was, but it was HUGE.

 These fish had giant humps on their heads

 A wolf

Flamingos