Spring is here!

Well, my dear readers, spring is fianlly here. The flowers are blooming, the grass is growing, and it's getting warmer. Every year when spring comes around, I love to go out and take pictures of different things in nature. I like to use different filters, and I'll also edit them sometimes. I thought that I would post some of my pictures from last year.

Oracles of Fire

I have recently been reading a book series entitled Oracles of Fire by Bryan Davis. It's a continuation of another series called Dragons in our Midst. The first series was about a boy whose father is a former dragon but his mother is a human, and so the boy (Billy) is part dragon and part human. All the books are very exciting and interesting. Bryan Davis is an incredible writer. I'm in awe of people who can create whole worlds; like C. S. Lewis and Tolkien. The first book of the second series starts right before Noah's Flood, and it continues all the way up to modern times. What I especially love about this book is that Bryan Davis takes a well known bible story and puts a twist on it. He adds dragons, evil spirits, and many other things. All throughout the book he slips beautiful Christian truths; different things about God's love, prophets, and despair with hope. I would definetely reccomend these books, they are just incredible, inspiring stories.

I have been working on my own story very little in the past few weeks but I will try to get the next chapter up sometime before the end of this week.

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 

Paintings and drawings

I'm not an especially good painter or drawer. I'm can't draw people very well, but I still like drawing. My favorite thing to draw are landscapes.They can be quite beautiful sometimes. I first started doing canvas paintings about a year or so ago. The first one that I did was a picture  of several mountains with a house and garden at the bottom of them. At the top I wrote, " I will lift my eyes up to the hills, from whence does my help come from." I really like the way it turned out. I decided that I wanted to do four different paintings of the four seasons.  I wanted to do one every term. This next one that I did was a spring painting. I drew a meadow with small flower all over it, and a little stream running through it. Then we had summer break, so I didn't really want to draw  one then. However, after the summer, I drew a fall one. I drew a path, lined with fall trees. On one side of the path were fields, and on the other side was a meadow. After that, I decided not to draw a winter one quite yet. Instead I did a love, hope, and faith drawing. Next to each word was a flower. Next to love was a rose, next to faith was a lily, and next to hope were bluebells. I got the inspiration from a poem that I overheard my mom reading to my sister (Lizzie). In the poem it said that love was like a rose, hope like a bluebell, and faith like a lily. I liked that, and so I decided to draw it. So far that's all that I've drawn. I plan to draw a Christmas one. I thought of doing one that says "Peace on earth, good will to men," or just "Peace on earth. Then I would put holly berries or some kind of Christmasy flower or berry. Also, next year, I plan to draw a winter and a summer landscape picture. Here are some pictures of my paintings.

                                                                  My mountain painting
                                                                             

                                                                       My Fall painting

                                                                My Spring painting

                                                       My Love, Hope and Faith painting

                                                  (We still haven't found a place to hang it)

Christmas Activities

Merry Christmas! Well, its been a while since I wrote, for which I apologize. I have been very busy these past few months with school and music.  I have just finished exams this week and am so ready for a break. I can't believe that it's already Christmas! I wonder if everyone is as excited about Christmas as I am. We have a lot of activities planned for this happy Christmas season. (I just love the Christmas season, don't you?) Yesterday me, my mom, Lizzie, (my sister) my girl cousins and a neighbor family (with adorable kids) all went to the Nutcracker Ballet. It was really nice, I just love ballet. I recognized most of the music, and even some of the dances. Another thing that's happening this month is that my grandparents are coming on Thursday, and I'm really excited to see them. I'll tell about each activity that we're going to do in detail as they happen. Now for some fun pictures.

            I'm the one in the blue sweater. The one next to me is my cousin Rebekah.  

                  The one in the pink sweater is my other cousin Heather, and the other one in pink is my little sister Lizzie. The one in grey is one of my Turkish friends, her name is Selen.      

                                               Here's the adorable kids that I told you about.
                                                        (They are adorable, aren't they?)
                                       The little one in the red dress is my especial little charge,
                                             I always look after her when they come to our house.
                                                 She's four, and she's just the cutest little thing.

                                      Looking at the Nutcracker that we brought with us.
              (She was especially excited with opening his mouth using the lever on his back.)
                                                                             

                                                      Waiting for the doors to open.

Summer!

Well, I had a really fun summer break. We didn't go very many places, but we did do a lot of swimming. From the end of June to the end of July was the month of Ramadan, which is the Turks month of fasting. On July 3rd, David, my older brother, went to America with his cousin to work in a camp. The camp was in Colorado on top of a mountain. Last year there was a fire up there and so David helped chop down dead trees and clear trails. Then he went to my uncle's house (he lives in Colorado springs) for three days. After that he flew down to Texas to be with our grandparents for a week and a half. Then he flew down to Florida with our cousin to be with our other grandparents. He'll be back on Saturday, the 30th. So David had a pretty busy summer. About two weeks ago, we went to the zoo. It was just the moms, the cousins and Nathan and Lizzie and me. We had a really fun time, and we saw a lot of really cool (and cute) animals. After the zoo, we went to the seashore and had a picnic. Well, not much else has really happened this summer. Next I'm going to be writing a post about my paintings. 

Cherries

 Last weekend I went to Isnik with my family to pick cherries. Our friends there have several cherry trees. We got up at 8:00, and by 8:30 we were out on the field. We had breakfast on the field and then we got to work. There's a couple ways that you can pick cherries. You can pick from the ground up to a certain point (then all the cherries that you can reach from the ground are all picked). Or you could climb up into the tree and pick from there. Another way is to get a ladder, they have really big ladder, some that they had made themselves. I did a little bit of each, but I mostly picked from the ground. I'm just a little bit scared on ladders, and I'm not very good at climbing trees. After several buckets have been picked, you have to start sorting them. Only a few people at a time do the sorting, the other people keep picking. I helped a lot with the sorting and I like it. You have to take out all of the bad, moldy or rotten cherries, and you also take out all the leaves. An interesting fact about cherries, did you ever notice that when you buy cherries, most of them have their stems? There's a reason for this, the reason is that the cherries stay fresh for longer if they have their stems, because they get water and nutrients from the stems. So when you pick cherries, you have to make sure that you pick them with the stems. We brought home two crates full of cherries and we made cherry jam. Here's some pictures I  thought you guys might like.

Breakfast on the Field.

 Picking time! Up into the tree.

All done! We really look tired don't we?

All the cherries are ready to be taken into town and sold.

I'm the one in the truck with the blue shirt on.

What you sow, you will reap

One day I was coming home from the park,when one of the neighbor ladies came out of one of the houses near ours. I didn't know her but just to be polite I said hello. She said hi back and then she asked me if I had just moved in. I thought that it was kind of a weird question because I pass her house almost every day going to the park. I said no, that I had been living here for almost three years. Then she asked me if we liked our neighbors, and I said yes. She kind of looked surprised and she said that she didn't like her neighbors. I didn't say anything, and I kept on going. When I got home I was talking to my mom about what the lady had said, when my Mom found out what house they lived in, she said that they had had trouble with their neighbors. My mom told me about a Turkish proverb that goes; "What you sow, you will reap"
This also reminded me of a song by casting crowns that's called 'Jesus friend of sinners'. One of the lines in the song says "Open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers." That's exactly what the lady was doing. She wasn't being a good neighbor, and yet she expected everyone else to be good neighbors. I think that another of the problems was that she didn't realize what she was doing. Sometimes we do the same thing, without realizing it. That's why we always need to be be aware of what we're saying and doing. Not just with our neighbors, but with our family and friends as well.

Bread

Two weekends ago I got to go to an bakery in Iznik. It was really cool. I got to see how they make and bake the bread. First they make a fire in the ovens, then they take the fire out and put it in a different oven, then they clean the oven. After that they put the bread in and then close the oven door. After an hour they take the bread out and sell it. It was really interesting to see the brick ovens. We also got to take a loaf of bread home, hot from the oven. It tasted really good. Here's some pictures from the bakery.