A Typical Day

Pardon the radio silence, dear readers.  This household was recently derailed by the evilness of a nasty, ruthless bacterial infection that had me, in particular, knocked on my @ss for the past week.  But all is good now, thanks to the wonders of antibiotics. Score.  

Now where were we?

Recently an old friend reached out to me on Facebook to ask, "So, what are your days like there?  Like, tell me about a typical day."   To which I responded, "Well, it's pretty much how it was back in the States." 

And this is true, to an extent.  But then I realized I should elaborate a bit more, and what better forum than this here blog.

Humans, by nature, are creatures of habit, and we are no exception.  We have our routines, and just like we did in New York and D.C., we follow them.  It may sound boring, but when your husband is working 5 days a week, you, for the most part are working during the week, and your kid is in preschool 5 days a week, you tend to fall into a routine and pretty much stick with it.  A typical day for us is pretty simple--wake up, work/school, run errands, walk the dog, family dinner, maybe a tantrum here or there, go to bed. Rinse and repeat.

See, it's a pretty typical routine.  Just like in the States.  Except, we're not in the states.  Because there are always the little obstacles that stop and make you realize you're living in a different country.  Besides the language barrier, there is  for example, the journey to E's school where I have to walk in the middle of the street because the sidewalks here are used for parking cars.  I just listen for the roar of an engine behind me and jump out of the way before a car, or bus comes barreling by.  Or there's my afternoon walk with M-dog, where for example I use the Call to Prayer from the local mosque as my queue that it's time to take her.  Or that picking up food for dinner involved me standing in the aisle at the store for 10 minutes trying to remember the Turkish word for "chicken" while attempting to locate chicken broth. It's all those little things that add a little spice to the routine and make it unique.  And I like it.  I think we all need our routines, and we tend to create them wherever we are.  They're important to function, especially when you have children.  But you also have to adapt to your surroundings, which is what we have done.

Now weekends, on the other hand, are a different story.  Sure we stick to a running routine, but for the most part, we are always off on some adventure or another.  The beach, hiking, visiting archaeological sites, castles, you name it, we do it.  The weekend is our time to explore this amazing country that we get the privilege of calling home for 2 years.  

But then again, deciding we will explore every weekend is another routine we've perhaps fallen into?  If so, we enjoy it and wouldn't have it any other way.