A "Turkish Surprise"

Recently I've had quite a few 'I love living here' moments. Last weekend I took a taxi home from a friend's house with some high school girls. After dropping them off all around the neighborhood I gave the older taxi driver directions to my house. I was tired and my Turkish was worse than usual but he was very kind and understanding. When we arrived at my building there were street dogs barking and wandering the street. The driver immediately turned on his flashers and offered to to the door because of the dogs. This isn't the first time an older taxi driver has done this, wanting to make sure I get home safely.

Sunday I had another of those 'I love this place' moments. Some friends and I tried out a new restaurant after church. I've ordered delivery food from there before but hadn't ever been to the restaurant. We were the only people in the there and the owner/waiter was also the cook in the open kitchen at the back of the restaurant. Somehow, probably because I'd said how many people were in our group when we had first walked in, he pegged me as the Turkish speaker and directed all his questions to me. After our meal he asked me if we would like a "Turkish Surprise". Naturally I said yes!

He proceeded to turn on a recording of music and dialogue and performed a traditional puppet show for us, complete with belly-dancer intermission.

Turkish puppet shows use colorful translucent paper puppets and lights to tell a story. Afterwords we had tea and he showed us the puppets.