Adana in July

With a strong wind blowing through, these past few days have been a little cooler with the high being around 98 or 99 instead of 110! At least when the wind is blowing, it takes 3 minutes instead of the usual 30 seconds before your skin reaches the boiling point. I think the only place on earth that may be hotter during the last week of July is The Neshoba County Fair! We are certainly going to miss it this year; a first for me in my 28 years and possibly even tougher for Jayme as she has grown quite fond of it. Both of our families will be there taking in the food, fun, sawdust, games, flea-market, horse races, beauty pageant, concerts - well enough about that. However, if the elections here in Turkey go array on Sunday, we may be home for the second half of the Fair after all. Elliot, save me some chess squares, just in case.

As I mentioned earlier, the temperatures are getting close to 100 everyday and they don't cool off too much at night, usually down to the mid 70's. The problem with the way the apartments are constructed is that they have zero insulation and they are 100% concrete. So in the winter they keep the cold in and in the summer they keep the heat in. With no central heat or air, people are forced to buy Klimas (something similar to a window unit.) The only problem is that they are fairly expensive, especially when the average salary is around $5,000. Therefore, some people opt out of paying for the AC and just go with sleeping outside on the balcony. I haven't figured out how they get much sleep since things don't start dying down until midnight and the sun comes up at 4:30am. For the sake of our marriage, we made the sacrifice and went with the Klima in our bedroom, as well as the heaviest, darkest curtains Jayme could find. When different neighbors come over, they ask why we have upholstery fabric for curtains.

Last night we were going out to eat with our neighbors at 8:00, which is late for us so we of course ate a pre-dinner dinner. Then they called and asked if 8:30 was okay. Then the wife came by and said, how about 9 since the husband is having a hard time getting away from work and we also have to go to the hospital on the way to dinner, b/c the 2 year old baby got scratched by a street cat two nights ago and needs one more shot from the doctor to make sure he doesn't catch anything. Knowing there usually aren't any quick trips to the hospital we figured we ought to reschedule for Sat. or Sun. When our neighbor agreed that would be better we quickly put on our pj's and were thankful for the early night in. Within 5 minutes we had another knock and she was back saying her husband was off of work so we could go. It was already 8:45 and we still had to go to the hospital, and since Jayme and I are way past our years in time-for-bed requirements, we stuck with the Sat. or Sun. plans. We also had other neighbors stopping by to bring desserts over. It was a special holiday preceeding Ramadan and they celebrate by taking dessert to their neighbors. We have just started the three holy months here, the last of which will be Ramadan. We were not adequately prepared as we had just distributed desserts 2 nights before and we figured we don't know any devout Muslims in our building so they probably won't even celebrate. What we didn't realize is that devout or not, (just like at home) everyone celebrates holidays involving food. We are still trying to get used to this culture and it will certainly take us more time, but somethings I just can't understand. How do you eat lunch at 12 and then not eat dinner until 10pm. I guess it's all in the 20 cups of hot tea they continue to drink, even if it is hot outside. Maybe we will figure it out one day. Here's a few pics of our neighbors making the best of their balconies.