Back to school!

 For the first time in 1.5 years, the boy started in-person school 5 days a week! Despite being sad about summer coming to an end, they were excited to go back to school. 

We drove the boys in on the first day and they started riding the bus home that afternoon.  Caleb is in 4th grade in Miss Wilson’s class, and Benjamin is in 3rd grade in Miss Olsen’s class. Both boys had friends from last year in their classes and have made some new friends already. They had a great first day and week, and we were happy to see how comfortable they were to be there. We pray school can stay open this year,  and we are excited about the year ahead for them.

Amasra Black Sea Coast

A couple of weeks ago, we visited the small beach town of Amasra on the Black Sea for a long weekend. We read about this town online as a less popular tourist location with nice beaches, and it did not disappoint. 

This is the view from our AirBnB. It was a small apartment on the top floor of an old building. It had two bedrooms and a large balcony overlooking the sea.

View down the street from our building.

Our apartment was the top level of this building.

Knowing the following day was supposed to be rainy, we got into our swimsuits and headed right to the beach. The town is on two small harbors, the small harbor and the big harbor. The view from our apartment was of the small harbor right across the street, and the big harbor, where we went to the beach, was only about 300 meters away. The beach had a great setup with chairs and umbrellas for rent, bathrooms and showers, and a small restaurant.

It was crowded, there were many families out enjoying the nice day. Turkey gets a lot of foreign tourists, but here we only heard Turkish being spoken, and came to find out that this is a popular local tourism location. And another great opportunity to practice Turkish for me!

Eliza really warmed up to the beach this trip. She had a lot of fun playing in the water and splashing around.

This boy loves to swim and would stay in the water all day if he was able!

Caleb especially enjoys being buried in the sand.

These three have a lot of fun together, we are so thankful for their sweet sibling bond.

The beach cleared out and we were able to move to seats right in front of the water and relax while the kids played.

We dried off and walked to a restaurant on the small harbor for dinner. Amasra is well-known for it’s fish, so we went somewhere Nathan could get good fish (the rest of us are not big seafood fans). As we ate dinner on the water, we watched a beautiful sunset.

The kids shared a room with 3 beds. We woke in the morning to Eliza sleeping on the floor after falling out of bed. It was hot and there were no fans, and with the windows open you could hear dogs barking loudly all night, but we all slept.

As anticipated, the next morning we woke up to cloudy, grey skies. It was calming to drink coffee on the balcony and watch the storm clouds come in from over the sea. They came in very quickly and we eventually had to go inside due to a strong wind storm that started blowing things around the balcony!

We waited for the rain to subside a little and walked across the street for breakfast. There was a delicious family-owned restaurant right across the street from our apartment and we ate delicious Turkish food!

The rain stopped and it was a good day to explore the town. This was a museum across from our house. We didn’t go in, but looked at the ancient columns as we walked by.

The roads of the town were cobblestone and narrow. We almost booked a place on the peninsula (through the tunnel ahead) and was glad we didn’t. Our car may not have fit through it!

Walking over the bridge to the peninsula.

Caleb and I got some burned corn on the cob from a street vendor. It was tasty!

Creative pots for plants :)

This is Rabbit Island, right off the coast.

We hiked up a trail next and got a great view of both harbors.

The kids were great walkers this day!

Nathan took a lot of these pictures. He has a good eye :)

Hiking back down

We stopped at an art market on the way back. 

Then got some coffee and snacks while the kids played at the park.

We stopped at some rocks to see a different view of the the small harbor.

Then we went back to the beach for one last swim since the sun came back out. To our surprise, it was very crowded.

Nathan took the boys back out for sunset.

View from our apartment 

We ate breakfast at the Turkish restaurant the next morning then headed back to Ankara. It was a fun long weekend away and great to explore another new place!