Turkish Delight

One month in and I'm still here and still smiling, most days.

Of course, things are hotting up in many fronts: Harvest at home, harvest at school, Christmas to plan for (at school...not at home yet).

Mr Beehive and I had a glorious 72 hours in Istanbul only 2 weekends ago. I can't believe really that on Monday morning we were drinking turkish coffee in the bazaar in Istanbul, 24 hours later I was in front of the class as if nothing had happened.

We were a little down on our luck with the weather, sadly having two out of the three days with rain. But, not to completely wash us out, the final day was beautiful.

We walked for miles over the course of the weekend, drank far more coffee than we normally would, travelled by tram with our faces in other people's ampits (if you think the tube is bad in rush hour...welcome to Istanbul, probably one of the most crowded cities in the world!) developed a taste for 'proper' turkish delight and sat on the edge of the Bosphorus in the glow of the bridges lit up, for dinner. We both agreed that a weekend is simply not enough time to explore Istanbul and we hope to come back here again someday.

Then of course we were back to normality.










The barn is now down...the mess is still there and there is a very small amount of brick work that is now up. Sod's law has had us with a beautiful September and October, of course, the minute we have arrived at brick laying, the rain descends and stops play. We are desperately hoping to have it into some kind of liveable space by Christmas, but I think we're going to have to see what life brings.

We have lit our first fire of the season too. Master Beehive the elder brought a supply of logs in to fill the two baskets last weekend and both Sunday and Monday we resorted to lighting the fire. Sometimes it's not necessarily that it's too cold, it can just be that it's too dreary and grey and there is nothing better than watching the flames lick at the inside of the stove door to warm both mind and soul.