You learn something new everyday

My host Ilhan has been reading my journal and pointed out that readers in the US might not have their web browsers enabled to read the Turkish characters. These include a C with a tail (pronounced "ch"), S with a tail ("sh"), U with two dots above, O with two dots above, lowercase i without a dot, and uppercase I with a dot (as in Istanbul, Iskenderun, and Ilhan).

So while Ilhan watched the Turkish version of "The Apprentice", he kindly let me use his computer to correct my characters. Tesekkur ederim, Ilhan.

Today was another eventful day. We saw the old Roman road in Tarsus, as well as St. Paul's Well, St. Paul's Church, an American high school in Tarsus, and a glass bottling plant, the only one of its kind in Turkey. We had lunch next to a tranquil and colorful waterfall.


Soda Sanayi bottling plant. Here they're making ketchup bottles.

This evening we had dinner at a Mersin tennis club with representatives from the Chamber of Commerce.

Food continues to be a popular topic. Last night, Lisa's host Tufan had us over for dinner, and his wife baked a delicious chocolate cake whose secret, she said, was to soak it in cold milk. She gave Lisa the recipe, measured in increments of Turkish cay glasses. At the end of the recipe, she wrote "then give to Victor to taste".

The attendees at Tufan's house on Tuesday night also teased me for skinning a fried with with my silverware. They joked that "he must be high society, not like us who live downtown". I tried to reply in Turkish, "hayir" (no) ... which sounds like "higher"! Higher society!

On Wednesday afternoon (after the glass factory) we visited Tufan's father's farm outside Mersin. He has dogs named Hammer and Cafe who monitor the farm. Tufan's father didn't catch my name at first, but once someone introduced me as "Victor Hugo" he got it and proceeded to put Lisa and me to work picking "yeni dunya" ("new word"), a Maltese plum.

Delicious!