Caldwell's Worldwide

Home Sweet Home!

We're home! Back in our own house in Hermosa. It feels very normal. The house looks great! We are giddy with excitement at seeing everyone and just actually being home. I find myself hugging people simply because I know their name and they speak English and I'm just so happy to see them!

Sam is connecting with friends and juggling all the people and activities he wants to see and do NOW.

Ruby surprised Megan by showing up in her living-room at the first possible moment, they are inseparable if they have a choice.

Henry surprised Ben, then re-acquainted himself with long lost toys and spent an afternoon with Vaughn. He has been blissfully happy without a storm cloud in sight.

Jim is sleeping poorly, thus spending late night hours on the net, doing research checking out the job market. Plus he's working hard to get our lives back in order. His important papers (resume etc) are in his filing cabinet buried deep in the back corner of his office, the same office we transformed into a storage unit before we left. It's giving us great incentive to dig.

I'm happy! I'm busy unpacking, restocking, and reconnecting. The beach is cool, breezy and fun. The grocery stores are huge, overwhelming with choices, bargains, extra values... I've about got all the basics and have high hopes of cooking a meal soon.

Life is good!

Back In the USA --- Kaye

We are back in the good old USA, safe and happy to be here. 

We flew into SFO and were just in time to join an extended family gathering in Lake Tahoe for the 4th of July. Sun, fun, and fireworks with cousins, grandparents and friends. It feels so very normal to be here!

We will be home in Hermosa by the 12th. (or a few days before)

Life is good---K

Homeward bound!

Today is our last day in Turkey. Our last day outside of the US.  It will be filled with packing, haircuts, last walks through our little Turkish town, a last meal at our favorite restaurant, and mostly it is filled with extreme excitement to get back to our family and friends, our cat and home...

We will stop in Northern California for a couple of weeks, visit family, pick up our car and cat and be back in sweet Hermosa some time after the 4th of July. --Kaye

What have we learned?

What have we learned? Well I was proud when all 3 kids could sign a tab to our room with confidence; actually that was only tongue in cheek pride. We have learned a lot.

 

We can ask our kids about politics and the governments in Africa, Thailand, The Gaza Strip and Israel. Each will likely give a different answer skewed by their personalities. They can also cover the topics of Barak Obama, Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin. They have noticed how much they see of American President Obama on TV’s that are not even broadcasting in English. They can discuss religion in the world and some places in the world where religion is or has been against the law.  They know specifics about Buddhism, Catholicism; Protestants versus Catholics, Muslims, Jews and atheists as opposed to agnostics. They can correct me on Greek and Roman timelines and places, not to mention ancient weapons and mythological beings.

 

They know the differences between heritage, culture, skin color and religion. They can understand how important it is to belong, and just how divisive and dangerous these issues can be. They have opinions on gay marriage, human rights, racial conflicts and relations in Africa, America and the rest of the world.

We’ve had so many in depth discussions during this year with all our intensive time together. I think we’ve smoothed out some of our hard lines as we tried to discuss two sides of issues even where we think one side is the truth. I hope we have learned tolerance, and will continue to practice it.

 

We’ve learned to cook together, and try to identify flavors of the foods we eat in local restaurants to mimic at home. We’ve shopped in fabulous market places, identifying all sorts of things, some have been truly amazing and fresh and some amazingly disgusting.

After one week in Turkey I could send any one of the kids to get… a loaf of bread from the bakery, or some specific fresh veggies from the produce shop with just a 10 lira note, and they’d run off without fear, knowing charades might be part of getting the job done, and they’d come back smiling and tell the stories of how they communicated and how much they spent and how fast they made it home.

 

We now know that we are able to live in other places and cultures and how people in other cultures can live very differently from us and still be very much the same as we are.

 

We have all come to know, seriously know, how important our friends and family are to us. We know just how comfortable we are at home and how small our world is in Hermosa. We’ve been incredibly lucky on this journey in the places we found and the people we met. We are fortunate to have had the opportunity at this time and the nerve to have actually taken it. ---Kaye

Star Trek

We just came home from seeing Star Trek at the movie cinema. We loved it! The movie was in English with Turkish subtitles.

Funky theater, above a grocery store, no A/C and we were the only people there! We picked up candy at the market, and enjoyed every minute of the show. I may go see it again!

Turkey update: June 8th Kaye

 

Turkey is wonderful. I think is a well kept secret that is bound to get out. Peope are friendly and welcoming, it's beautiful and clean, it's safe and inexpensive and filled with amazing history at easy access.

(Downtown Cesme)

 

 

                                                                                                                          Our apartment on the other hand is pretty bad. Small, undecorated and the shower is not grounded properly so it can be a shocking experience turning off the water. We all now shower in rubber shoes and the kids refuse to turn the water off, instead they call me, as long as the floor is not wet, I'm safe. The location is good, with a few draw backs, it’s above a men's card club, directly across from another men’s card club, they don’t appear to drink other than tea, but they smoke up a storm and they are there from 7 am – until well past midnight, 7 days a week. And we’re around the corner from a small Mosque, their “call to prayer" speakers are right out our window. Informing us of the prayer schedule loudly 5 times a day. Good news,  the nice fellows playing cards below, toss up my clothes pins back up if I drop them off the balcony  clothes line and they’ve even tossed up an occasional t-shirt. I've yet to drop any underwear... but I live in fear with each load.

The food is great! We've figured out how to cook and also some easy good restaurants within walking distance. We're right in town, so we can walk to a favorite bakery (no ovens in houses here), a produce shop, olives, and a nut shop all with nice people allowing us to buy with charades or in pidgin English. All are very inexpensive. Turkish Bread = .50 lira  or 33 cents;  a weeks worth of olives for less than $1 (at home that many olives may last a year). Turkish breakfast = tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, bread and yogurt. Butter tastes like cheese?  It’s not so good!

 We found a favorite beach just outside of town, it has tables, lounges chairs, umbrellas, volleyball court, small cafe and a new baby kitty. Not to mention the beautiful clear cool waters. It's hot here but very Hermosa Beach hot, not Sacramento hot or Texas hot!

We've been out and about doing overnight trips to ancient cities. I'm surprised that the kids haven't gotten tired of them as they did of the Wats (temples) in Thailand and the Churches/Buildings in Italy (quickly) maybe it's the fact they are wide open and you can climb around and make your own discoveries.

            
Yesterday we took an all day boat out around the local archipelago with kids leaping dangerously off the top deck into the Aegean Sea. We anchored at Donkey Island and found a shy baby donkey. Cute as can be!

                

Today is Sunday, no school and no trips, just computer games, the big farmers market in town and laundry! I need to get brave enough to take my camera to the Sunday market. It's so clean an orderly and so not-Thailand! There are hundreds of stalls selling olives, nuts, cheeses, and amazing but limited veggies, mostly tomatoes (home grown, vine ripe) artichokes by the 100,000's, zucchini and peppers of many varieties (which are served grilled at every meal).

Last note is the TV. We have a satellite dish, it has most world news and many cable channels such as the all important Cartoon Network, but they've all be translated and dubbed into Turkish. We do get two channels in the evening of American and English TV shows that has Turkish subtitles but still in English. We have some decent shows, most not. We're all watching The Jon Stewart show regularly, it's a new favorite. We get Aljazeera in English it's our only English language news. We are all up to date on Gaza, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Obama's trip to the middle east. I watch the ticker to see that Nadal was beaten in the French Open, and hope to catch up Federer at some point. I look forward to watching Wimbledon in Tahoe.

The days and weeks are going fast. Everyone is in major count-down mode and very excited to get home and see everyone.

New adventures in old places -- Kaye

                

Click on these

      Kids search for their likeness' carved into the walls

 

June 4th --- We just spent two nights in the town of Pamukkale in a great little B&B. We are about 4 hours drive from our apt in Cesme. There is the ancient city of Hieropolis here, it is famously built beside thermal springs so heavily calcified that it has created a hard, white mountain of natural terraced hot tubs. For 3000 years people have been building and healing here. The latest building was a ticky-tacky hotel built directly on the white mountain. Sometime during the last 10-15 yrs the Turkish government recognized the site and made the locals tear down the new hotel and started preserving the area. Actually, the latest building is the tourist shops and parking lots, well outside the ruins and the calcified mountain. It makes it a bit of a trek to get inside, but there is hope that the area will be preserved and restored.  

We trekked through the sprawling ancient city of amphitheatres, temples, marketplaces, tombs including notable historic characters, then we waded in the terraced calcium pools. 

Click on these too!

 

They also have an ancient swimming pool that is still being used. On the bottom of the pool you can see giant pieces of Roman columns, some come close enough to the surface to sit or stand on.

(We opted out of swimming, because we were ready to head for home)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of Jesus’ Apostles, Philip, was buried here in Heirolpois, hundreds of years after they built the temple of Apollo. Most of the sites here have multiple periods of different religions and together they are known as the “original recyclers”. So the Greeks built (or the pre-Greeks)… the Romans used pieces of Greek buildings to build, then the Christians did the same thing. Sometimes by just renaming an entire building and adding a new facade and other times just dragging off the nicely shaped marble blocks to build a temple for the “True GOD(s)”

                                Martyrion of St. Philip

 

Speaking of Greek God’s--- About an hour from here is the ancient town of Aphrodiesis and the temple of Aphrodite. We spent all day there yesterday. I think it’s my favorite place thus far! It’s off the beaten path and fabulous. We saw only one tour group and a couple other stragglers (like us) walking through the entire site. The self guided tour was ~a mile long loop through some recently excavated and truly amazing artifacts. Temple, stadium, theatre and more.  We could climb around the entire place, it felt like we were discovering things on our own. As recent as 25 years ago there was a small village living on top of, and around this site, it was moved so they could begin excavation and restoration. My favorite moments were at the end when we got to a small acropolis type building, actually a city gate, where they have a lawn and sprinklers going. Again we were alone and the kids had a blast running thru the cool water. I will remember it forever.

 

 

Our Trip to Ephesus - Ruby

 

 

On May 22, 2009  Ruby wrote:

We just got back from an overnight trip to Ephesus. Ephesus is a three thousand year old city. It was both a Greek and a Roman city and used to be a trade center but later died out when trade moved from land routes to ship routes. It’s now ruins but was so interesting. We saw a huge amphitheatre, libraries, and old latrines or public bathrooms that fifty people could go wiz at the same time. Yuk, with a capital Yuk. The market place was mostly destroyed except for little tables and pillars. The gates were awesome and it was so old it seemed unreal.  I had a great time and will hopefully come and sit in the amphitheater as people did thousands of years ago.

 

              

 

 

 

     

      Caldwell kids as

      Roman statues

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Caldwell boys on

     Ancient Public Toilets

Knock on the Block – Henry

From May 22 2009

 I got a concussion. I had to go to the hospital. I got a CAT Scan, but about 75% of the way through, my sonic brain waves exploded the processor. They gave me pain pills. My head hurt and my stomach was sick.

PS. I was in the wave pool at the water park near Ephesus when I got the concussion.

 

Hoplite Henry Storms the Castle, May 20 2009

 

   

  

 

We went to the castle in Cesme. It was kind of boring. It was a very hot day. The walk to the castle from our apartment is about 2or 3 minutes. The castle was built more than 1000 years ago. 300 years ago the Turks fought off the Russians here, when they tried to take the port.  --Henry