CHRISTMAS IS COMING

Christmas is coming…😀 my favorite time of the year. I just simply love Christmas. I love all about it, the atmosphere, the quiet streets covered in snow (if there is 😊 and hopefully there will be) , the trees and bushes, the silently chirping birds, the special lights in the streets....

....the specially decorated shop windows, the Christmas goods which are coming in red, gold, green, silver and all kinds of glittering colours and sequins....

.... the greeting cards and post cards.

..and this time you can buy lots of soft,fluffy things in the shops, like slippers, gloves, knitted hats and the colourful socks which are hanged on the mantelpiece in American films when the children are waiting for Santa Claus...

In the previous years here in Turkey it was somehow not very Christmasy this time of the year and there was no such atmosphere on the streets, opposite to this year when surprisingly (to me) in many places they started to decorate Christmas trees and such and put all the beautiful lights around (at least here in this area where we live) Despite the fact that it is 12 degrees today and the sun is shining brightly, in the evening these lights can evoke the Christmas atmosphere.

By wondering in between the streets in our neighbourhood I found a cute and beautiful ceramic workshop and they are making  amazing things :  

- Modart Atelier -

...so I'm very happy about 😍 having this Chrismasty feeling around because it makes it easier for me too to get ready for the feast. I can't wait to go home to Budapest, where I will spend this time and the New Year, with my family and friends for the first time after many years, so I'm quite excited 😊 I love to spend this holiday with them because for me and (I think for many people) first of all, this is a family holiday and I hope no one will be  alone at this time of the year …because it's the time to share peace and love that we feel for each other.

….and here came to my mind one of my favorit Christmas movie, the ’Love Actually’…

                                                          picture: Variety 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EElIawHIbSQ

I'm also looking forward to my trip to Hungary because in January there will be a concert of Japanese drummers. They are the Taiko drummers 💥 you can check them here: )

 https://iventer.hu/etn/taiko-drummers-munedaiko-it-koncert-budapest/

…and I definitely want to go to this concert because I love to play the drums and I love to listen to the drums and I think it's a spectacular thing to see 😮

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxSj3TP90SA

As we know soon after the Christmas New Year is coming...and here in Turkey there's a custom that I think is so cute and funny, that in the New Year's Eve day couples give each other red underwears as a gift. So I asked my husband the reason for this custom and he said that it brings luck. However I doubt that it’s all, because then they could just give each other something else, I don't know what….a horseshoe forexample ? But then why  underwear and why red underwear? And it is it is not only important that it the underwear should be red, but it has to be as sexy as possible....

So I suspect (becasue the red color is associated with sexuality) that this custom should have tod o something with sexuality. Because it is like a „call to waltz” ( or sex 😊) ...it’s like a red linen in front of the bull's nose.... This is only my interpretation of course 😊, but if there is anyoone out there who is readings my blog and know more about this custom, please share with me in the comment section (thank you)  

 By the way, there is no official Christmas in here, because although Turkey is a secular country, so all the religions are free to be practiced, but the official religion is Islam...like this December 24-25-26 (which is the Christian Christmas time) is a working day, just like any other weekday. So I feel a little bit homesick at around Christmas time, when in my homecountry people are at home, baking Christmas cakes, cookies, wrapping presents, buying Christmas trees and listening to Christmas music... 

(...here is one for you from my favorite singer :) )

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hM2Xri4v9M

                                                (picture by Rayo) 

…and that's not the case here. By the way, the New Year's Eve Day is called ’Christmas’ here.

What I also like in Turkey (for your information, since 2023 the country’s name has been changed from Turkey to Türkiye) is that you can buy a lots of different and delicious dried fruits and nuts and oranges and other fruits which are the basic in many Christmas cookies (so I hope to be able to take some home, with me, because the price is very reasonable for the high quality).

AAAAAND….I have a Christmas cake recipe (which is so delicious, and you can bake any time of the year because it's very simple and doesn’t require any special ingredients) that I got from a very nice Italian friend of mine a few years ago, which I baked a thousand times already and everyonewho tasted, loved it including my mom, who since than many times have baked it again and again because she and my dad both loves it so much. The recepie I will share with you around Christmas so you can try it too 😊

(Many of the photos above are taken in Kadiköy, Feneryoul organic market) 

(photo is taken in Kadiköy Friday market)

THE HOUSEWIFE

Let me start with this: Everybody deserves a little bit 💥 of time for themselves, even mom's :)....or housewives. Time for yourselves in my understandig is the time what you spend the way you want to enjoy yourselves, whatever it means to anyone (for me it's mainly listening music, walking, listening music, taking photos, drinking coffes with my friends, knitting, reading or writting, dancing and of course reflecting about important questions in life), 

Now I would like to talk about the life of housewives and the mom's (as I saw or experienced) in Turkey and I ask all the man not to take anything as an offence, because I only know the woman side and I have no intention to hurt anyone just to share my own experiences..thank you 💜

So I would like to talk shortly about of this "women" issue, as I am a woman myself 😊….and I’d like to warn you it will be quite detailed 😊 What I experiences as a 'housewife' but I believe it is not only a turkish speciality but probably the same in the whole world...but of course I don't know how does it work in other places. So women, especially if they are housewives (like me), works at least in one shift like a "full time job" and if they a full time job and plus have children even more. I will tell you how I see it.

You would think (maybe...) that in case a woman is at home and doesn’t have a daily job (like many women in Turkey are housewives and staying at home) she has nothing to do or “what is that little housework?...nothing” Now I'll tell you, and no offence to anyone for using words, but running a household so that the house is really clean and there are clean clothes and hot food on the table every day and every member of the family is healthy or can get recovered is a fucking hard work to maintain it and all these requires long hours. So it is not “nothing” it's actually a full time job.

Now if you are not "just" a housewife (like me) but have a full time job one this work is multiplied. Mum gets up at dawn and makes breakfast for the kids and for dad and of course she is always at the very end of this row. 

(simit, very popular in Turkey, you can eat it any time of the day...best with ayran...I think) 

(olives, unmissable part of the famous turkish breakfast ('kahvalti') 

By the time the whole family wakes up mum is already preparing the breakfast, the clean clothes because dad has to go to work, kids to school or nursery. In the best case dad would take the kids to the school, if not then mum does first the dish washing after breakfast (she eats her own breakfast in the kitchen), puts away the leftovers, cleans up the mess what the children and dad have left in the flat and start to dress up the children fast, who sometimes hysterically and says that “I don't want to go to nursery today”, “I don't want to wear this today” (so mom not only works, but also plays the role of a home psychologist, trying to calm them down, convincing them or sometimes “force” them nicely that they have to go, because everyone has a job to do and for them it's school or nursery). 

Then the father who can never find his socks shouts... "don't you know where my socks are?... or my blue pants?... or my yellow shirt? “

                                                                    (my dear husband 💗)

... Meanwhile the mother has lost her hair, there are black bags under her eyes, wordlessly there's a housewife who's already wrecked a little bit 💥 in the morning…

                                                     (me when I'm a little bit 💥 wrecked in the morning) 

...can’t stop because the well-being of the family rests on her shoulders and on top of that, she should also look out for herself somehow so that her father doesn't end up with a woman 20 years younger than her who has time to go to the gym to keep herself in shape and can go often to the beautician and hairdresser, and to smell good every day and has perfect make up on her and dressed by the latest fashion…

                                            (photo is take in Kadiköy Friday market) 

.....here just comes to my mind one of my all time favorite movie the ‘The heat…I recomend if you haven’t watched it yet…it’s extremely funny. I’ve watched it at least 100 times but I can laugh about it every time…

picture: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/The_Heat?id=YqthdG-mukQ&hl=tr&pli=1

After all this she goes to make the shopping for food and trying to do this as economically as possible. Sometimes she collects from two or three stores what she could buy from one place but would cost three times as much. Sometimes this means not only going to the grocery but to the pharmacy or other shops buying clothes for the kids, new socks, new underwear, new shirts for dad so he can look good at work... so here we are halfway through the day, mom drags home what she bought like a donkey with a load…She gets home and she has to drink coffee, but if she could she would start washing and vacuuming right away but she's already tired... so she needs coffee... she stops for 5 minutes, quickly scrolls through social media here and there until she finishes her coffee. 

Then the labour starts. Cleaning, in the meantime she puts lunch on the stove so that when dad and the kids get home there will be a hot meal. Of course, it's not like ‘I take it out form the fridge and put it there to be cooked’. No. You start peeling, filleting, cutting, chopping clear the counter and starts the cooking... let's say half an hour. Of course, if there are children, sometimes mom bakes cookies for them…so an extra half an hour. Now that we've “rested well” , we can start washing and tidying up. I throw a good load of laundry into the machine, not much... Then I start packing up the clothes that were thrown around, the items that everyone left around…..and when all this is ready it is already the time when children and father are returning home….so we will serve the dinner to everyone, dishwashing, cleaning up the left overs and the mess and serve prepare everyone for the shower and maybe than we will have some time “for relaxing” 

                                       (photos are taken in the center of Kadiköy) 

…but only in case you have no children, because the mom (or the dad?)  have to put the small children in the bed…who knows when…depends what their mood is, if they want to sleep or not or there will be other difficult moments again just like in the morning…  

I could continue with more details but maybe it is already too boring and trust it’s even tiring to write it all down what a ‘housewife’ doing during one day.  But it's a very tiring job...and it is a job and I insist on this...it is a job...so this is something you have to repeat everday (very boring and tiring) and not only 5 times a week, but EVERY DAY, I mean EVERY day without a 'day off', because you can't go for holiday of being a mother or a housewife (I mean when you have no children and you are brave enough or you can arrange with your husband - like me - you can go...so in this sense I am very very lucky and gratefull for my dear husband), but you have to work everyday and you are not payed for it. In case in Turkey for an example there are many woman in this situation, they are working as mother and housewives  unstoppibly and without being payed. They have no any income just the money what their housband earns and ready to share with them. This is very changebale, some husband might be very generous, some are maybe very much mean, however it is a total dependence for all their life of this woman, plus when they get old they have no pensionat so they are in all their life till they die are dependent economically (and emotinally too) on their husband. Can you imaggine this kind of life, to feel that you life is in the hand of somebodies good intention or good mood or bad mood...if you are not nice enough to your husband he might just leave you there without no money and you are really "fucked up" What can you do, especially if a woman is uneducated beacuse they were raised up to be a housewife and mother and can't get a proper job to support yourself with a proper earning...will you start begging on the street...no...this is not what anyone would deserve...and hopefully it would never happen to anybody....

 ( a typical symbol in Turkey, the so cold "evil eye" for protection) 

All in all what I wanted to express here to be a ‘housewife’ (with or without children) is a full time job and deserve attention…in my opinion it should be payed by the state as a ‘public work’ (which I heard by the way that they are planning it in Turkey and I couldn’t agree more with it…well done!)

I hope I haven’t hurt anybody’s feeling by missing out details or mentioning things which you might believe it’s not true…but I’m sharing here only my own experiences and that’s it.  

And today's music, from Calum Scott: 

pic: youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShZ978fBl6Y&list=RD2g9kDtm_t9U&index=16

...and of course one, from my favorite 💘, Ed Sheeran:

pic: BBC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DSZIxelhMw&list=RD2g9kDtm_t9U&index=17