Phillip and Rebecca Mefford

Our oturma odası, or 'sitting room,' has become "the play room." It's the one room that we allow to be messy (more or less). By 9am Lincoln is happily eating kahvaltı with his friends at school and Phillip is 15 minutes into his first class at the university, which started at 8:45. His teaching schedule varies from day to day. If he does not have class first thing in the morning he will still go and swim some laps at the Olympic sized swimming pool on campus. Meanwhile, Rebecca at home with Hudson and Sofia, gets absorbed into the black hole known as the kitchen. Hudson plays with Thomas the Tank Engine, Sofia munches on cheerios in her highchair, and Rebecca does the dishes to, most often, either Chris Rice’s hymns or Gershwin’s jazz. All this, punctuated with diaper changes and pleas for puzzles and play-dough. House cleanliness is a huge priority for Turkish housewives. This is a challenge with small children—what some have sai

An outing to Isparta's ethnography museum this past summer. Our neighbor's daughters love to be  abla's, "big sisters," to the kids, especially Sofia Ezgi. Our general goal is for Phillip and Lincoln to be heading out the door at about 8:30am so that they can make it to work and preschool, respectively, on time. It is generally at just this time that we are scurrying to make sure Lincoln’s backpack is ready, that he has an undershirt under his Ninja Turtles long-sleeved-t (so that his teachers aren’t afraid that he will catch a cold), and wrestling to get socks and shoes on. Post-breakfast teeth brushing is almost always forgotten. We usually remember to quickly read through a story from the children’s Bible before heading out the door. All this flurry, for getting only one of our three children out the door. As you know, our three children are very close in age—on the verge of being 1, 3, and 5 years old. At this juncture in Turkish culture having childr

Pajamas are the perfect outfit for an early morning adventure. As you can see, the "lull" before busyness begins doesn't last long in the Mefford home :) Somewhere between 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning Lincoln trots into our bedroom and whispers, “Daddy, should we eat breakfast?” Daddy and Lincoln sit side by side eating cereal. Phillip steals a few moments of quietness to read from the Bible, until Lincoln’s Cheerios are done and his chipper chattering begins again. This is Lincoln’s first breakfast of the day. His second breakfast happens with his classmates at school, kahvaltı, at 9am. We are guessing most of his classmates do not have two breakfasts. You see, mornings in Turkey are a time to wake up slowly, a time to leisurely drink tea and eat kahvaltı— a spread of olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, breads, jams, and boiled eggs. Mornings are not a time for extreme productivity or entertainment or socializing. Yes, there is school and work to prepare for. But on we