I love this about Turkey... the fruit and veggie market

Our building is 12 stories tall. Each floor has 3 flats, that makes 36 families living here. A lot of those families aren't just mom dad and kids. They are grandma, grandpa, unmarried uncles and aunts, plus mom, dad, and kids. If I felt like doing the math, I could tell you approximately how many people are packed into this building with us, but as I showed in my last post, I'm lazy, so that's not gonna happen. Even without me doing the math, you can imagine that each building is basically like an entire street of homes in suburban America. One block here holds seven or eight suburban American blocks worth of people, many of whom don't have cars. Having this many people all stacked up on top of each other has quite a few advantages. For example, I never need to get in the car to do my basic shopping (fruits, veggies, basic groceries, bread). There are shops in the bottom of every building, so I have access to all sorts of things. Here are just a few of the shops within a one block distance of my home: 5 hair dressers (that's a low estimate), 3 grocers, a copy machine place, 8 pharmacies (we have a ton of them right here since a hospital is across the street), a kids clothing shop, a butcher, a restaurant, a bakery, and a fruit and vegetable shop, oh, and I almost forgot, there's also Target, Starbucks, and a place that sells hot dogs. Okay, so I wasn't completely honest about those last three, but a girl can dream, can't she? Now even without all that Starbucks business, wouldn't you like to have all those things at your fingertips rather than a car ride away??

The other day James and I took a little walk to pick up some groceries. I snapped some shots in the manav (the fruit and veggie store).

I love this place! It's so colorful!

The fruits and vegetable assortment changes with the season. I can't wait for the strawberries and cherries... and for the white mocha frapachino grande! Oooops, sorry dreaming again....We buy produce by the kilogram here. All this stuff is cheaper than it is in America, and tastier!

We don't even have to mess with touching our fruit until we get home. Here's how it works, we ask for whatever we want and the manav man picks it out and weights it for us... watch!

James: Bir kilo portakal lutfen. (One kilogram of oranges please.)

Doesn't James have great pronunciation??

Manav man: Tamam. (Okay.) Do you see him hopping to it?! That's the kind of effect James has on people. Or maybe it's just the guys job, but either way that was impressive.

Impressive and exciting... Elise is just worn out from all the excitement.

I love the manav!