Expat Affairs

by **arover** Thu Aug 30, 2012 10:24 am

I write a monthly article from the perspective of an expat for a friend of mine's adventure travel company's newsletter.

For anyone who is remotely interested here is this month's effort.

Sweating, Olympiads & Sweets

Here we go then it’s nearly the end of August and as yet there has been no discernible change in the temperature. It’s still very very hot and around about now those of us who have been here all summer would be more than happy to see a few cooler days on the horizon. That shouldn’t be too long off from previous experience probably towards the middle of September. Once again though, following last year’s performance we have felt a drop of rain in August. I can’t speak for the whole of the area as we get a lot of localised stuff but certainly here in Gökseki we had about 20 minutes worth about three weeks ago and filthy it was too, must’ve come from the desert or something as it left everywhere with a dirty brown covering. We all keep chatting to families in England and visitors who make the trip out here who talk of the worst summer weather in living memory. Our twenty minutes of rain was surely trumped by the downpour experienced in the north east of England when the premiership football game between Sunderland and Reading was called off for a waterlogged pitch. Apart from anything else that freak occurrence played havoc with my fantasy football team not to mention the inconvenience to the Reading faithful who made the trip to Sunderland.

Just staying with sport for a while August has seen the London Olympic Games take place. We got very comprehensive coverage here both on Eurosport with English commentary and TRT too so there were usually options for us all if we didn’t fancy the dressage or the synchronised swimming. The television set in our house was rarely switched off, I loved every minute of it, swimming, handball (what a good game that is), volleyball, gymnastics, tennis, cycling, track and field and of course the weightlifting which mesmerised me and is of course pretty popular here in Turkey. London certainly pulled it off right from the opening ceremony, celebrating the Industrial Revolution, the NHS and the evolution into a multi-cultural society hit just the right note for me and had the added bonus of holding up for ridicule the lunatic fringe Tory MP who sneered at the “multicultural crap”. We could probably have done without Macca at the end though but that’s nit picking. A big thumbs up from me.

I couldn’t possibly have conceived of a rival to Bradley Wiggins for Sports Personality of the year after rattling off his Tour de France victory and Time Trial gold but the game have thrown up serious rivals for him in the shape of British pin up girl Jessica Ennis and the incredible Mo Farah. One particularly endearing suggestion I saw towards the end of the whole thing was that the volunteers who turned out day after day at these games be nominated for the award. Who would vote against that? Istanbul’s hat is in the ring for the 2020 games, they’re up against Tokyo and Madrid with the Madrid bid seemingly wavering a bit this week. Turkey, by the way, notched a total of five medals 2 gold, 2 silver and a bronze and would certainly hope to do better than that were they to host the thing. One thing they may have to do here is change their approach to sport in the school curriculum if they wish to make that happen. Friends of mine with children at school here report that sport (and most other less academic areas of the curriculum that we are used to being commonplace in the UK) are given little emphasis here which can make life a little difficult for the child who shows promise in say drama or artistic pursuits.

Ramazan’s over. Observers can now eat and drink at their leisure again. The end of the holy month is celebrated here, as I have noted in this column before, as Şeker Bayram or sugar holiday when it is traditional to hand out sweets to visitors. One to keep the dentists in business although it probably doesn’t make that much difference as many Turkish people have a sweet tooth. The result for Kaş last weekend was an extremely busy town with holidaymakers here from all over Turkey. You begin to lose count of the number of 34 plated (Istanbul) cars around town all of whom appear to bring Istanbul driving habits with them. Good for business though the beaches, restaurants and bars have been packed with everyone in celebratory mood. The Şeker Bayram holiday coincided this year with me actually doing a week’s work (something I have to prove to myself annually that I am still capable of doing). I was guiding a family group of twenty six people on an activity based week, seven families in all and as usual they were charmed and delighted by Kas and its surrounding areas and enjoyed all the activities on offer. It’s a bit of a touchstone for me too, I love this area and enjoy showing it off and rubbing shoulders with the English families helps keep me in touch with their hopes and concerns and the general zeitgeist of middle class English life. It’s a good trip in a beautiful place all the clients being decent appreciative people. Hope I’m not making it sound too difficult!
Last time I referred to the Kas4Kids/Busy Bees charity summer sale which was to take place on the 20th August. It did so and it was hot. A big thanks goes out to all who contributed in a wide variety of ways. Despite the heat just over 4,000 TL was raised and I will be informing all as to how that money will be spent in helping local children in due course. Particularly gratefully accepted were cash donations and raffle prizes from those on holiday here. On October 13th a fund raising Barn Dance will be held at Akçegerme Beach near Gökseki with a set meal. Anyone who would like to support this can buy tickets at Café Corner in town.

Next month sees a trip to the Aspendos theatre to the east of Antalya to see a ballet performance (should be an education for me) and probably the birth of our first grandchild (even more of an education). So an interesting month ahead I reckon, more of that next time.