Our year in Turkey: Super Nehir Eats Sticks!

That is what Nehir declared as he was eating a parsley stem at Breakfast this morning. He loves to eat fresh dill and Parsley and he is impressed with himself when he eats the stems or "sticks." He considers it a superpower.

Yesterday we went on an outing to Priene and Miletos, two ancient Greek cities that are fairly close to our house. Nehir started the day with complaining about having to go, but his mood changed rapidly when he and I got to ride in our neighbor's fancy care. We lucked out and got a cool, breezy day. Priene is on the other side of the mountains from our house and it is was a large port city with a theater, complete with an alter to Demeter, the god of theater. There was also a large temple to Athena overlooking the city center area. Alexander the great visited this city. The view from the hill used to be the sea, but the sea is now 7km away due to silt from the mountains accumulating over the years. It is now very fertile land. The site has many large pine trees growing all around the ruins, so whenever we would get hot in the sun, we could duck into the shade for a few minutes and cool down in the nice breeze. Nehir really enjoyed exploring and Taylan seemed content in the backpack (thanks Mom!).

We then crossed the valley to the ancient city of Miletos, which was also an important port city and is now several km from the sea. Thales was from Miletos, as was Bias, and the original "tyrants" (nice claim to fame eh?). I hadn't realized that there was a guy named Bias, I wonder if the word bias comes from his name? This is a spectacular site. We went into the amphitheater first which is enormous and well preserved. There are huge, stone tunnels and staircases behind the theater benches so the people could get up to the higher levels (just like baseball stadiums today. It is very cool inside the tunnels which makes one realize how useful the stone buildings are and were for such a hot land. It is truly awe inspiring to think that ordinary people built these massive stone cities without modern machines. After leaving the theater we were at the top of a hill and the remains of the city stretched out below. There were remains of temples, houses, the senate meeting hall, the town square, bath houses, and much more. It was very impressive and Nehir, despite a nasty fall, was a great little explorer and enjoyed imagining the city as it might have been all those years ago. "Imagine this is where the kings came in and maybe the guards stood there..."

In other news, I found my book and it had some good suggestions for fostering positive thinking in children.

Theater at Priene