Dwyer's Christmas 2008

My concept of Octonodecembuary is that once you decorate for Halloween every day becomes a blur that can make Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve, and Valentine's Day just seem like one quick month. Plus, I have my birthday in December, Karen has hers in January, and we have five close friends and family birthdays in there as well. So the most important thing of all is to make sure you don't let anyone rush you through it because time flies when you're having fun.

This Christmas was no exception. Katie Marie Dwyer's first Christmas ! ! ! It was hard getting prepared. We had "the incident" at the mosque in Adana that set back our decorating one entire week. And work...work has been very busy in December. With Karen having sciatic nerve problems, me not getting any time off due to base drug testing needs, and not having seen our friends and family in over 16 months - it has been tough. But it has also been one of the best Christmases ever just because of Katie. She can light up your day like....well, like a Christmas tree.

Karen and I want to thank all of our friends and family for everything they have done for us. Especially during the Christmas holidays. It was amazing how much stuff everyone sent us. I could go on for days and not have said enough about that.

I am going to just let the pictures tell our story. The first one above is Katie's first "face-to-face" with Santa Claus on Christmas eve day at the CDC. She had seen him at the tree lighting ceremony. But here she gets to really check him out and tug on his beard.

The Christmas season started with the tree lighting ceremony. The gradeschoolers put on a great performance. The video is very dark but it sounds great and you get the idea:

Below is 3am Christmas eve after Karen and I finally finshed getting the house just right:

Below: ELMO! ! ! ! Elmo does abso-frig-lutely everything. And I mean everything. He even farts and tells two minute stories. I am not kidding. Sometimes he will say, "Elmo has something to tell you. Squeeze Elmo's nose." And when you do he farts and says, "Excuse Elmo."

Below: Karen and Katie opening presents:

Below: the Grinch rears his head:

Below: A young girl after a very tiring first Christmas:

Starbucks At Incirlik Air Base

Starbucks has opened at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey!  And this is not a "We Proudly Serve..." but a full-blown Starbucks with mugs, desserts, and wifi.  In fact, I believe this is the first full-sized Starbucks in all of USAFE.  The base had been trying to get Starbucks to come in on a smaller scale but once Starbucks Turkey saw the base and the captured market, Starbucks offered to put in a full store.  I heard they paid for 100% of the construction in exchange for being able to keep all profits for the first year.  Sounds fair to me.  Thank you Starbucks!  

Karen and I love our Starbucks.  I don't care how commercialized people claim it is.  The ambiance and smell offer a comfort feeling that reminds us of home.  I'm a pop culture junkie anyway.  We spent four years at the intersection of Black Mountain and Mira Mesa in San Diego, where they literally had afour Starbucks - we miss our coffee!  We bought Starbucks thermoses that say "Turkey" on them.  They are the yellow ones onb the shelf in the photo above.  We also bought a little bear wearing a Starbucks 2008 jacket and waving a Turkiye (Turkey)  banner. We are hoping they will bring in mugs that say "Starbucks Incirlik" but we will see.  Starbucks may not want their name going on mugs with the name of a military base on it.  Incirlik is also the name of the village outside the base so it still could happen.

Below Katie is held by one of the Turkish workers on opening day:

Whirling Dervishes In Konya

NOTE: BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE VIDEO OF THE DERVISHES AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST.

Karen and I went to Konya on December 14th to see the "real" Whirling Dervishes. It was a long five hour trip up into the mountains and a sort of high desert area that looked a lot like the Antelope Valley near Edwards Air Force Base.   I took the above picture myself.

A quick Wikipedia explanation: "The Mevlevi Order or the Mevleviye are a Sufi order founded by the followers of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi-Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, Islamic jurist, and theologian, in Konya(in present-day Turkey). They are also known as the Whirling Dervishes due to their famous practice of whirling as a form of dhikr (remembrance of Allah).  The Mevleviye, one of the most well known of the Sufi orders, was founded in 1273 by Rumi's followers after his death, particularly by his successor Hüsamettin Çelebi who decided to build a mausoleum for Mevlâna, and then Mevlâna's son, Sultan Veled Celebi (or Çelebi, Chelebi, meaning "fully initiated"). He was an accomplished Sufi mystic with great organizing talents. His personal efforts were continued by his successor Ulu Arif Çelebi. The Mevlevi, or "The Whirling Dervishes", believe in performing their dhikr in the form of a "dance" and music ceremony called the sema.

The Sema represents a mystical journey of man's spiritual ascent through mind and love to "Perfect." Turning towards the truth, the follower grows through love, deserts his ego, finds the truth and arrives at the "Perfect." He then returns from this spiritual journey as a man who has reached maturity and a greater perfection, so as to love and to be of service to the whole of creation.

The sema was practised in the semahane (ritual hall) according to a precisely prescribed symbolic ritual with the dervished whirling in a circle around their sheikh, who is the only one circling around his axis. The dervishes wear a white gown (symbol of death), a wide black cloak (hirka) (symbol of the grave) and a high brown cap (kûlah), symbol of the tombstone.

The Mevlevi Order was outlawed in Turkey at the dawn of the secular revolution and the dervish lodge was converted to Mevlana Museum in Konya by Kemal Atatürk. In the 1950s, the Turkish government legalized the Mevlevi order as an association and began allowing the Whirling Dervishes, who are chosen among the members of this authentic Mevlevi sect, to perform annually in Konya on the Urs of Mevlana, December 17, the anniversary of Rumi's death.^[1] In 1971, they performed in London with Kani Karaca as lead singer. In 1972, they toured North America for the first time with Kani Karaca, Ulvi Erguner, and Akagündüz Kutbay among the musicians. They performed in France, for Pope Paul VI, and at the Brooklyn Academy of Musicand other venues in the United States and Canada - under the direction of the late Mevlevi Shaikh Suleyman Hayati Dede. In April 2007 the order initiated another tour of the U.S. where they performed to sold-out crowds, in places such as Denver and San Francisco.

The order is still active in Turkey, currently led by the 20th great-grandson (22nd generation descendant) of Rumî, Faruk Hemdem Çelebi."

So I guess Rumî, Faruk Hemdem Çeleb is the guy in the picture in the black robe on the right side of the floor.  We were glad we went to see such a unique event but ten hours on a mini-bus is a long time.

This was also the longest time we left Katie alone. We left at 0600 in the morning and did not get home until around 1100 PM. Thanks to Larissa and Chris Cook for watching Katie on her first "long day" away from Mom and Dad.

OK. There are some errors on here I just can't fix. For example "Katie" text above being wrapped around so the "e" drops to the next line. The software literally won't let me correct it. Just part of living in Turkey I guess.

Our Turkish Christmas Birds

Two birds have been sleeping in our vine outside our front door every night.  I have never seen anything like it.  I didn't know that birds actually get close together and snuggle.  It has been cold here - in the 30s most nights.  And our vine is just about bare at this point.  But these two birds get up there every night just after sunset and snuggle together until the morning sunrise.  When they are puffed up like in this photo they seem to be asleep or almost hibernating.  there eyes are closed and I can actually walk up to about a foot away to take a photo like this.  While we are going in and out the front door in the evening, we walk within three feet of them and they never move.

I'm not sure what type of bird they are.  Our Turkish shoeshine guy at the Medical Group, Jaf, tells me they are Nightingales.  They don't look like the Nightingales I see when I google them.  But perhaps they are some Turkish variation.  

Merry Christmas From Patrick, Karen, Katie, and Slinky Dwyer!

Meeeeerrrrrry Christmas everyone! I have one minute to post this! they now have a time limit set on the computers and they automatically log you off. In fact I am going to log off right.....NOW!

And now I'm logged back on and have 55 more minutes but the library closes in five so let me get in what I can. Octonodecembuary is blowing by and time is literally flying. I posted as many pictures as I could of Katie on her site. She is wonderful and talking (or she thinks she is at least)...a lot! They have made it even harder to do stuff on government computers including at the libarary. Flash drives and active x controls are disabled to some extent. I found a way arounfd loading the pics though. Karen had a hell of a time accessing e-mail and Facebooks.

I'm still collecting pee at work. I can only begin to tell whay an absolute thrill that is. I don't actually have to collect it but I have to manage the program. We are trying to get cards and stuff out to everyone but please expect delays. We appreciate everything everyone has done for us or sent us. We miss everyone! Oh, the pedal car. I drove that thing around the entire base perimter - 8 miles. It absolutely killed my legs! It was to raise money for the Combined federal Campiagn.

Our holiday greeting videos ran in St. Louis missouri on KSDK and some station in San Diego. If anyone has a way of capturing that in file format, please send to me. We miss you all. Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night....