Long story short

Finally it was our last day in Istanbul. We liked it, but were ready for a break from the big city. So it was laundry time.
Power outage = 7 kg of steaming + wet laundry - affordable dryer < No help from hostel manager= taking to the streets in search of a laundromat
Streets= 2 self proclaimed Turkish actors wanting to help us out.
Search for laudromat= drycleaners = 20$ drying job =3$/kilo (weighed wet)
Time to take two of the nicest people in Turkey for tea.
Tea= facebook + email exchange + promise to find Mustafa a Canadian girlfriend - a bit of spray on sunscreen Mustafa wanted to try after seeing me use it
4 pm = laundry pickup time
Brandon convinces the dry cleaner to weigh the now dry laundry
Us = + $7.50 dry cleaner= - $7.50
Final answer: We are pretty glad the power went out :) Sometimes people's kindness is surprising and completely genuine. For anyone interested, Mustafa is the one without the mustache and judging by his enjoyment of spray on sunscreen, he'll fit into Canadian culture well.

Rooftops and concert

We have been enjoying the rooftop restaurants in Istanbul. We also went to the Zaz concert at a park. She is a French singer and some of the Turkish people knew the words to her songs. While waiting in one of the most polite lines ever, we saw some homemade grilling going on as well as some little cushions for sitting on for sale.
The concert was very fun and civilized. Even though it was standing room only and there was beer being served, no one pushed or tried to get in front of each other.
We have been treated to friendliness and helpfulness in Istanbul.
Now onto Cappadoccia!

Why are there so many cats?

This morning I woke up to what I thought was the sound of Brandon tripping out of the bathroom. When there was no reply to 'are you ok?', I removed my eyemask to find a pigeon had perched on our top bunk. We (Brandon) tried to shoo it out by clapping. It flew into the closed window a couple of times until it found the door.

We are really enjoying Istanbul. The temperature has dropped because of a rainstorm last night. Yay! With no air con in our hostel room, it is a great relief. We were spoilt by air con in Dubai. We have seen most of the sights we wanted to and are going to a hammam this afternoon.
We have also really been enjoying the food and the Turkish beer. Turkish ravioli and mezze have been the highlights.
The lowlight= the abundance of stray cats + fake cat paraphernalia (who knew that word had an r in it?!) Yesterday evening we were having some Efes beer at a very hipster bar. Brandon would get distracted by the FOUR stray cats in the street beside us. He made me watch them for awhile because he is so amazed by their reflexes. I, however, am grossed out by their dirtiness. I do not have any pictures of real cats.

Bye Dubai

We said goodbye to some of our favourite habibis and habibtis (darlings) today in Dubai. Brandon loves the people who work in the restaurant and grocery store in our building. I love these cute kids the most! First stop : Istanbul via the Sharjah airport which has the best airport food court ever.

Why this week rocked

This peanut coconut stir fry with soba noodles turned out to be delicious. Yes I do love milk with my Asian food!

Students learning about lenses and what they do to light.

Students enjoying Mr. Girard's guitar talent during lunch time.

The weekend started out with these two great things:

Flowers from a nice husband:

Awesome Indian food at a hotel nearby. They also had live music. Getting us excited for our trip to India this summer. This meal included vegetable qorma, paneer, and a chicken dish. The naan was also DELICIOUS.

Braved the beach in what felt like over 40 degree weather. I felt less hard core when I found out the temperature was only 38. But when you're just lying there and still sweating it's time to go...

To LimeTree Cafe. It is one of our favourites here. I got eggs benedict and a cranberry spritzer. TGFAC (Thank God For Air Conditioning).

Brandon learns how to skydive. His instructor was a very nice Scottish man who stopped counting the number of dives he has done after 1500 jumps. He estimates he's done 5000 in his life. What a crazy job. He says he doesn't get nervous anymore...

Brandon doing some skydiving:

I'm so glad he made it back alive :)

My mom's visit

Our last visitor this year was my mom! She is the greatest, so her visit was so easy and fun. She didn't really want to see the souqs or do a desert safari and I wasn't complaining. I did go up the Burj Khalifa with her, though. I think it was my 10th time. That's one of my favourite activities in Dubai, though.

We spent some time at the famous Atlantis spa. The massages were so relaxing. And the sauna with twinkle lights in the ceiling was magical.

Then up the Burj Khalifa.

Can you tell that I'm much closer to the edge than my mom? She was afraid she would fall off the top, I guess :)

Back at the bottom. The sun had set and we found Brandon there.

My mom came to school and thought she would document some real life moments. Brandon and I often stand by this map to remind ourselves where we are living now.

We went for pizza by the Burj al Arab and reminisced about seeing it being built. Or rather seeing the peninsula it now sits on being built. My mom said there were so many cement trucks that they looked like ants.

The weekend my mom was here was Brandon's birthday. Yay! My mom got him the best gift ever: a sock monkey. 

This was the best gift ever because when we went on a family vacation to Mexico a few years ago, Brandon's bag got mixed up with a certain Senor Reid. When we looked in Senor Reid's bag all that was present was a very large sock monkey. Brandon made the trek up to the reception desk in my brother's bathing suit (luckily he brought 5). Unfortunately the bathing suits looked more like pants on Brandon, thus his motivation to find Senor Reid and his bag.

I decided on a surprise visit to iFly Dubai after a surprise French toast breakfast. 

I especially like my mom's realistic fork and knife action in this photo

Brandon didn't seem that excited when he figured out his surprise... I thought it would be a perfect consolation/ warm up for his rescheduled real sky dive in May.

Here we are before. Don't believe Brandon's excited look. It's all an act.

Here is our after picture. Brandon's happiness in no longer feigned. He told me that this experience was much more fun than he has expected. I agreed.

Then we went for a delicious lunch at PQ. We're not sure why the waiter chose this particular angle for the photo.

We stopped by the beach for an evening nap and swim:

And here is the birthday boy at one of his favourite restaurants: Reem Al Bawadi. My mom was also very impressed by the food here. We indulged and got the Umm Ali which is basically bread pudding made with baklava instead of bread. It's also one of Brandon's mom's favourites.

Isn't he cute? So happy to celebrate another birthday with Brandon.

The next day we took a trip to Abu Dhabi to visit the mosque. Brandon drove the jeep that our very kind friend lent us.

And that was the end of my mom's visit. We miss her so much.

Morocco

This trip was as epic as I expected it to be. I did a lot of planning beforehand, with some awesome imput from the rest of the group. It was the most fun to travel with my siblings and Brandon's best man and wife. We all got along so well and had lots of laughs.

Here we are on the plane in Dubai. We had Kate stay for a week before we left. The Emirates plane was not quite as nice as others, but the direct flight was totally worth it. No more unplanned 14 hour delays in Doha for us!

When we arrived in Casablanca, Abdul picked us up from the airport. Then we met the guy below near the centre of town. Here he is working on his bartering skills which, up to this point in his trip, had not served him well. Before we arrived he had bought more than one carpet and a leather jacket while in Fez.

Here he successfully paid a great price for a nice pair of jeans. It was a little colder in Morocco than any of us expected.


We headed to the beach that evening for some reunion photos:

some gangster photos:

as well as some hover hand photos

(inspired by these http://twistedsifter.com/2010/12/25-funniest-hover-hand-pictures/):

We visited the mosque in Casablanca. It is extremely big. It is built on the water so the views are fabulous.

Here is AJ in a petit taxi on the way back from the mosque. One of these little cars ran over Brandon's big toe. He was pretty sure he had broken something. He didn't.

After Casablanca, we met up with the Emmerzaels at the airport. Yay reunion! The 6 of us flew to Ouarzazate to stay the night before our desert camel adventure. We stayed at Riad Rita. It was the best smelling place on the block, literally. We could smell it from the outside. Rita was an excellent host except when it came to showing Graeme the exact location of the toilet in his room.

Above: Here we are ready to rough it for two nights in the Sahara.

Below: Little did we know that we would basically be staying in huts with real beds and matresses.

Here is the first place we stopped for lunch. We ate Moroccan salad, a Moroccan omelette made in a tagine (also pronounced tangine by some travellers), couscous and chicken. There was also a yogurty dessert. Delish!

Here are our camel photos. It was really hard to pare them down.

Graeme and A.J. holding hands. Graeme was probably the person who missed AJ the most once we all parted ways. Hearing him say "I really wish AJ was still here." was not uncommon.

Quote from Brandon: "That's a really awesome picture of you." (While talking to Megan). This is a picture of Chelsea.

In the evening we played catchphrase and Chelsea's version of 20 questions which basically consists of asking very personal questions. Luckily she didn't make anyone cry.

The next day we did another dromedary (otherwise known as dromedons) ride. We felt so cool using them as real transportation. Our desination: a hotel with a pool and lunch. One of our guides informed Chelsea that he had dreamt of her the night before.

Above: Brandon riding side saddle. His Gma's comment: "Geez Brandon, how lay back is this?" I agree.

The lunch after the long ride. It included a very good bottle of wine and thankfully no tagine (We'd gotten a little sick of this dish even though it is delicious!)

We continued on the road to another desert camp. Here we climbed a huge dune and watched an amazing desert sunset. Before we departed on our climb, we made sure to look the part by all wearing some type of headscarf/gutra that did not make us look bald.

After the climb to the top of the dune we realized Chelsea may have overdone it. We were enjoying some tea around the table at the camp when she leaned forward into the table. When she didn't react even though we complained of liquid dripping on us, we realized she may have passed out. When Chelsea became aware of her surroundings, she asked why everything had fallen off the table. She has a problem.

That night AJ took some amazing photos with a really long shutter speed. I think he was also hoping to get some pictures of the trails of the stars, but the moon was too bright. Here are the pictures we took by the campfire:

Above: Graeme's extremely scary idea.

Above: Trying to write Morocco. You can try and guess who made an 8 instead of an O (his name starts with a B)

Above: My idea of lightsabers (better executed by Brandon).

The next day we (or rather Abdul) drove through the Atlas mountains.
Luckily we had AJ with us who felt it was important to have a steady supply of chocolate:

After the 10 hour drive, we said goodbye to our amazing driver Abdul (50% of our Moroccan drivers had this name) and headed into Marrakech.

Marrakech was the land of delicious breakfasts, crazy markets, tiny streets, green parks, and mosques. Here Graeme gained the reputation "hard Berber man". In other words, he was an amazing barterer. AJ also found some amazing fossils and rocks in the market. Direct quote "Oh man, these rocks are friggin' awesome." (while closing his eyes a la Napoleon Dynamite).

Above: Chelsea and Kate attempt to cross the street. They are unsuccessful until another large group of ladies comes to cross with them.

Our last stop: Chez Momo in a mountain town of Ouirgane. It was so picturesque and really cold! Some of our rooms had no hot showers which seemed to decrease the temperature more. I may have gotten really mad at them about the lack of hot water, when it turned out that all someone had to do was flip a switch to make it turn on. Brandon didn't understand my logic of yelling at the man who had fixed our problem. I blame the lack of logic on my lack of the ability to shower.

Here are the Halverson siblings on our hike with our lovely guide Mohammad. He had us over to his house where his wife cooked us the best Moroccan food ever. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that when we were not thrilled seeing yet another tagine coming through the door for our lunch. However, we were all pleasantly surprised by the home made version of the ubiquitous Moroccan dish.

And here is AJ on our way back to Casablanca where we all flew out of. We ate at a famous restaurant called Rick's Grill which features decor from the movie Casablanca.

Truly an amazing trip with the best of company. Kate and AJ flew out separately before the rest of us. We were lucky enough to spend another week with the Emmerzaels here in Dubai. This meant that we got to continue playing our favourite card game "dirt lump" and hear Graeme complain about how much he missed AJ.