Aaron Baillio’s Blog

Well, I am back from Turkey and I finally have a moment to catch up on my blog site.  This is a panoramic of Ankara where I was staying….it was not like this at all but I was there in the winter while there was snow on the ground and it was always foggy.  But, this does give you a good idea…everyone lives in high rise appartment buildings…everyone!  It is rare to find and actualy home and if you do it looks like Charlie’s house from Charlie and the Chocolate factory.  However, my hotel was awesome.  We stayed at the Swissotel.  Here is a link to visit to see some pics of the place: http://www.swissotel.com/ankara/z995/phototour_01.html.  Anyway, I had only heard horror stories about Turkey but it was actually quite nice.  It helps to have someone drive you because no one there knows how to!  Its as if all the street lines dissappear to Turkish drivers.  You’ll have 3 lanes but you’ll see 5 because people are trying to fit on wherever they can.  Then, when the road bottlenecks like when a road goes down to two or one lane, somehow the people work it out and no one gets in a wreck.  It truely is amazing.

It also helps to stay in a 5 star hotel.  It is hard for me to sleep and be truely comfortable without Kristin there, but a 5 star hotel sure makes it easier!   Overall the food was pretty good as long as you like meat.  Basically, you start with some kind of salad, possibly some humus and some bread.  Then you get meat.  Lots of meat.They eat lots of lamb too which is fine by me cause I love it.  With your meat might come some fries and some peppers and possibly a little lettuce.  Afterward, most Turks drink this hot tea in an hour glass shaped glass.  So, being a meat lover I had a great time…but it isn’t for everyone.  Also, you can pretty much sum up Turkish food in 4 categories: Doner kebabs, Shish kebabs, a pita type pizza and other.  The other category is anything that isn’t the first 3.  But it was good. 

Also, it was nice to deal in a currency that is actually weaker than the dollar.  But, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was cheaper.  Everything is still pretty expensive there.  I mean, I spent 20 Lira on a TMNT action figure, so basically it was little less than $20!  I did buy Kristin some cool jewelry…a necklace made from a semi precious stone in the area.  It’s cool.

Well, the project went well and now I am working on our solution.  We are still waiting to see what will happen with my job and how long w will be staying and what not.  I have an interview with a division at Randolph AFB today.  Could be we go there?  Who know?!  Things have been nothing but crazy here job wise so it would be nice to get out and be normal again.

Well, we thought everyone was healthy again…but we were wrong.  We stopped the antibiotics way to early for Will and his lymph nodes swelled up!  One side looked like he had swallowed a golf ball.  It was aweful.  We gave him a blessing and started giving him the anitbiotics again.  The reason we stopped was cause he was a tyrant trying to get that stuff down his throat!  I wanted to kill him!  So, we learned we can mix it with ice cream in the evenings and yogurt in the mornings and we can get it in his face without him screaming and spitting it up.  So, he has made a recovery and is getting better.

Well, that is pretty much the update for now!  Hope all of you are well.  I love to get your posts.  I am sorry I don’t get to post much on your sites.  It is to painfully slow to do much on the internet at home and the Google blogs are blocked at work, so the chance of me actually getting word back to you is pretty small.  Sorry!  One day it’ll get worked out.  Talk to you later!

Christmas morning (click for a cool photo)

 Well, Hello everyone!  I am back from the half-dead and ready to post my update. It has been one crazy holiday season.  We had our Christmas Saturday morning but it was a lot of fun.  We had some fun gifts waiting for us.  It was simple, but fun.  The boyus had a great time.  Asher was mostly interested in rolling around in the paper and Will latched onto one or two things he got and ignored everything else.  The rest of the day was spent getting ready to fly back to the states.

The flight actually wasn’t to bad.  Flying to Atlanta is a long flight – 10 hours!  But, the boys did fairly well.  They didn’t really sleep, but they didn’t act up much either.  Then in Atlanta they had some time to run around and get the wiggles out before we flew another four hours to SLC.  Both the boys crashed out on this flight.  Then it was an hour and a half drive up to Logan.  So, we didn’t get in till really late, but we went straight to bed and we were able to sleep for several hours anyway.

The whole stay in Utah was fun.  We were able to see family (and I saw my sister!) and we were able to do some shopping that we would never have been able to do here in Germany.  We also ate at some places we missed.  William hada  great time playing with his cousins.  He was go go go the whole time.  The only drawbacks were neither slept well.  Both boys wound up on the air mattress with us every night and it was too loud during the day for Asher to get any kind of nap.  Also, our hosts were sick before we got there and so we all got sick.  Upon our return, I got deathly sick!  I think it started with the flu and then turned into a severe sinus infection that hurt my whole face.  I was bed ridden for almost a whole week after coming back.  I was totally useless around the house.  Both the boys got sick too.  Last week we finally got everyone in to see the doctor and so now we are all mending.  It has been crazy, but I think we are finally normalizing.

The funny thing is that it has been extremely difficult to readjust to the time here and it was very simple to adjust going over.  In fact, I don’t think Will has quite gotten back on schedule.  We were there for 9 days and it was just to short.  For that kind of trip you really need to make a 2 week trip or longer so you aren’t so rushed and you can adjust better. 

Now that I am well I am traveling to Turkey for work.  I leave tomorrow and will be gone till Saturday.  Hopefully Kristin stays well so she can take care of everyone while I am gone!  It should be an adventure.  I have never been and you never know how those Turks are going to act around Americans.

Well, I will update soon.  Take care!