This is way better than Tupperware!

Last night there was a visiting dignified person here at Incirlik. He was a Colonel and in health care, and JB and some of his colleagues were invited to attend a dinner with him. How nice that spouses were included!

We were told to show up at one of the local carpet stores for dinner. Baylee babysat for us again! She's fantastic and lives just around the block. She showed up at 6pm, and we headed to the carpet shop in the Alley.

We had no idea how you ate dinner in a carpet shop. But we soon found out. Basically, these are "way cool" Tupperware parties. A fantastic dinner is served, and carpet lessons are given. We learned a ton of stuff about carpets here in the Middle East and ate an absolutely amazing dinner.

The carpets at this particular shop (Uzbek's) were ALL handmade. I have a feeling that before we leave here, we will buy at least one handmade carpet. And this is the color one we would like. Something like this will run you somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000 USD. However, if you were to try to buy the same carpet in the U.S., you could pay tens of thousands of dollars. The reason is that the items are taxed so much leaving the country and customs just saddles you with tons of fees. Thus the reason that buying a carpet when here with the military is such a great deal. We can ship these over for about $20 from our military post office. If you are interested, let me know! :)

This is Leslie, the only pediatrician on Base with her new husband Shane. They are awesome people. They attend the same church service we do.

One of the most amazing rugs I have ever seen. This one is at the high end of pricing: about $4,500 USD.

Learning about the various types of carpets and looking at samples. I learned that there are very few rugs being made IN Turkey anymore. The reason is that as Turkey modernizes, the amount of money a rug can generate is not enough to be an acceptable salary. As a result, many of these rugs are coming from other places: Afghanistan and Iran for instance.

The dinner. Folks, this stuff is just so amazing. I L-O-V-E the food here. Lots of breads and meats. The brown pot holds something called "tava" -- a mixture that you put over rice. So yummy!

A close-up of the food.