Netsel Mall all decorated for Christmas

All of the Turkish Santas have been on the Mediterranean Diet so are on the thin side.

Ibrahim and Tom having a pre-dinner chat

Lots of good food and pecan pie.

Jane explaining pecan pie as it’s not something Turks know; Karo syrup and pecans aren’t sold in here.  Our ingredients were all bought along our way here and we brought the Karo syrup from home.

Quinn and Colin experienced pecan pie eaters!

Hannah-Ruth picking the first gift; as she’s the first she also gets to go last!

A bottle of wine; but no worries about her age, she lost the bottle a few rounds later.

Joan watches  as Bill opened his gift which also went to someone else fairly quickly!

We celebrated Joan’s 89^th birthday in 2013 before we left for England!

Some gifts sort of remained a mystery;  a bib-apron?

Tom had a good time though I don’t know what is final gift was but none of his three tickets was the raffel winner.

Jill needed her chocolate treats to be explained; dried fruits covered in chocolate or something like that.

Jane’s pick was a calendar from the Marmaris SPCA

Joan had picked a similar calendar with dog pictures.  The money really goes for a good cause and who doesn’t need a third calendar?

Colin had this bottle for about 1 round and then it was gone too.

Mogens picked these funny boxers, but alas, he didn’t get to keep them either!

Randal lost his bottle of stuff right away too.  Those bottles moved around all evening!  He did go home with a great gift assortment from the Netsel Mall Coffee Shop,  Kahve Dunyasi ; chocolate spoons, chocolate covered coffee beans…..

Notice Randal without glasses.  Since his cataract surgery he has great distance vision.  But he’ll need to get new glasses here as we left Roanoke before his eyes had fully adjusted.

Gwen picked a soup mug with some soup mix and instantly traded it for Colins’s bottle of wine!

For fun, Randal had substituted one of his Cellars of Roanoke Wreck Repair  vintage 1948 labels on this bottle of local wine, but it got lost in translation as Gwen tried to explain in Turkish what the deal was. 

Here’s the story about my gift pick. 

I had bought something in Roanoke for the gift exchange.  But when we got here I thought we should have made donations to the animal shelter for the gift swap.  Someone really did think of it.  You make a donation and  receive a dog calendar and cat calendar in exchange for the donations.  Jane picked the cat calendar.  Joan picked the dog calendar but wasn’ t so enthused about it.  So I decided that no matter what I chose from the table, I would then swap it to Joan for the dog calendar.  My mystery gift was a packet of holiday cards, not so really hard to part with.  I  took the very simple calendar from Joan and gave her the cards.   I felt good about “my donation to the dogs!”  Not sure what Joan thought!

Rose Toilet Water was Quinn’s surprise gift.

Quin hadn’t let his mom take the battery operated light from Bill earlier on but he wasn’t so thrilled with the rose toilet water he chose so swapped it for the lamp himself.

Paul instantly swapped his gift!

Connie, from Cape Cod, chose something useful for boats so was quite happy and not mean at all.

Then it was time to sing!

Mogens and Hannah-Ruth played for the carols

Everyone sang

Some with great enthusiasm!  

Not sure if Connie is drummers drumming or maids a milking!

Sibel wins the grand prize!

Guven Marine* donated this huge gift basket for a cruiser raffle to help support the events we have at Sailor’s Point during the year.

Sibel was the grand prize winner!  As she’s the most famous sailor among us, it seems fitting.  

“Osman Atasoy and Sibel Karasu have gone down in history as the first Turkish navigators to reach Antarctica, covering 8,500 miles in their 14-meter craft, Uzaklar II”

http://www.mydoramac.com/first-turkish-sailors-in-antarctica/  tells the story as we were here for their big return!

*Guven has been organizing the work on Doramac and keeping an eye on her while we were in the US.