How did July arrive so quickly? In just over a month, we'll have been in this city a year. It seems to have gone fast and yet it seems like a very long time ago that we were living in Istanbul.
July and August are hot here. The weather will be hot and sunny almost every day, with the temperature usually reaching above 30 degrees Celsius. In fact, it will be an abnormal day when it doesn't reach 30 degrees.
So for the next couple of months, our entire routine shifts. We avoid being outside in the sun between about 9.30am - 4.30pm - it's just too hot and too much chance of sunburn, especially with small fair skinned children. Even at 5pm or 6pm, it is still hot but at least there's less chance of getting burnt. So we try and get the boys out either first thing in the morning or sometime after 5pm, fitting tea (dinner!) in as well. This usually means that the boys' bedtime shifts later. We end up going to the park when they would usually be getting ready for bed, or later. I can't quite embrace a Turkish mindset of 'the children go to bed whenever they want, usually post 9pm and sometimes at midnight' - mainly because that would definitely be too late for me! But I have definitely relaxed my British attitude of 'it's 7pm, the children must be in bed and going to sleep'. It just doesn't work when you live in a hot country, and that's okay.
Despite the heat, it's a lot more comfortable here than in Istanbul. Although we're in a flat and surrounded by other apartment blocks, we're at the edge of the city so we can get a breeze into the flat. We have a balcony that is shaded and the boys play out on (and we can even fit a small paddling pool onto it). As well as being significantly less humid here compared to Istanbul, we are also much higher up in terms of altitude, so the temperature drops a little bit cooler at night. Plus, we have a car so we can get to wherever we need to go in air-conditioned comfort - that makes a huge difference compared to walking and getting public transport around.
Summer here might be hot, but there are definite plus points too. We can plan outdoor activities (in the shade or the evening) with a strong degree of confidence in what the weather will be like. We're enjoying the summer fruits that are in season here - huge watermelons, ripe peaches, grapes, nectarines. We have friends who live in a house with a garden, a 5-10 minute drive from ours, and while they're out of the country this summer, we're helping with watering their garden. The boys are enjoying playing in the garden and 'helping' water while we have also been collecting kilos of cherries from their trees.
