The Mask Museum

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I promised myself when I started blogging about our life in Izmir that I would blog about the good and the bad. I hate reading blogs that make everything seem perfect.  We've definitely had our ups and downs here and I want this blog to represent our entire life here, not just the good stuff.

We had big plans to go wine tasting once we got our car.  There are a bunch of wineries outside of Izmir, but they're hard to get to unless you have your own car.  We found out that our car was in Izmir a week ago and thought that we would definitely have it in time to go wine tasting this weekend.

Wrong.

Apparently, it takes three days to register a car here and there are no such things as temporary tags.  So, our car has made it to Izmir, but we can't drive it until probably Wednesday. Goodbye wine tasting.

We spent the day feeling a little discouraged and desperate for something to do.  Add in a notification from the cell phone provider that Mike's phone plan was probably getting cancelled (we're still not sure why. It doesn't help that the notification is in Turkish) and you've got two very sad Hogans.

Luckily, we cheered ourselves up with the discovery of the mask museum.  It's one of those things that we had heard was a hidden gem of Izmir and it's only a block or two away from our house! It's pretty small and only took about 15 minutes (which was good because they were closing in 30!), but it was free and pretty cool.

This one was my favorite.

This one was Mike's.

These were masks of famous people. Victor Hugo is the second one from the left on the bottom.

Masks representing different cultures around the world

When we got home, I began to make enchiladas for dinner, but the building lost power. Pretty standard. Needless to say, the 15 minutes they needed to bake in the oven was not going to happen. Luckily, we have a gas stove top and quickly changed our plans to a tortellini dish we had planned for tomorrow.

Rewind to Wednesday when we went to a market across town.  There were TONS of fruits and vegetables there, including a bunch of peppers. Mike is an extremely picky eater, but he LOVES spicy food.  When we go to Thai restaurants, he usually asks for Thai hot and enjoys it.  So, when we were at the market on Wedneday, he asked one of the people selling peppers if they had spicy peppers.  She pointed to these skinny green ones and reassured us they were spicy.



Mike asked for half a kilo of peppers and before we knew it, we were walking home with a grocery bag full of spicy peppers.   Because of this, we've been adding them to EVERYTHING.  I've eaten them in eggs, Mike's had them in pot roast and tonight, we added them to our tortellini. Add in some spicy sausage to this recipe and you've got yourself an Italian dish with some kick!


And last but not least, Mike and I have both had friends get engaged this past week and we couldn't be more excited for them! Mike's friend Matt got engaged to his girlfriend Jordan last weekend while vacationing in Canada. One of my bridesmaids, Sara, got engaged to her boyfriend Mark while spending the week at the Outer Banks.   Both of them have been dating for a while and all we have to say is.... IT'S ABOUT TIME!  We're so happy for them and welcome them to the married couples club!

Mike video chatting with his friends in Arlington while they celebrate the engagement. Look at that smile!

While it might not have been the most exciting Saturday, it was a Saturday in Izmir. Luckily, the power came back on while we were eating dinner and we'll have the enchiladas tomorrow.   Happy weekend everyone!