I’ve been living here for nearly 4 months now, how did the time go so quickly?! Last year I wrote a post about our old apartment (click HERE to read that) and I thought I’d do the same for this one. If you’re nosey, you’ll enjoy it, and if nothing else it’s nice for me to look back on later on! (:

We rent and live in a fairly typical Turkish apartment, we pay 550tl a month (roughly £160 at today’s rate), it’s nothing special and I think we are definitely paying a little too much rent for what it is, but I guess what we really pay for is location.

Our last apartment was a 20 minute walk to any other civilisation, no shops, no bus route, just a farm and our neighbours. This time we’re living near the sea, about 150 meters and less than a minutes walk to the beach, which I like. Although I loved living further out in Calis away from the busy parts and hotels, I did feel a little isolated. I never went out without Berkay as I didn’t like walking down the busy main road that ran past the house (it’s the main road to Calis from Dalaman so it was always very busy and difficult to cross). Now I’m able to leave the house, walk along the seafront, go to our friends house or even just walk 10 seconds and go to the corner shop for bread instead of the 20 minute one way walk previously. We’re at the quieter end of Calis just behind Guven’s restaurant so we still avoid a lot of the noise, it’s really the best of both worlds.

Our apartment is in a block of 10, and most of my neighbours are Turkish. It was 2 and a half months before I realised that one of my neighbours was actually English, I was wondering why I could hear English music and TV shows and one day it suddenly clicked! I’ve since found out that I have another English neighbour as well, but although I’ve been here 4 months and they live directly underneath me, I’ve not spoken a word to either of them!

Our apartment only has one bedroom, it’s fairly small but has massive wardrobes which we never had in our old house, so that’s a big bonus. It’s a very basic bedroom, wardrobe, chest of drawers, bed, mirror and fan. This fan has been on constantly since we moved in, the poor thing gave up recently so we had to buy a new one! We haven’t been sleeping with a duvet, just my blanket although we have pulled the duvet out of the cupboard this week as it’s been getting chilly! You may notice I’m a bit of a big kid, my blanket has Tinkerbell on it and I have a little soft toy army! I’m a sucker for teddy bears and soft toys, see that frog on my pillow? I can’t sleep without him!
  
Next to the bedroom is the bathroom/wetroom. I’ve had an argument with this room recently after slipping on the floor after a shower and badly bruising my elbow and grazing my foot and wrist! These things are so dangerous but I guess it’s much cheaper to have a wet room rather than installing a shower cubicle, and having a bath is definitely rare in Turkish houses, if you’ve got one of those, you know you’re doing well!
 
Further down the hallway is the kitchen, which is really tiny. Our landlord got us a new fridge after we moved in and when they brought it upstairs I was amazed it actually fit in, it takes up half the width of the room! It’s a basic kitchen, there are no fancy appliances, no dishwasher, no oven, no microwave, just 3 gas rings,  a mini oven and an ancient washing machine.  Surprisingly we bought the current gas bottle when we first move here and haven’t replaced it yet, one day I know I’m going to be in the middle of cooking dinner and it will run out… all part of the fun of living here (; Note the cupboards, these are the infamous ‘Turkish cupboards’ that are part of everyone’s houses..well  maybe not everyone’s, but they are definitely very common, must be the cheapest version they sell!

 
The only other room in the apartment is the living room, where I spend every evening glued to my laptop and writing my blog! This room has an abundance of chairs as you may notice,  two 3-seater sofas and 4 armchairs, and there were also 5 wooden chairs in here but we managed to give them back to the landlord. Seriously, who needs that many chairs, considering it’s a one bedroom apartment? I guess it’s for those sociable Turkish people who like to have the world and it’s mother around for cay everynight, we however, are not those type of people…
 
We actually have a TV in this house, which Berkay is very grateful for! He’d watch it every waking hour if he could, it drives me mad, Turkish ‘soaps’ are so bad, they make Eastenders look like an Oscar winning film! My favourite thing in the room is the cabinet in the corner with a few of our photos and Berkay’s diploma proudly displayed in it.
 
The thing I hate most about this room is that rug on the floor…. it’ lime green with an orange and purple clown on it… who buys these things? I’m not afraid of clowns and this one is quite cute, but it still creeps me out a little, I considered rolling it up and putting it out of sight but I’m a little too afraid of it… so it just sits there, at least it’s unique I suppose, I bet you’ve never seen a rug like this before?

We have two small balconies, one off the bedroom which we only use for drying clothes outside, and one off the living room which is where we sit and eat or play backgammon, our favourite things to do (; It’s nice out there, but it’s on a street where there are two hotels and a shop, so there are usually people or cars driving past which means it’s not very private. I love sitting out there being nosey though, I used to sit there every evening during Ramadan and listen for the call to prayer and cannon fire at sundown, lovely.

That’s all, it’s nothing special but it is our home, for now at least. When I first moved in here, I always wanted to be out and about doing something, I didn’t want to be sat at home. I realised that the reason I didn’t want to be inside too often was because I didn’t want to get too attached to this house, like our last one, as it’s just too heartbreaking when I have to leave it and go back to England. After 4 months, it was inevitable that this house would feel like home and now there’s nothing I like more than sitting on the balcony with Berkay playing backgammon and watching the world go by… Oh well, only another 5-6 weeks here then back to England for the foreseeable future… but for now, this is home.