Same Cafe, New Day

One of the coolest things about living in cities for a month at a time is that you get to establish a minuscule amount of routine.

You find your favorite restaurants, shops, and cafes. You go to the same veg/fruit guy every couple of days, and the barista at the local coffee shop knows your name and order. It’s a lovely touch, considering we move around so much.

The best part about this sort of routine is that while it’s a bit of the same… it never, ever gets old. That’s the cool part. We’re here long enough to enjoy the comfort of our favorite places, while not being here long enough for it to feel mundane.

Stevie and I have a bit of a way we treat the weekends here. We wake up at 3am on Saturdays and Sundays to teach our kids, and then we go back to sleep for a little nap in between our two sets of classes. We end up teaching a 9/10 hour day most weekends, so we are totally exhausted by the time 4pm rolls around.

Because of this, we’ve been quite content to pop over to the bakery, grab some Turkish bread, make some runny eggs, watch an episode of our show (right now it’s Cuckoo), and then head to the coffee shop for a latte and a chat. It’s honestly been a lovely thing to look forward to on the weekends for me, as there’s really nothing I’d rather do than hang out with Stevie.

This was my view today at the coffee shop. I had loads of feedbacks to do, so I sat and did that while Steven finished grammar checking his mate’s PHD paper. We then had a craving for curry, so we went to the store to grab some sauce. Steven made a fabulous dinner, and now we are off to bed. I’m exhausted, and we have a busy week ahead!

It’s our last few days in Istanbul, so we’re trying to squeeze in the last of our to-dos. We also start a new workout program tomorrow. We’re challenging ourselves to a dedicated 8-9 week program in the hopes of losing this covid weight. Fingers crossed it works!!