Making Progress

I've been a little stuck for inspiration lately. Or maybe there's actually too much, and it's focus that I really lack. Or maybe it's just procrastination leading me to wander the web at the expense of getting anything done. Or maybe there are too many decisions to make. Or maybe those decisions could be expensive and risky. Or maybe they won't lead me where I want to go. Or maybe I don't know what I want. Or maybe I do know but don't know how to achieve it.

Does every parent face this kind of dilemma when their children reach that terrifying point of entering full-time education? Within the next two weeks both the Brown-eyed Girl and Little Boy Blue will set out every morning and won't be back until dinnertime. What an expanse of time to fill! And it would be very easy to fill it with pointless procrastination, temptingly so.

I do have a plan, I'm going to join a driving school and work to finally get a driving license. So that will fill mornings. But that will last a month and then what? What do I want to do? What do I want to be when I grow up?

I do have the answer to those questions but I lack a method to achieve them, hence all the wavering indecision. And of course there is the fear of the unknown, the worry about the risks, the courage I need to gather to progress.

One thing is certain, the spinning in circles really has to stop. It's time to take a step in any direction. I can always turn back if it's not the direction I want to be going in, can't I, can't I?

Budding Artists

When I wrote a month or so ago about visiting the sculpture exhibition in Cimenlik Castle I really didn't imagine the next exhibition there would be my daughters! We got a phone call last week to invite us to the opening of the Cocuklar Evi Troy Project in the Muavenet-i Milliye Exhibition Hall in the castle grounds. The mayor strolled around a walking tour of Canakkale opening exhibitions as he went.The Troy Festival in Canakkale this year is mainly centred on several exhibitions like this in various locations around town. Previous years involved a lot of folk dancing from Eastern Europe but a reduction in funding meant that there isn't so much dancing at the crossroads this year.

For the last year the whole preschool has been involved in this project, learning about Troy and its myths. The story was watered down a little, the gods were sidelined, the violence reduced and the sex left out completely. We had to read a book where the site as it is was explained from the point of view of two hedgehogs. Then we visited Troy with the author. The trip mainly involved a huge queue to get into the reconstructed horse by the gate and some of the outspoken kids told the story from the stage of the theatre. Then we sat, ate our lunch and the kids drew pictures. Back at the school they constructed a horse from their artwork and drew or constructed lots of little projects to do with Troy. The end-of-year show was a play of the story by the 5/6 year olds, with the 4/5 year olds on darbuka and the 3/4 year olds with bells on their wrists, held in the Korfmann Library downtown.