Here it is, December second, and I am sitting in a Starbuck’s in Alanya, Turkey. I listen to Christmas music piped over loudspeakers in a Muslim country where Christmas is rarely celebrated. I miss my children in California, wondering if I will return to them this Christmas, or if this will be my third Christmas overseas.
Last summer I was here when it was really hot, and I snapped a photo of a boy swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. Now my children are in the California mountains where snow may fill the forests at any time.
Life is full of contrasts, irony like the bitter taste of coffee mixed with dark chocolate.
In Antalya, to the west of me, I had a job at Akdeniz University where this palm tree, under a white-hot sky, reflected in a fountain. I fought hard for that job, but it ended sooner than I expected, thanks to slow Turkish paperwork which would not get my contract in time.
Perhaps the hottest of anything I have seen in Turkey is the love two people can share, like this couple I randomly saw at Kaleiçi in Antalya, posing together on their summer wedding day.
I like to write about life’s extremes like summer and winter, New Zealand and Russia. If you like travel adventures and enjoy my photos, please have a look at my book “Fire and Ice”:
Lonna Lisa Williams 
Reblogged this on beddyburc.
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