London

2011 started with a busy week.

First I was in Fethiye for our regular Fethiye Loins Club meeting. During the first weekend we hosted regional meetings for Lions Clubs on the cities of Mugla and Antalya. Our District Governor Lion Mr. Nasuhi Ondersev and Vice District Governors Mr. Ahmet Asir and Ms. Canan Banu Dundar were also in Fethiye. We was quite an honur to have so many Lions Clubs' members in our town.

You probably know by now that I love taking pictures. Yet, caught up in the excitement of the events I forgot to take my camera with me, therefore I have no pictures fron the meetings or our dinner in the evening. I hope that our members and our guests will send me some to share.

I left Fethiye on Sunday evening to go to London to attend my reflexology course. I try to plan events and my schedule and for some reason I find events lined up back to back. This was true for Lions Clubs meetings and the course in London.

I will be leaving London in about five hours and I am glad that I came.

London is a city that I feel quite confortable in. I usually fly in with Turkish Airline to Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport. I usually take a train down to Paddington, Heathrow Express or Heathrow Connect depending on the times of the train. Sometimes I request a driver to pick me up from the airport depending on my energy.

For the last two years I stay at the same hotel in London. I come to this city for so many different reasons that I guess I like to keep somethings constants in my trips. Yet in the last ten or moe stays I have always stayed in different rooms, maybe once in the same room. I did not request this specially, but I did not ask for the same rooms either. It is nice to stay at a hotel with many original painting on almost all of the walls of the building and a piano near the reception area. I never played the piano though, I do not think I am good enough to play publicly at a hotel.

My reflexology course with Mrs. Hagar Basis for IIR Internationa Institute of Reflexology London was very good. I love this technique and I love the way Hagar teaches it. Reflexology is a very effective technique for my ailments and it is a shame that it is not well known in Turkey. Also there are many people who call themselves reflexologists after a weekend workshop. If you would like to learn more about reflexology, check out the IIR websites.

I am flying back to Turkey with a night flight because I will be attending a training camp for four days starting tomorrow morning. My flight will arrive in Istanbul at around 5-5:30 am and I need to be in a class by 10 am at a location a few hours drive from my home in Istanbul. I did not plan it this way. It is the way it is.

I am happy to complete the two hurdles without trouble and I hope I can complete the camp successfully. It is an important and precious training for me. I will write about it later on.

It is almosy 5:50 pm and it is dark in London now. Although there are about five hours to my flight, I guess it is time to get moving. I feel tired to go sight seeing. I would like to go to airport and do some reading and relaxing there.

I was in Northeastern London at a Buddist center for my reflexology course. During lunch we went to a small restaurant called The Muse. The waiter's accent made me think that he could be Turkish, but I did not ask. Later on I heard him speak Turkish with someone in the open kitchen. It turns out the bistro was owned by a Turkish and a French guy and our waiter was a friend of the Turkish owner, helping out his friend at times. The portions were a little small and may be the prices were a little high, but it was a nice, pleasant, friendly place, with a more French apperance than Turkish.

I bought a singing bowl from the Buddist center. In Istanbul and in Fethiye I have bowls that I had bought from Japan and Findhorn Ecovillage in Scotland.

Apart from Turkey, the US has been the country that I have stayed longest in since I went to college there for four year. The UK follows it. I had been to different parts of the UK, but London has always been my city. It is a city that everytime I leave, I feel I will be coming back again.

With lots of love to you all.

Have a wonderful 2011.