Routine Tuesday Nights

Every Tuesday night the interns eat dinner at The Willingham's home. Cayla gives us a break from cooking duties and allows us to eat her consistently wonderful food. Today we planned on heading straight to their house after work, but they did not have water or electricity, which is sadly not at all abnormal. We waited half an hour at the office for their electricity to turn on, and around five thirty, I took my formerly black dress shoes out of the cabinet by the front door of the office and slipped them on my feet. We left the second-story office, walking down the "hallway" through the open air office building, and turned right to walk down the stairs. The first floor "hallway" passes right by a Turkish dessert shop that has an endless supply of baklava. We exit the back of the office building into a confused mixture of a parking lot, construction scene, and trash pit, and depending on the day the space looks more or less like any one of these. 

The seven minute escapade through backstreets and neighborhoods to the Willingham home always changes because I can never remember the exact route to their house. It makes life an adventure. Their house is the second floor of a two story building with uncovered stairs running up the outside of the building leading to their "front porch" or housha. That's where we ate dinner tonight. We had two blankets covering the concrete front porch with cushions lain on top making the floor as comfortable as a couch…with out the living room. It was awesome. There is no better way to wind down an in-office workday with an full evening picnic on a balcony….except to finish it with a cup of traditionally kurdish tea and some of the best dang oatmeal-raison cookies this side of the Euphrates!