Joel and Dotty Kuhn Remember Turkish Sites and Flavors

Host: It was 35 years ago that Joel met his lovely wife Dotty while living in Turkey. They fell in love and got married in their country side home and now they live in New Jersey where they have lived for 20 years and their love story continues. Our crew had an opportunity to interview them, let’s watch.

Joel: I came to Turkey about 35 years ago as a school administrator for independent schools in Turkey and Dotty and I met there, she was a teacher, I was working for the air force at the time, out of the school district and we lived there for about—I was there for about seven years and we were married in Turkey in fact, about 30 years ago.

Dotty: Well the teachers that get together and do interesting things in the weekend, we go to Bursa or up to Uladat to ski and that’s where he proposed to me, in Uladat.

Joel: We did get marry in Turkey at a country house that we have which was on the bay of Ismit, some are close to the village or Carmesal and we were ready in the front porch of our house. First by a chaplain, an air force chaplain who have said the first official English words for marrying people and we had about a hundred people in the front yard and in front of our porch and then we had a Turkish judge came. He was the marriage man with his black robes and we signed the marriage book in front of him and the—our land lord was the best man for our wedding and he signed as our witness.

Dotty: I like everything about Turkey. Riding the ferry boats, everything.

Joel: There is such a sense of history in the sense of it being so different, the different people, the different foods that the cities which were modern. The villages which were not that different than a lot of the times in some aspects and I felt that you can go out the highway and you can find yourself back five hundred years in a flash. It was just a wonderful magical experience.

Dotty: What we enjoy eating is the kinder kebab and we go to the bazaar and there is the place that the Americans go, I believe it was called the cargo shop, the shadow puppets.

Joel: Nowadays what we discovered in the last-last summer for example with my teacher. It's the old palace of the former of the last governor of Egypt and that was fun. Our relationship to Turkey and the Turkish community now is we’ve been going back in the last ten years at least once or twice a year. The last three years I’ve been studying Turkish language. Does kinder kebab—