In the spirit of keeping old traditions from my family alive and creating my own new ones here, my roommate and I invited our friends over to decorate Christmas cookies. We had the ingredients to make dough and frosting but I have not found a place you can buy food coloring here yet, and I didn't bring any, on purpose actually. Sprinkles are also hard to find. I wanted to try to make some on my own so I researched it on the internet and found so recipes for various colors. I boiled a purple cabbage for hours and ended up with some purple liquid that I mixed with sugar and made some very pretty light purple sprinkles. Pomegranate juice got us reddish-pink ones. My home-made food coloring didn't work so well for the frosting so we borrowed some. I used it to make all the other colors of sprinkles so we're ready for our next cookie decorating party.
Two of my friends came, and the kids who live downstairs. Their family cleans our stairwell, takes out our trash, and looks after things in the apartment. They sat and patiently and creatively decorated for hours and listened to us chat.
It was especially fun to see my friends interact with one another. I told about how I met each of them and they had fun chatting together. My roommate sang some hymns with her guitar and my friend who is not part of the family was surprised to hear another Turk singing along. She is interested, and I was glad to have a natural place for them to be able to meet each other.
