I've got a bit of a dictionary addiction and can spend many a happy hour browsing a good one for pure pleasure.
Here, the dictionary takes on a whole new importance as Turkish words have so little in common with English ones. At least in the European countries you get a few clues - it's easy to guess that "cuisine" is French for kitchen and the other European words for kitchens are equally guessable.
Not so here - you'd be scratching your head for a while to work out that "mutfak" is where the Turkish housewife whips up the family dinner.
My friends teased me about lugging around my Turkish dictionary but they had to see my point when we were at the market.
A farmer was selling honey and herbs and jars full of jams and syrups he and his wife made.
We had to buy a jar of his mulberry molasses which he assured us was very good for coughs if you drank it with hot water or spread it on bread.
Another jar looked pretty delicious too and we mimed spreading it on bread but he looked horrified.
Out came the dictionary which saved us from the bitter disappointment of finding that his homemade ointment for haemorrhoids was not delicious on bread.
Our first full boatload of guests have just left and my darling and I were just sitting down to a quiet read of the papers (him) and writing this column (me) when the phone has rung, and three of our sons and one girlfriend are in a cab on the way to this little bay.
Even though I am quite old enough to remember travelling before cellphones and email, I just can't remember how we coped with the problems of meeting up with people.
Last week, eight of our family all arrived from different parts of the world, and managed to find one another in a cafe by the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.
Given how hard it is to pin our children down to specific times or dates at home in the Wakatipu, this was nothing short of a miracle.
Now I am just waiting to see what other problems the aviation world is going to encounter to prevent the rest of the family getting here - the Chilean ash cloud looks as if it is going away, thank goodness, and at least Christchurch airport is fully operational [at time of writing] as two of our children leave from there.
Poor, poor Christchurch - it must be so exhausting going through all that again, and I am very glad some of our friends from there are going to have some time with us in Turkey.
It's a strange and uncomfortable feeling being here and so relaxed and happy when so many people we know have been having earthquake dramas and other terrible tragedies at home.
It is making me even keener to have all our children close to us.
I am very excited to see what they think of our new home.
I'm also excited to see what they think of my new bellydancing skills.
Andy Patterson celebrated his 51st birthday here.
We had finally caught up with the Fishers' gulet and cunningly managed to get ourselves invited on board for dinner.
They dressed Andy as a sultan in a very fine dishdash sold to them by one of the myriad boats that float around selling everything from fish to bellydancing outfits.
We girls enchanted the new sultan with our bewitching performance in our diaphanous, tinkling finery, so were a little put out when the men stole our thunder by putting on our pretty garments and doing their own version AND doing it better.
It hasn't all been fancy dress and belly dancing, though.
Our boat agent in Marmaris was very excited to hear we had Annabel on board and organised a little press conference for her.
It turns out the PR manager for the Marmaris equivalent of DQ is madly keen on New Zealand and instead of just the local paper, had every TV station and national newspaper there to meet her.
As ever, she was the perfect ambassador and I'm looking forward to seeing what is in the papers today.
Her husband got the lowdown on Turkish politics which are as full of mayhem and misery as ours.
Marmaris has all the same problems as Queenstown and there is a lot they do to counter these problems that we could copy from them.
They are manic about rubbish collection and street cleaning, and their marinas are breathtakingly clean.
I love the idea of David Kennedy's "Shaping our Future" forum.
One thing I would love to see is an encouragement for locals heading overseas (or anywhere, for that matter) to take some of the Queenstown brochures and info to give out to people at their destination.
I know how hungry for anything to read I get when I am waiting somewhere and a brochure on Queenstown would make very exciting reading.
And on the subject of exciting reading, do have a look at A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.
There has been a queue for this book here and it is a weird jumping back and forwards through time collection of stories about a big-time music entrepreneur and his young PA.
The stories leap around a lot - sometimes about Sasha and sometimes about Bennie - but there is always a connection, sometimes very slight, between the two.
It's a bit disturbing and quite sad in places - her kleptomania, for example, and the huge swings in their fortunes and circumstances make for fascinating tales.
I loved it and I definitely wasn't the only one.
