ATASC and all of its chapters organized an Members’ Afternoon Tea at the residence of Turkish Consul General Honorable Hakan and Nazan Tekin. The main purpose of the event was to gather the Turkısh Amerıcan communıty from San Dıego to Ventura, and to show the unity, solidarity and collaboration between all ATASC Chapters. The other purpose was to raise funds for education – for both ATASC School in Izmit, Turkey and also for the schools supported by chapters here in SC. The surprise of the day was the attendance of Yasemin Kumral, the popular singer of 1970’s.

Ms. Nazan Tekin was very kind, opening her home and helping with all the preparations. The garden had a festive look with the tables, chairs, flowers, furthermore the vendor booths lent a Turkish Bazaar atmosphere. The food table was laden with delicious savory and sweets prepared by the organizers. Tea, coffee and conversation flowed freely during the whole afternoon. More than 150 people attended to enjoy each other’s company and do some Mothers’ Day shopping. You could buy jewelry, evil eye ornaments, pestemals, copperware and even carpets and paintings ( I added a list of vendors below if you missed this event). And of course no Turkish Kermes is complete without the sale of borek, baklava, helva, asure, profiterol and cookies.

The event raised roughly 2000 dollars half of which will be donated to ATASC School in Izmit, Turkey. This school was built by the Turkish American Community after the 1999 earthquake and is still supported by ATASC in multiple ways. Please check our website www.atasc.org for more details. The rest of the funds will be evenly divided by the five chapters; namely LATAA, OCTAA, TALL, ATA-SD and VATAN.

We all left replete with food and goodies, promising to come back next year and to make it a bigger event and even more fun.

pictures

Vendors:

Carpets – by Erhan Ercan www.flyingrugs.com

Paintings – by Ciler Cetiner Ciftci

Pestemals – by Murvet Thiele

Jewelry – by  Ruhsar Boduryan

            Ebru Kocataskin

            Zeynep Gul Evans

            Aynur Avsar www.artizana.com

            Hafize Turgut

            Mine Caglar