The Grants' Bulgaria Blog.

Merhaba, bu Elly!

(A google translate check confirmed that I actually got this right! Hurrah!)

Don’t be fooled by my introduction, we’re a long way off fluency in Turkish. Kathryn taught us a very useful phrase: ‘bu ne’ which roughly translates to ‘what is this?’ and can be used when pointing at various objects. Of course, I have to be difficult because I want to know the words for things that aren’t physical eg emotions, adverbs etc so I guess it’s the textbooks for me! David recently praised my creativeness in learning Turkish: scrawling words and phrases on the windows of our living room in whiteboard marker! I didn’t tell him that it was a result of boredom and rebellion in our rather stuffy ‘old person’ flat!

Continuing on the language note before I get on to the real topic of today’s post, I visited Fatihan again with Kathryn yesterday. I met her originally because I wanted a haircut and from the start really liked her. I think the main thing about her is that unlike all the other people I’ve met with Kathryn she’s the only one who actually remembers my existence and doesn’t leave me sitting bored in a corner while she tells Kathryn heaps of stuff. I think homeschooling Aydin the past few months meant that Kathryn couldn’t get out very easily to see people which means they have a lot they need to tell her. This is ok I guess, its just hard to look interested for longer than 30 minutes. This hasn’t been Kathryn’s fault at all! I can understand very much wanting to catch up with someone important to me that I haven’t seen in a while and if they’ve brought someone along with them that I can’t relate to…well I might accidentally ignore them in my excitement! (shh everyone, stop laughing!)

Anyway, Fatihan is really nice! She makes sure I am involved in the conversation and being a hairdresser she’s very good at talking and engaging people in conversation. When we were leaving yesterday I asked her (through Kathryn) what she would like me to be able to say in Turkish when I next see her. I was hoping for something simple like eg. being able to answer when she asks me how I am, especially since I only know a handful of words and haven’t yet grasped the suffixes and vowel harmonies. But no: ‘I want you to tell me what you did today or the day before and what you did for God and if any miracles happened.’ I called her a hard taskmaster! Anyway, it looks like I might be set now for someone to help me learn the language, please pray that Stu can find someone that he shares a connection with!

On with the post.

I thought I should sit down and write a post on how we’re going. You know, beyond ‘oh yeah, we’re doing fine,’ but what you should say when the asker looks you in the eye and says ‘No really, how ARE you doing?’

Honestly? We could be doing better but I think  considering the circumstances we are coping ok. We have been suffering quite severely this past week with culture shock and/or homesickness. This post is going to be more about how I’ve been feeling rather than the both of us, because Stu is better to talk about Stu and he’s gone to bed anyway.

I just realised that Sunday (5th) marked the longest time we’d been out of Australia: our last trip was 26 days. Kind of gave me that feeling Samwise must’ve had in Fellowship of the Ring when he first got to the furthest he’d been from the shire.

So, the past two weeks or so have been fairly difficult as the excitement over our new adventure has faded and we sort of aim towards some sort of settlement. Except, we can’t really settle properly because we can’t speak the language. We really want to just strike up conversations with people and tell them about how we come from Australia and tell them about our lives there and hear about their lives here. It would certainly help us learn about the culture here!

Which leads to our next difficulty with settling in: the cultures. We’re Australian, living in Bulgaria, interacting with Turkish/Millet. Yeah, it’s confusing. I occasionally somedays forget that we’re in Bulgaria, I don’t think we’re in Turkey either though. On top of all that there’s still remnants of communist rule, of wars between Bulgaria and Turkey/Ottoman Empire, Millet family feuds… We’re learning that Australians are grossly informal – apparently the Turkish aren’t at all. We’re from a completely different life to the Millet. I’m married but childless, studying at uni, worked at a department store which was supplemented by government payments, own a car, go to church IN a church, all of which only scratches the surface on how different my life is to the Millet I’ve met. Kathryn tells me about all their struggles, they’re essentially ostracised by both the Turks and Bulgarians, I can see by the state of the streets in the Mahalle that they’re quite poor. So I feel no connection to these people, but I think in time something will click and it will all be good. For now, I’ve just got to laugh at our now seemingly petty little gen y problems we had at home.

It was hard to put a finger on what it was I missed about home. Quite simply, it was my life! I miss it when I realise I’ve been carrying my phone around out of habit and not because I expect a text message. Sometimes sitting in our flat I hear someone coming up the stairs and without realising just assume it’s Sam dropping in, or Humf coming home. I miss being able to read products in the supermarket without staring for ages trying to decode the Cyrillic and the familiar logic by which streets are laid out and signposted. I miss everyone being within arm’s reach, even if they lived in Hobart or Melbourne (ok, and Bendigo). I miss fish and chip nights with my family and being dragged outside by Stu’s family; I miss all our friends (I would name you all but then the orchestra would start playing…)

I hate getting my Turkish and Bulgarian mixed up; not knowing who is what and which greeting I should use (btw, we’ve just been speaking in English at everyone – stops them from talking back unnecessarily); that time differences mean that Australia is awake when we’re busy in the morning but asleep when we have free evenings; having to catch the elevator with one of our neighbours and explain again that we only speak English and feeling awkward (I usually opt for running up 5 flights of stairs instead).

I like that our neighbour’s name sounds like Statue so that’s what we call him; that it’s Summer; that Kathryn has pointed out which fruit seller across the road is Turkish and now she knows us; that it’s cheaper to call home on skype-out from here than it was to call Launceston to Hobart; that Humf loves us (and the global financial crisis) so much that he’s considering coming here instead of SE Asia; that Andy might be in Romania at Christmas and it’s ONLY next door and therefore logistically possible; that this blog has a daily hit counter and we can see that lots of people have read it; that Aydin is actually a pretty cool kid to hang out with and how proud we feel when we’ve taught him something which is only topped by how proud HE is.

On that note I shall stop there and go to bed.

The photo is from a spit roast lamb feast we went to last Friday in honour of the pastor of the Korean family’s church visiting.

I think the guy on the far left was the mayor of the local village. The man next to him actually did most of the cooking. It was a beautiful setting, in some forest with springs. Quite nice.

Lots of love, take care, God bless

Elly xx

Tags: culture shock, language - Turkish

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 12:34 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.