We all of a sudden discovered that today (Dec 8th) marks 6 months since we left Tas.

I’m reflecting on our 3 month reviews and finding it amusing that we proudly called it our ‘first quarter’ because we hadn’t realised at that stage that we’d only be here for 10 months.

So what has changed in the past 3 months? Are the big topics of the last milestone (culture shock/homesickness, language, teaching) still important to us, or have we found new things to dwell on? Do we regret being here yet? Are we keen to get home?

Culture Shock

I just asked Stu if he’s still feeling culture shock or homesickness. He said yes without hesitation, which surprised me. The other day I realised that I no longer pined for home and decided that I must be ‘over all that.’ But then, I have been on holidays and as a result have spent a lot of time being in contact with friends back home. I guess those things are always going to be sort of hanging over us because we’ll never really feel like we belong here and it’s not so much a pining for our home culture but more a general feeling of having no idea what’s going on outside.

I’m not scared about the next 4 months, because I know they’ll be quite similar to our first 4 months and it’s comforting to know that we survived those fine. Saying this makes me think about a television series we’ve been watching lately called FlashForward. The basic premise is that the entire world blacks out for 2 minutes and catches a glimpse of what will happen to them in 6 months time. For a lot of people in the show, knowing what the future brings gives them hope and/or determination. Hope because they have a future worth living for, and determination to change their path if they didn’t like what they saw. I guess what I’m experiencing here isn’t really the same, but now that all the uncertainty about living here has faded away it’s easier to look at our remaining time here and feel calm.

Language

I won’t dwell too much on this topic here, since Stu wrote about our Turkish lessons in the last post. It feels good to be at a stage where we have a 27% chance of understanding what someone is saying to us, and a 62% chance of being understood. (Those statistics are completely arbitrary and were just numbers I thought looked good) Occasionally I catch myself starting to translate into Turkish (in my head) what I’ve just said/written, and today I was talking today to a friend at home and she said something and my first response was a Turkish word. Fortunately it was over chat so I had time to remember the English equivalent before responding.

Years ago Stu and I had this friend* who went to another country for a few months to learn a new language. When he came back he would constantly slip in a word or phrase of this language into conversation. We (being the circle of friends) got completely frustrated by this behaviour and were adamant that he was showing off his new found knowledge just to show how smart he was now. I’m sad to say that our friendship with this person was never the same again. Stu and I have been thinking about this incident and cringing at how ignorant, selfish and immature we were. How could we know just how much it confuses your brain to learn a new language? We have been worrying that we will alienate our friends back home with our new language because of this past experience.

[*I've not gone into any details here to protect this person's identity and I ask that people familiar with this story also respect this when they comment ]

Teaching

Not much to say on this because we’ve only just started again this week after a 6 week break. We’ve definitely settled into some kind of rhythm and Aydin appreciates that we have our roles and stick to them. Stu does maths and I do English. It’s good. Kathryn was given the advice by everyone but Aydin’s actual teacher to get him to redo kindergarten. We didn’t have a strong opinion on this either way, but it will be good to know that by doing so will ensure that Aydin will have a better chance of retaining the core basics in both maths and reading. We’re hoping the teacher is ok with the hold back.

Regrets?

We still don’t regret being here. Well, that’s not entirely true. The recent uranium fuss has changed our contentedness here a lot. We have the promoter meds for chelation, but we don’t start on them til we’ve built up our zinc for 2 weeks, but without even opening the bottle we could smell that it’s not going to be a pleasurable experience. Stu explained earlier that it’s because of the uranium that he’s felt culture shock strongly in the last few weeks – it’s easier to resent living here when you can’t even drink the water! We have gone so far as to say to ourselves that if we’d known about the uranium situation then we wouldn’t have come. I guess it is all part of God’s big plan and there is a part of me that feels kind of proud that we’re here doing this and aren’t sitting at home because we were putting ourselves first. It would be nice to know for sure how much we should be worrying about our health and whether drinking bottled water, avoiding root veggies (no potatoes, carrots, parsnip or mushrooms in winter? Come on!) and taking the chelation meds is enough.

Home?

Ever since we confirmed our return dates, we’ve felt like we’re ‘about’ to go home. I’m sure in 4 months time I’ll reflect back on this post and think ‘oh, but it did feel like just the very next day we were leaving.’ Stu is very keen to get home to his new job and I’m very keen to get home because we’ll be temporarily living with Sam and Dani (brother and fiancee) and I just can’t wait to live with Dani. Neither of us grew up with sisters so this time together before they get married is going to be very special.

And here are the official dates:

• April 1: Our last day of term
• April 4: We catch a bus to Istanbul and the metro to the airport to catch our flights which leave at 9:30pm.
• April 5: We catch a flight to Australia. Because things aren’t simple with us, we’re booked onto a flight which will take us to Sydney but we’d rather go to Melbourne so we’re on a waiting list for that. Who knows if we’ll get onto it or not.
• April 6 very early am: We arrive in Sydney or Melbourne. If it’s Sydney then we’ll be booked onto an arvo flight giving us enough time to grab our first decent Australian coffee in the city. If Melbourne, we’ll be organising to have breakfast with my brother Will and the Arnotts and then contemplating spending the night in Bendigo so we can meet our nephew. (Oakleys: hope that’s ok with you! Completely up to how we’re going)
• April 7: We’ll definitely be back in Tas on this day. Someone shall organise a party for us.

On that happy note, I’m off to watch more tv

It’s getting colder. We’re loving it. Next week will bring an expected high of 2. We’ll be coming home to a Tassie winter and laughing in it’s face!

Families: we successfully posted your Christmas presents today. They’re now in the safe (?) hands of Bulgarski Poshta and Australian Post (allegedly it’s the latter that lets the side down this time of year).

Lots of love

Elly xx

You know how some sports require muscles you may never have used before? Like kayaking – after a day in a kayak my lower back and stomach muscles are aching from constantly sitting upright. Or laser skirmish/paintball – where to avoid getting shot, you’re running around in a semi-crouched position, and the next day your thighs are in agony.

Well, as Elly described to me the other day, our Turkish lessons are revealing similarly under-utilised areas of our brains!

We have Turkish lessons three afternoons a week with our tirelessly enthusiastic language helper Mirem. The lessons are 2 to 3 hours and generally involve Elly and I working out how to say things in Turkish, or Mirem quizzing us on some of the hundreds of key vocab words she’s managed to make us memorise! Mirem spoke almost no English when we started lessons 3 months ago but she’s picked up a little since then – the Millet have great memories! Even so, much of our communication with Mirem is laboriously slow and involves digging through dictionaries for key words, plenty of gesticulation, as well as lateral thinking about how we might express something with the words that we know.

For example, Mirem insists on escorting us back through the mahalle on our way home – she must assume we don’t feel safe doing it by ourselves! Yesterday we tried to politely tell her that she was welcome to stay home rather than walking us 10 minutes down the road and back. So how do we say it?

What we would have said in English: “Mirem, thanks for the lesson. Please don’t feel you have to escort us through the mahalle today.”

What we would have said in ‘Strayan: “Mirem, stay here, ya nong! We’ll be right! Seriously! See ya tomorrow, mate.”

What Elly actually said: “Mirem, burada, hoşça kal.” (tr: “Mirem, here [points down], goodbye [waves hand wildly].”)

What Stu was going to say: “Mirem, biz gideceğiz, sen gideceğin değil.” (tr: “Mirem, we will go. You will not go.”)

I thought Elly was quite clever to think of that. My attempt was grammatically more complex but far inferior, don’t you agree? In the end, Mirem politely refused our offer and walked us halfway home regardless!

In yesterday’s lesson we covered some fundamental theology – as you do! Mirem gave us 10 minutes to answer each of the following questions:

- İman İsa’ya ne demek? (tr: what does it mean to have faith in Jesus?)

- İsa ne demek? (tr: what is the significance of Jesus?)

- Rabbin sofrası ne demek? (tr: what does it mean to have Communion?)

- Melekler ne demek? (tr: what is the meaning of angels?) – we totally avoided this one! Angel? Aren’t they those things that no church I’ve ever been to has bothered to explain? Hmmm.

The results were interesting! We know our limits in Turkish, so we didn’t attempt very sophisticated answers. In fact, we ended up quoting bits and pieces of the (English) Bible and translating those. To the second question, Elly cheekily answered “Yuhanna üç onaltı” (tr: John 3:16) which Mirem thought was hilarious and insightful.

Anglicans amongst our readership will be proud (or ashamed) to know that when it came to defining the Lord’s Supper, Elly and I quoted the Anglican Communion service virtually word-for-word. Since most of that is just Corinthians 11 Mirem didn’t seem to think anything was amiss!

So, our brains are aching a little. Mirem said we’d “forgotten almost all our Turkish” during our 4-week holiday. We’re not so sure – I suspect we lost familiarity with a lot of words Mirem had taught us, but I also think Mirem rather exaggerated our language abilities in her memory! In any case, we’re back on track now and enjoying finding ways to stay motivated.

Elly taught Mirem a key lesson recently: that she (Elly) loves to tell stories! So now our lessons often begin with Mirem saying “Elly, hikaye var mı?” (tr: Elly, do you have a story?) whereupon Elly has to think of the latest amazing news and render it into Turkish. Fans of Elly’s stories will be pleased to know that wild gesticulation remains a key story-telling tool in Elly’s Turkish.

Meanwhile, I (Stu) play teachers’ pet by translating Mirem’s teaching materials into English, as well as filling an exercise book with English verbs in all their cases, tenses and conjugations. (I truly pity anyone who has to learn English as a second language!!)

The moral of the story is: learn a language! It rocks.

Cheers

Stu.

We got the scooters again on Wednesday! They were too much fun (and too cheap) to resist. We went back to Osman to hire them… despite meeting another nice young scooter hirer the night before. This other guy invited us to have free elma çay (apple tea) and a chat. He had great English and had actually been to Australia – plus his brother lives in Melbourne. We asked his name as we said our farewells and were astonished to hear that his name was Jesus. Actually, his name is İsa (which is the Turkish word for Jesus), but we told us the Anglicised version. We thought it would be a rare name for a Muslim country, but Dave later informed us that that isn’t the case.

So as cool as it would have sounded to say that we hired scooters from Jesus, we went back to Osman. That’s a hugely hilarious dichotomy of names for anyone who’s familiar with the history of the Ottoman Empire – which was founded by Osman I!

This time we decided to drive a couple of towns away to visit one of many underground cities scattered around Cappadocia. We chose Kaymaklı Underground City because it was the biggest, even though there were smaller ones that would have been free. We were talked into paying for a guide to take us around, thankfully we only had 20 lira on us which was accepted instead of the usual (exorbitant) fee of 70. It was worth having Mustafa (a retired ministry of tourism official) take us around as there were no signs explaining anything once we got inside – Peter Grant, you would be out of a job here! It was quite surreal to be walking around tunnels and caves where the Hittites hid from Assyrians and the early Christians hid from the Romans.

After visiting the underground city we headed back to Göreme to do some off-road exploring – the real reason for hiring scooters again. We drove through some very narrow valleys and I had to hop off the back of Stu’s and walk along behind for some sections. By this time I had had a few solo runs and some with Stu on the back, they were ok but I didn’t have the hugest confidence in my driving! Nevertheless when we got closer to the highway to take us back to the hire place I felt I could get there on my own! I think I just wanted to say I drove on a public road in Turkey without a licence. I didn’t last very long before I scared myself and the boys (who were trying to catch up!) by nearly side-swiping a concrete barrier.

Our last full day in Göreme was another walking day. We decided to walk to the nearby town of Üçhisar for lunch then walk back through the Güvercinlik (Pigeon) Valley. The valley was an interesting walk. We’re very used to Tasmanian walking tracks that are extremely well marked out, even to the point of laying out duckboards just so we don’t get lost. With the valley walk, there were moments where the track branched out into 2, 3 or more paths and I we had to choose which way to walk. Sometimes we were lucky and found that our selection took us in vaguely the right direction, but sometimes the path we chose ended at a cliff edge or a river or under a tree. It was like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel! We eventually made it through the valley just as the sun set which was lucky.

As a reward for our long week and to celebrate our last night in Cappadocia, we visited Göreme’s Turkish Baths. Ahh. It was lovely. In brief, it went like this:

• Mud mask slapped on
• 50° sauna for 15 minutes
• Shower then lie on a marble slab for 10 minutes
• An attendant comes who then sloughs off your dead skin with a scratchy mitt (eww) and rinses you off.
• The attendant then used an air-pillow with soap suds in it to massage/cleanse your skin. This part was very relaxing for me as my attendant was gentle, but I could hear groans of pain coming from the boys as various joints (inc back, neck, elbows, knees) were cracked rather forcefully.
• We then showered off and headed to a small pool to paddle round in for a bit before heading back for a second stay in the sauna and a few more laps of the pool.
• After our final shower we headed to the towels where we were accosted by a towel-wielding man who insisted on drying us down for us. That was weird, reminded me of being 3 and fresh out of the bath again!

The next day, Thursday we were supposed to fly out at 9pm at night, but discovered that getting from the airport in Istanbul to Sultanahmet before the last bus/ferry/tram would be extremely difficult and it would be cheaper to cancel the flights and catch an overnight bus instead. Apart from being uncomfortable to get a decent night sleep in the bus was fine and we arrived in Istanbul bright and early at 7am. Stu and I had originally planned to catch another overnight bus to Haskovo but due to tiredness and some not-so-subtle hinting from Humf we decided to spend the night so we could see him off at the airport the next day.

Humphrey! He has gone

We hope he had a good month with us, we think he got a good taste of some rather obscure European countries and what it’s like to live in close quarters with the same people for a few weeks – now he knows how I survived only having brothers

We had a rather entertaining bus ride back to Haskovo. For those not friends with me on facebook I will re-post here soon what I wrote about that trip.

Now we’re home. Kathryn and Aydin have been having a ball in Australia and we came home to the news that they are planning on returning to Haskovo for the next 6 months at least. We received high praise from his teachers and educational psychologist for all the hard work we have put in over the past 5 months which was really good to hear. Well done Aydin!

We still have two weeks break until we have a student again and we’re looking forward to some quiet pottering about and intensive Turkish (maybe).

Til we post again!

Elly