Sarma Marma...

Last Friday, we went to visit our old roommates. Hulya is teaching us how to make Turkish delights...(not really Turkish delight, but other yummy Turkish foods) We had so much fun. But, I'm glad that we went early, because let me tell you, Turkish food is a process and you are gonna want to do it with friends. It takes time and alot of hands! If you decide you want to visit my house in a year or so in America, you are gonna be just pleasantly surprised. I am under construction when it comes to my cooking and hostessing skills! Now that Hulya has moved out, I have discovered that all the cay (Turkish tea) has added up over the past few weeks and now I find the little cup that could fit in the palm of your hand full of hot tea on a 120 degree weather day quite endearing! It's become comforting. I know that these moments are becoming a part of my insides, tea and all, and I'll take them along--with most likely a nice Turkish tea pot to keep me company for quite sometime. But for now, I have Turkish tea at my disposal and plenty of friends to drink it with, so I'll live in the moment.
Back to the 'sarma'. This is what we learned to make on Friday. It's peppers and eggplants and grape leaves stuffed with this rice mixture. It was stinking hilarious...Okay, let me explain. Turks do not cook like Americans. There are no precise measurements or conversions. It's a glass of this, splash of a lemon, couple spoonfuls of this...seriously. I knew this, but we went to learn how to make sarma. Hulya cooked exactly the way she always does and we were left running around the kitchen helping and furiously taking notes as she dumped heapfuls of ingredients into various pots and bowls. She's so funny, she loves me--i know this because she calls me her 'ci ci kizim' (jee jee kuhzum) (which i think means my 2nd (step) daughter...how cute is that. she has a daughter whose around 11, i think. any who, we have a fun friendship--thanks to her living with us for three weeks and plenty of toenail painting and the occasional quesadilla making at about midnight--me doing the toe nail painting, her owning the toes, and me doing the quesadilla making! i loved it, but all that to say, we have bonded). But in spite of our sweet friendship, she kept getting so mad at me for wanting to make it into real measurements! I kept trailing after her asking, 'how much?' 'how much?' It turned out good, and we had a fun afternoon. But, when i got home the fun really started seeing as how in the 'sweat your face off' heat, i had carried a hot pot of sarma in my lap all the way home on the bus...but this payed off! I delivered some homemade treats to four of my neighbors and they just glowed as I told them that I had helped make the Turkish food! I think, our stock just went up in our apartment...

A Busy Day...

So, for lack of better material for today and because some of you have frequently asked me what a regular day in my life here looks like...here goes...it was a busy one:
6:45a.m.: I woke up to walk. Katie and Jayme regularly walk and i don't get a ton of exercise here so I'm trying to take up the habit with them. I woke up this morning a little late but ran out the door, but couldn't meet up with them. Turned out that I missed Katie and I walked alone or so i thought! We both ended up walking alone (at the same time, on the same street) and probably passed each other up on opposite sides of the street!
Came home and got ready for class...
9:00a.m. Turkish class. There are five of us in class and we love our teacher. She's great, but i don't love what we're learning right now. This is actually a word: 'gitmemememi'...what a horribly long word, eh? I thought so, too. But there's a whole tense that resembles it. Today we learned how to say, 'i wish...' but I wish we didn't have to learn the '-memememi' tense!
10:30a.m. Class finishes. I had to finish off my lesson plans for my next class. I ordered lunch from a nearby cafe and they delivered. I had lunch at the office with our teacher and Craig and Katie and then finished up my lesson plans. They take a bit more time because for my younger class, I have to ready my English lesson as well as my Turkish disciplinary vocab (i don't use it on a regular basis: Please be quiet, Sit down, Listen to me when I'm talking to you, Show this class respect, and then if that doesn't work, yes i resorted one class to giving them candy if they behaved...this teaching thing is new for me!)
12:30p.m. I bus it to my English class. I had two back to back classes teaching a high school group and some younger children. The high schoolers are of course very worried about looking cool while they're speaking broken English--one would think i would be of encouragement because i look ridiculous (I am convinced) every time i open my mouth, but maybe I'm just scaring them from practicing!
3:00p.m. I rode the bus from my English classes to a local dessert shop. Me, Katie, and Melissa met up with our university friends for ice cream and to catch up. They've been a bit M.I.A. since the heat wave. Not that I blame them. We had a great visit.
Then about 5:00p.m., I grabbed some dinner and headed off to ladies bible study. We started tonight about 6:00 and then finished up about 9:00...so I headed home about 12 hours after I left today! What a busy day! This isn't always the norm, but lately there have been quite a few days like today. Yesterday was a bit slower. Katie hosted a tea in the afternoon, we made a new friend, and I taught night class. I guess the slow days balance out the crazy ones! And in the middle of all this routine and non-routine...there is Turkish. Just adds a whole another element to an already crazy day! But yesterday and today, slow and fast, I got to visit with friends and share myself with them and Who is in me. So, regardless of the speed of the day, I love that the heart of my day is still the same, to just love on people here in the middle of whatever I'm doing. Love on them in a way that I just couldn't do on my own...love on them in a way Only He can, and look for ways to show them why.

Bazaar Car

Look at me...I mean do I look just like a cute little Turkish girl going to the bazaar or what. We bought this little 'bazaar car', no i don't mean a bizarre car, but it's that too... I don't drive here, so this is as close as it gets, but they really do call them bazaar cars! In our neighborhood, every Thursday and Friday all the ladies and sometimes the men pull their 'cars' to the bazaar and buy fruits and vegetables for the week. They fill the cart up and then pull it home. They buy so many vegetables and some people have to walk such a long way, that little car is nice, let me tell you. Plus, no one ever buys as FEW vegetables as we do. They always look at us funny and then we have to say, no really, that's all we want. They cook with tons of vegetables here. I love feeling like I fit in just a little bit more. We stopped on the way home this week to buy something someone was peddling along the way and the women were so nice. They could not have been more excited to see us practicing our Turkish so well--mind you we have had 3 weeks of full time practice--so excited they gave us an apple for our journey. Just because. Here, have an apple. You never know what kinds of little gifts you'll find along the way just by opening your mouth. They thought we were German, not sure what we thought once we told them we were American. We took our apples and headed home, me driving our bizarre car.
This is my roommate Melissa. I don't think she's been on the blog yet. Welcome to the blog Melissa. Yesterday was her birthday and in good Turkey style her birthday started with a little power outage. It went out while I was in the middle of making birthday treats of course. I had to carry all my pans and bowls over to Katie's house and borrow her oven. Our visitors left yesterday morning. They'll be here in our city for several more weeks of radiation for our friend, but they're staying at an empty house for the remainder of their visit. Of course, the power was still off when they left, so they had to carry their suitcases down the five flights of stairs by candlelight! Melissa has an old fashioned lantern that they used. It came in handy because later in the morning our upstairs neighbors knocked on our door wanting to borrow a flashlight. We didn't have a flashlight to offer, but we surely gave her the lantern. She may have thought we were a little strange, but she gladly borrowed it. This may be a little treat that summer has to offer us. This is the 3rd time our power has gone off this week. Maybe we should invest in a flashlight...

Visitors...

some welcomed with open arms and enjoyed...

...and some not so greatly welcomed:

Today we were cleaning. Last night Hulya looked at me and said, 'You and me...we're going to clean tomorrow.' Yes mam. Now I'm all for clean, but we just cleaned a few days ago! Like bleach, sweep, mop, wipe down good cleaning. Top to bottom. Well, I guess we are a bit cleaner now. But I'm so glad we cleaned because it helped us do some necessary exterminating. So, we are mid-cleaning and Hulya yells for me to RUN...which usually means that the cats are on the table or doing something naughty they're not suppose to do--which is just typical behavior...but today it meant something completely different. Yes, somehow in the wee hours of the morning or late hours of the night, we had a visitor to our salon. I greeted the visitor this morning with basically a blood curdling scream that I'm quite sure the heavenlies heard. A bat, yes that's b-a-t... had made its way into our cozy little home and I just am so ecstatic that we found it in the daylight as opposed to tonight when we snuggle into the couches and close the door for bed. Apparently during the day, these bats lose their superpowers and can't even really open their eyes. Bless it. Just heard a bunch of screaming and never knew what hit him when Hulya swept him up in the dust pan and dumped him over the balcony...hopefully not onto our downstairs neighbors' balcony. We can only hope we didn't pass the madness onto someone else. We sleep in the living room (the room of discovery) because it's the only room in our house with an air conditioner. Can you imagine if I had found the creepy crawler while it was flying around our living room. Now, I am all here, but that might have momentarily sent me to packing my bags. I know he may look like a little booger, but doesn't matter...he's still a bat and I'm sorry, but bats are just too too much for me. I was pretty much scared the rest of the morning until i comforted myself that I've actually had my rabies shot! Don't worry about me, just get me to a doctor quickly please if I start foaming at the mouth...
Any who, you'll be glad to know precautions are being taken so a disaster like this never happens again. If you were or are planning to visit, please don't change your mind on account of visitors like the one we found today in the salon...I promise you are more welcome than he is!

Religion, Politics, and The Akward Party

I am an opinionated person. But, last night I experienced just how opinionated my new friends can be. I had a dinner party. We'll just call it the awkward party. I don't like to talk politics with people here, it just tends to be...well, not a beneficial experience, shall I say. Elections are coming up and maybe tensions are running higher than usual thanks to all the advertisements and campaigning efforts. But last night, i had two different friends over for dinner...I'll replay the details for your awkward reading pleasure. It was such a mixed up evening. They didn't end up getting along at all, and all the while with my new visitor from the east, I was trying to be the hostess with the mostest--but that means a whole new thing over here. Hospitality is huge. I hardly sat down once last night! Melissa and I cooked an Enchilada casserole and the fixings. One of my friends had requested Mexican. So, the meal is ready. We've just sat down and prayed...and one of the very first topics that one of my friends brings up is terrorism and her views on the government's actions towards it and activity in the east of our country. Great. The night just started with a bang. So then, my other friend becomes defensive. I am struggling to understand exactly whats going on--Turkish is flying rapidly and the voices are getting raised. Ak-ward. Everyone calms down and then we have dessert. Tea is such an art here. I was so stressed trying to keep all tea glasses filled, wash forks--because we had already used all the forks and didn't have enough for dessert! So, we're washing forks, spilling tea on the carpet, trying to gage the conversation and keep it afloat without any more disasters. We are well into the dessert course, moving into the fruit course, mind you when things again went awry. Not to mention the fact that at this point, there are a million dishes on my kitchen counter and we had to have cut the juiciest watermelon I've ever seen in my life...so the kitchen is a disaster, but we're on to watermelon eating in the salon and my friends are now talking about religious sects in Islam. They are getting along about as well as at the dinner table, only keeping their voices to a dull argumentative tone. The only moments of relief were the smoke breaks my friend took that I accompanied her with to the porch. They each made sure to tell me they didn't like the other before the night was over. I guess not everyone meshes, I'm learning and apparently opinions run strong...and they're not afraid to argue over them. But, I think this may just be another part of the culture because everyone seems to be fine now. It was just such an awkward night. I brought two friends together that share a common bond of new faith that I too share, and it seems the only thing they could do was pick each other apart over the things that they don't see eye to eye on. It made me think, as Christians, we have something so huge that binds us and connects us. What do we let divide us? There's just no room over here for division, really, no room anywhere for it. The only thing I want to divide in me is the Word...
For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of the soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
Hebrews 4:12

Let's Get This Party Started...

with a few fireworks, shall we? ...

We celebrated Craig's birthday on Monday...and we had a little too much fun with the fireworks! I bet that Jayme and Jared's neighbors are still scratching their heads wondering what the 'yabanci' (yah-ban-jee) (foreigner) neighbors were doing! We had so much fun, but Katie might have gotten a little singed carrying the cake out! We've got to make a birthday away from home special, now don't we...

Jared has become master of the 'mangal' (the barbecue). It teeters over the edge of their balcony while before the purchase of a new mangal fan this past week, Jared had to blow on it to help ignite it! But he always does a great job and we had some burgers again thanks to the Yates' balcony and their barbecue.

We watched some 24--of course, one does like to do one of their favorite things on their birthday, now don't they. We saw a nuclear bomb go off, and Jack helped save the day once again in season two. It was real touch and go there for a few episodes. It was a great party.

I've started a new class this week. It's at another school here in town, Turkish owned and run and we are serving as teachers for conversation classes, but I prefer the title that they really do use, 'English conversation consultant.' Has a better ring to it, I think.

This is my class. We were playing a game here. (Ali was very good humored as was the class that his picture was taken while he was blindfolded! They love a game!) They're really sweet once I get them to quiet down. I basically have had to translate everything I say from Turkish into English and at some point, share both with them before they understand. But they've come early to both classes because I let them help me practice my Turkish before class, but during class, I constantly chide them to only use English.

They holler at me, saying 'Hocam, Hocam' which means, 'My Teacher, My Teacher!'...but sounds something like...(hoe--like a backhoe--and jam--like a British person would say jam)...It's pretty humorous! In this class, we worked on present, future, and past tenses today, but my other class is a bit more elementary--in age and language. We learned body parts today and sang the hokey pokey. They loved it! and I think they learned a few things in the process! I was so nervous about teaching a whole class of children, but I think I'm looking forward to going again next week.

An American blog

So, this may be a pretty bad picture of me, but it still deserves to be posted. Here we are on a beach in Turkey celebrating America's Independence Day...It was a great day that needed to be celebrated. We're American, no matter where we live! We drove to the beach loudly listening to patriotic songs, with our windows safely rolled up. (smile). But we had a great day. Picture this. We pulled three picnic tables together, hung our 'Happy 4th of July' banner (courtesy of Mama Daniel--everybody who sends a package deserves a shout-out!) between umbrellas and proudly stood as after we prayed, we played some much deserved Lee Greenwood...'God Bless the U.S.A.'...well, we played it quietly anways. Our entire American family here in Turkey went to the beach. We actually closed the company for the day! Such luxuries only happen over here, we close for American and Turkish holidays!
I was thinking about a couple different things this week as I reflected back on my first Independence Day away from America. First, I am so thankful for what our friends and family who are a part of the military do. I live in a place where people are still drafted into the army. I'm not saying anything positive or negative about this, (this is not a political piece I'm writing), all I'm saying is it made me thankful for these people who willingly make sacrifices. Isn't it funny how moving half-way across the world will make you love, appreciate, and be thankful for so many things that were right in front of you for so long.
As i was thinking of what independence really means on this particular holiday, it made me think about independence in other areas...how here in this place I'm learning in my spiritual life, I don't really want to be independent at all. The more dependent I grow on the Father every day--physically, emotionally, and mentally--the happier, healthier, and safer I am in all these areas.
We are still a household of four, probably will be until July 20th or around then. Our Turkish friend starts her treatment next week. She is sweet, funny, and a hoot! She is such a joker. When my brain doesn't feel like it's going to melt from overheat and over-exhaustion, I can literally feel it growing at moments. You think I'm kidding...I'm not. Literally, from the minute I wake up until I go to sleep when I am at my house, we are either speaking or translating Turkish. But she's teaching me alot more than Turkish. She's also teaching and helping Him instill in me much more than being a servant, He is using her to teach me how to have a servant heart and to desire that. They are two very different things I think. And you can certainly be a servant without letting Him give you a heart for it, but if you do, I'm learning you'll miss out on half the blessing of letting Him rearrange your heart and give you joy in places and circumstances, maybe before you wouldn't have chosen to allow it to grow. And it'll grow into something beautiful. He's such a good God. He's provided for her in our home and He's providing for me in very different ways through her presence in my life.

The Saloon

Friday, we visited our friend at her saloon. I know what you're thinking. No, we actually didn't. We visited her at her salon. She owns a hair s-a-l-o-n, and we meet with her once a week, but usually she mis-texts and ends up inviting us to the 'saloon'. It's always fun and...usually a bit interesting. We had been promising for weeks and Friday we had to make good on our word. We allowed them to do our makeup. Yes, that is why we look like we're going to an eighties prom. All I've got to say is that we had some serious makeup going on... We've promised to take Jayme next time...and don't worry, I'll be sure to post those party pics as well! We really did have a great visit. We always learn a little Turkish, practice a little Turkish, and of course speak a little English. Speaking of ...speaking Turkish, though, I am currently getting more practice than I ever imagined, and it's been great. A little mind boggling at times, but I'm learning and I'm making some new friends. I've had kind of a discouraging Turkish month, this past month. But He surely brought me some practice and has given me and Melissa a huge opportunity to look beyond ourselves and minister to two sisters from out east at the same time. They're not pictured. I don't think they're 'saloon' kind of girls. (smile.) But neither are we! One is Turkish and one is American. Our new Turkish friend is ill and is in our city for treatment and she and her American friend that has come along to help her are staying at our house. We are speaking alot of Turkish. Pretty much everything is translated either from or into Turkish at this point at our household. It's a great learning experience and I am so glad to hopefully be able to love on and bless our sister as she fights this battle. But she is an encouragement because in spite of her circumstances she knows Who is really fighting her battle on her behalf. He has doubled our household and He is blessing us doubly because of it.