He Said, She Said

We had lunch at one of our friend's houses with her family for the first time last week. Family is such an important part of the culture here that it's always really neat when we get to meet our friends' families. Usually a lunch or dinner will turn into some kind marathon of Turkish chatter. It's always fun. Just thought you might like to know the great range of topics we discussed at our last 'luncheon'. Any occasion can go just about this way. It's always funny to see what comes up in conversation. I always leave thinking, my conversations in English don't even seem to go that many places in such a short time! So, after some really delicious food Friday, we at some point at our friend's house discussed the following topics with people we had never met before: (Get ready, it's a long and interesting selection...)

• Greetings and Family Details, our friend's engagement, Learning Turkish (of course), Turkish food, Istanbul, being pregnant (our friend's sister-in-law was pregnant), how to discipline children, whether I might ever marry a Turk and whether I wanted to marry my friend's mom's nephew (Katie helped me dodge this arrangement, her mother was very insistent!), husbands helping their wives, jobs in Turkey, the Arabic language, the death penalty, a random story about our friend's dad being in jail a long time ago, farms and cows in Mississippi, the difference in Protestants and Catholics, sheep sacrifices in Islam and Christ's sacrifice, retirement, stoning in the Middle East as corporal punishment, teaching English in Turkey, whether Craig is in the military (this conversation actually lasted for awhile! Her dad kept looking at me and Katie and being like, 'Now, is Craig doing his military service here?'...we're not sure where he was going with that, but we kept saying, 'Really, no he's not!'), the draft in Turkey and how people enlist in America...

and well i can't even begin to remember all the other things we talked about! I told you it was a marathon! Isn't it so funny all the things that come up while we're just swimming in Turkish trying to keep our heads above water! It is never a dull moment, i promise! I'm leaving on a jet plane Tuesday morning and maybe next week I'll have some pictures of my country for you from outside my concrete jungle! Have a great week!