Cultural Blunder...

So I discovered yesterday evening that I had committed a cultural fauxpas (sp?) a couple of weeks back and had no clue!! It makes me wonder how many other times I've offended people and didn't realize it...
I was out for dinner yesterday evening with some short-termers and one of the Turkish guys from our church. He then proceeded to tell them about how terrible it was the first time he met me! Right...so...
I was sitting by myself one day at church when he came up to say hello. He'd seen me before and I knew that he was one of the trustworthy solid believers (there are a couple who are just there looking for a foreign wife unfortunately) so when he came up and said hello, I smiled and said something to the effect of (in Turkish) "Yes hello, we haven't met before have we?" His face turned serious and he said, "Right, right...okay" and then he walked off. I thought that was weird and didn't know what to make of it. A couple minutes later he came back and said something about us all being brothers and sisters in Christ and freedom and such, again, weird, but I nodded in agreement and then he introduced himself formally as did I.
Last night I learned that my statement of "we haven't met before have we" which I meant to mean "great, I've been wanting to meet you, this is our chance" was interpreted as "I don't know you, who do you think you are just coming up to me like this as a man and saying hello!" Wow! I now know that that is a very rude thing to say to someone (possibly a very helpful thing in some circumstances:) I was so surprised, I had embarrassed and hurt him without ever intending! So, we cleared that up last night much to the enjoyment of the short-termers with us...Remember Amy, people first here, honor first here, always, always...