What now?

So, I'm starting to think that maybe my Turkish is not quite as bad as I often feel it is. Lately when I tell people what I'm doing here if they ask (that is, I'm studying Turkish) their reaction is not "right, what school are you at?" or something to that effect, now the reaction I usually get is a confused look and then "but you already know good Turkish?!" I guess I do. I've actually started to pray out loud in Turkish during our prayer meetings which has been one of the most difficult things for me to do. I even translated for a group doing street dramas this past week!

My language helper has even become more complimentary as of late. She looked at me with genuine surprise the other day at this sentence that I used while talking with her. We actually have a hard time staying on the lesson these days, we usually end up just talking for long periods of time! She's my age, knows and loves God, and is in the same phase of life as me...really, I couldn't have asked for a better language helper! We try to limit the chats until after the official lesson time is over but, well, it doesn't always happen that way. It's still language learning in some sense I suppose but she doesn't correct me then and doesn't go into explanations of grammar and its usage in such-and-such a context, or idioms, or new vocabulary--you know, things I'm paying her to teach me!

While I know I'm nowhere near as fluent as I'd like to be and definitely not ready to teach in this language yet, it's nice to know I'm well on my way:)

I suppose this means that I should be moving on now, I mean using Turkish rather than studying it as a way to grow in it. But what, where, how? Good questions...there are options on the table but nothing is clear or definite, I'll continue praying and seeking, and I'll keep you posted.


Here's a shot of me using my language skills, teaching 4 & 5 year olds:) I'm not sure what's with the expression on my face here, I was actually enjoying telling the story that evening!

Summer heat

Summer used to make me so happy--long sunny days, warm weather, spending time outdoors. I would get more energy in the summer, look for any opportunities to go for walks...but in Istanbul with the addition of a few more degrees Celsius and a ton more humidity, I'm not quite as enthusiastic as I once was. Right now all this sunny hot humid weather just makes me sweat and makes me tired and lazy. Generally I prefer to stay inside where I can wear my shorts and there's a fan. When I have to go places I am constantly in search of the shadiest and/or breeziest side of the street to walk down. On the train or minibus, I prefer to stand because if you sit, you often get up with sweat marks on you, lovely. When my language helper comes to my house for my lesson, the first thing she does is go to the washroom to change her shirt. I've actually taken on a common Turkish habit of wearing undershirts even in the summer, sounds crazy, but they at least absorb the sweat so that your t-shirt doesn't expose how sweaty you really are. It's surprisingly effective. Smells tend to be intensified in the heat, walking past a garbage bin, or even just walking downwind of one is an experience, and of course there's always the smell of sweaty people.
When I wake up in the morning and it's overcast, I am ecstatic.
I know I shouldn't be complaining, it's really not that bad, it's just I'm a Calgarian, I'm used to cool and dry, I have yet to acclimatize to hot and humid. I haven't got a clue how people in Thailand or the Amazon function...

Summer travels...

So I haven't written on here for a while. July was busy, involving a number of travels...
First a quick trip to Cyprus to renew my visa. From Cyprus I took a ferry boat directly across to be in time for the family camp happening near Mersin. At the camp I helped out with the children's program, met some great Turkish believers, and was granted the incredible privilege of helping someone come to Christ. It was an unbelievable experience as this individual was told by Jesus in a dream before camp started that a Canadian girl with long blonde hair would help him. I won't repeat the story as I've already included it in my newsletter but suffice to say it was completely God's work--God provided the dream and He provided me with the needed Turkish words (my Turkish is not good) and the needed answers to the myriad of questions this young guy had.
After that I took an overnight bus back to Istanbul, did some laundry and then met up with my old roommate to get on yet another overnight bus to go to Eğidir, a beautiful, COOL, lakeside town in the mountains to have a relaxing holiday and visit a few friends of hers there. We had a few days to sleep in, enjoy not sweating 24/7 (what a difference lack of humidity makes), to journal, to wander about the town basking in the slower pace and friendly atmosphere, to visit some surrounding places, and to meet with the people she knows there (which was quite a few!)...overall it was a marvellous holiday! Both of the above photos I took in Eğidir.




















Left top: Walking in the footsteps of Paul, in the ruins of Psidian Antioch just outside of Yalvaç a small town nearby Eğidir.
Left bottom: Taking a walk with Beth's friends in the very small village of Gelincik, again nearby Eğidir.



Above: Beth's friends took us all around their village on their tractor:) We rode in the back there, it lifts up...good times.














Left top: Dinner with Beth at a lakeside cafe. Left bottom: Our view from the lakeside cafe.
After this trip I was home only a day before some visitors from Canada came to stay with me while they saw the sights of Istanbul. I spent a couple of days helping them get around this vast city before they headed off to see other parts of Turkey.
I have to say it's been tough to get back into the grind of language study after all that, I'm so grateful for the break!

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...

Internet travel plans

So I wasted almost an entire day on the internet today. I did manage to do some exercise, get to the store and write some stuff in Turkish, but definitely the majority of the day was spent searching online for the purpose of making travel plans. I had to find some hotel options for my parents who are heading here in September (I'm happy about that!). That was quite easy though thankfully, plenty of sites that have photos, service details and prices listed.

The other travel plans however were not nearly so neat. I need to head out of Turkey to renew my visa soon as the one I currently have expires on July 20th. The trouble is that I'm going to be helping out at a camp near Mersin at that time so I'll have to go earlier and since the camp is in the southeast of Turkey it rules out the most logical options of Bulgaria or Greece (just a bus-ride away). My traveling companion and I decided that the easiest and quickest would be to fly to Northern Cyprus from Istanbul and then take a ferry from there to Mersin and from there travel straight to the camp. Pretty straight forward right?

Well, one airline quoted this amazing price but when I called it was more than double with the taxes. I tried some other sites, but some didn't go to Cyprus, some just didn't work once you entered all the info and clicked 'ara' (means-'search' or 'find'). Then I realized that once we flew to Northern Cyprus we'd first have to get from the airport to the nearest town of Ercan, then from Ercan travel to one of the seaside towns. That's alright, we'll figure that out once we get there, ask around, there's bound to be a bus or whatever.

But to which seaside town? The one with ferries that go to Turkey of course. Well it took forever to find the right site that listed locations, times and prices for ferries from the town of Girne. Great, but these ferries apparently only go to Taşucu which seems to be 90km from Mersin, or Anumur which is even farther.

Then I learned that there are ferries that go to Mersin (where we want to go) from the town of Gazimağusa but they apparently only run 3 days a week, usually at 8pm, the boat ride takes min. 2 hr and camp starts in the evening. Not so helpful.

So Girne it is. I then tried finding cheap pensions, once again, took forever to find anything but the massive, expensive hotels and holiday complexes listed on the internet. Once I finally did find a list, no prices were mentioned, and I did not have the energy to start phoning every single one on the list of 30 or so to get an idea of prices and room availability.

It is official, I do not enjoy making travel plans...especially on the internet. Isn't this why we have travel agents?

Just for fun, some shots of where I'll be heading in about a week. No, not mine, from the good ol' internet.

Prayer...

I've been having opportunities to engage in prayer in a wider variety as of late, some examples...

Prayer with eyes open...This city is so big that sometimes it's easier to meet people somewhere in the middle, at a cafe somewhere for example, rather than at a private house. Often we want to pray for one another or pray about some specific issues during those times. Closed eyes is not the typically understood sign that you are praying here (doing prostrations, facing a certain direction, hands out and open, repeating phrases, during the designated times...these are the recognized demonstrations here). As such, a group of people in a cafe with heads bowed and eyes closed would not necessarily be a witness to people who are praying together, it would just be odd. So I've found, you can still be focussed on God and united in prayer together even with eyes open.

Praying Scripture in Song...I just attended an all night prayer meeting and discovered a different way to pray that I absolutely love. We'd have a passage of Scripture, one person would read a verse then offer a short prayer in connection with that verse. All the while, 2 amazing guitarists were playing, then one guitarist would take a line or two from the prayer and/or the Scripture and would sing it out, then the other guitarist, or someone else, would harmonize and respond, everyone else around me would join in, harmonize and/or respond with new lines. It was beautiful, seriously beautiful...I couldn't help but join in with my own prayers and harmonies. We'd sing a bit, then move on the next verse and continue the process, time flew by.

Intercession in context (like prayer walking)...this is not new, it's just taken on new meaning for me here. I often spend time sitting on my balcony late in the evening looking out over miles of apartments filled with people who don't know yet--don't know that incredible love, freedom, purpose, life--and I pray for them. I ride the train crammed with people...I see different people with certain expressions on their faces, dressed in a telling way, or reading a telling book, and I pray for them. My surroundings, the structures I see (mosques, superstitious charms, ancient ruins, plaques, monuments, symbols of wealth/poverty), the people I see (their dress, mannerisms, eyes, possessions, etc.), give plenty of fuel for prayer. It's simple, and I'm discovering more and more, powerful. It is startling how many of those who have come to choose Christ here have done so because He met them personally in a dream or vision birthed out of their own cries or later discovered prayers of another.

Sitting still and taking in beauty...this is not new either, I include it though because it is my favourite and yet one I often don't make time for, or miss out on here. I love to just sit and be still with God, finding a spot where I can look out over things He's made that are yet untouched by us, marvel at the sights, the setting sun/a beetle crossing my path/a species of bird I've never noticed before/etc., listen to the sounds around me, rustling in the leaves/waves lapping/people laughing/etc., smell the ocean/rain/wildflowers/evergreens/etc., feel the warmth of the sun/crispness of the cold/breeze blowing/etc. Sounds cliche, I know, but I love it. As I do, I'm always refreshed, refocused...I want to worship, share my heart, chat with God, listen for Him, sometimes words, sometimes Scripture references (I later look up), sometimes just deep feelings.

Prayer is my foundation, weapon, and lifeline.

One reason I like this country...

Most definitely there are a number of things that can drive me nuts about this culture--the way guys feel free to stare openly or how easy it is to be cheated here for example--but thankfully there are pluses.
I love how helpful people are here. Yesterday I was in a little bookshop picking up some paper and I wanted to find a show repair place. I asked the shopkeeper if she knew of one nearby. The only one she could think of was a fair bit of a walk. There was also an older gentlemen in the shop at the time and he joined in, the one he suggested was also a fair bit of a walk but in the same direction I was heading anyways to pay a bill so I listened to his directions carefully and off I went. 15-20 min later after I turned onto the street I understood I was to turn onto, I came up to a 3 pronged fork in the road. Just as I was standing there deciding which prong to try first because I couldn't find the landmark the guy had told me, up pulls this same older gentlemen on his moped, he pointed me down the right street then turned and drove off.

A friend and I were off to visit one of the museums here and looked up bus directions on the internet. We had to transfer to another bus at a stop we'd never been to so when we got on the first bus we asked the driver to let us know when we arrived at the stop. He then asked where we were headed and we told him the name of the museum. He shook his head and said that if we went that way we'd have to walk aways and then informed us that he knew a better route. He took us all the way to the last stop on his route, got off the bus with us, waited with us until the bus that would 'take us right to the front doors of the museum' passed, he flagged it down for us and then told the driver to make sure he let us off at the right place.

Another day a number of weeks ago I had stopped a woman to make sure I was heading in the right direction to get to this major roadway. She said that I was and then offered to escort me the whole way and also help me get on the right dolmush as she was just out for an evening stroll anyways.

I was out for a run the other evening when a medic on a motorcycle passed (I know, odd, but they've got them here). Generally I'm bright red when I do any exercise and just as he was passing I was stopping to walk for a bit. I watched as he pulled up on the side of the road quite aways up and watched through his rear view mirror. As soon as I started running again he pulled off once more. Not too many women exercise here like that, definitely not to the point that they are sweaty and worn out, I'm sure he thought I would pass out right then and there! I thought it thoughtful to wait and make sure I was alright!

The helpfulness if possibly in part because I'm a foreigner but I know Turks who have the same experiences. One friend from Adana expressed that one of the major culture shocks she experienced when she went to live in England for a while was how unhelpful people were when she needed to get somewhere!

Hospitality and helpfulness, I appreciate these.