Things I've learned from celebrating Christmas in Istanbul

• Turkey is way more expensive than chicken in the supermarket. Like 2.5x per kg more expensive. And I don't even think turkey tastes better than chicken.

• If you invite over a group of international friends for Christmas dinner and have Yorkshire puddings, be prepared for questions. "Do only people from Yorkshire eat them? Is it savoury or sweet? Why is it called a pudding?"

• Similarly, do not make cultural assumptions and forget to tell people that we pour gravy on our food rather than in our glasses. Thankfully one of our guests clarified first.

• And when your mother has lovingly brought over a Christmas pudding because she knows how much her son-in-law appreciates Christmas pudding and you are planning on serving that Christmas pudding to guests, remember that bought Christmas puddings generally require a microwave (or more hob space than we had available since we were also cooking Christmas dinner at the same time). We don't have a microwave. But we can now confirm that Christmas pudding can be heated in a slow cooker (but if you are cooking your chicken in the slow cooker, best leave the pudding for another day...).

• It is strangely difficult to find rolls of wrapping paper here. But if you happen to be in IKEA after Christmas, you can buy some for next year.

• Small things will catch you out, like when you catch yourself thinking, "oh, maybe I can order that online in the post-Christmas sales" then suddenly realise there won't be post Christmas sales. 

• Shops don't close early on Christmas Eve! And they're even open on Christmas Day, should you need it.

• Christmas will feel much less commercialised if you live in a country where most people don't celebrate Christmas. 

• Even if most people don't celebrate Christmas, you may still find that there is one flat on your street with an inflatable Santa on a ladder hanging off an outside window.

• There is no list of "things you must have/do/see" for it to feel like a "real Christmas". It's great to be able to start and continue traditions where we can but our traditions should come second to serving others and making them comfortable. 

• In a similar vein, I had visions of starting a new tradition of a cosy Christmas Eve spent watching a Christmas film together as a family until I realised that often there are Christmas Eve carol services here so that new tradition was never going to get off the ground. I would like to tell you that I was super-enthusiastic from the start about getting to go and celebrate the birth of a certain baby at a carol service that would fall directly over J's tea time and lead to a delayed bedtime for him but unfortunately that wasn't quite the case. However, in the end I was glad that we could go and afterwards I was even more glad that we'd gone. More importantly, I was reminded that the baby whose birth we celebrate at Christmas shapes our traditions, not the other way around. 

It's nearly Christmas!

Somehow I feel like Christmas has crept up on us this year. Maybe that's a sign of getting (slightly) older. I prefer to think of it as the consequence of not having an advent calendar this year (because I suddenly remembered advent in November and had grand designs of making a fabric calendar in time, but then I realised that with my track record on sewing projects, Christmas 2017 might be more realistic).

But this last week we've been getting more into the Christmas spirit, despite L being heard to say a few days ago "at least I won't have to listen to 'last Christmas I gave you my heart' this year". Our artificial Christmas tree arrived from IKEA and we've got a slightly tacky gold star/snowflake thing hanging in our lounge doorway that, judging by J's repeated "Dar! Dar!", he was quite excited about.

Our Christmas tree. Please don't judge the decorating. My excuse is that we basically have to redecorate the tree every day as most of the baubles that are within reach of an 18 month old magically find their way from the tree onto the floor. And by 'redecorate', I mean 'put back on the tree in any random position because we'll be doing exactly the same thing tomorrow'.

Christmas Day is not a public holiday in Turkey, but I think New Year's Day is an official holiday. Obviously this year, Christmas falls on a Sunday, so there will be services but usually any special services are held on the evening of Christmas Eve so people can attend.

Interestingly, New Year is often confused with Christmas. My friend told me that she was once given a leaflet telling Turks not to celebrate New Year because it is a Christian festival. Any Christmas-sy looking decorations that you might be able to find in select shops in certain areas of the city are all to celebrate New Year of course, and even our Christmas tree came in a box marked 'yıl başı ağacı' which translates as 'New Year tree''.

But we are looking forward to Christmas. My job for this weekend is to make some mince pies for L and to make and freeze our Christmas morning breakfast croissants. We'll be making as traditional an English Christmas dinner as we can. Though probably chicken not turkey due to (a) the additional effort needed to find a turkey and (b) oven space. And including Yorkshire pudding because that's traditional in my family, thanks to my sister. And probably not 'pigs in blankets', though I might try and source some pork cocktail sausages. But other than that, definitely traditional. We're looking forward to hosting some friends from our weekly group for Christmas lunch and when we gathered this week, we were debating whether or not to set the Christmas pudding alight, but the jury is still out on that one. 

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

This world is not safe

This morning we woke up to find that there had been another terrible attack in our city.

There was something incongruous about reading the news while J bounced in, happy to be awake and alive and looking forward to breakfast, our child who we chose to bring to this city.

But then I remembered that this world is not safe.

At this point, I could discuss the nuances of how unsafe does a country need to be before you either don't go or, if you're there already, start packing to leave. There are issues of managing risk that could be considered. I could even throw in some theological truths, or at least cliches.

But actually, I want to talk about a fundamental assumption that Westerners often make. L and I are from an anomalous generation. We grew up 40-50 years after the end of World War Two, in a period of relative peace, stability and prosperity in the West. Yes, some Western countries have been involved in wars and armed struggles in the last few decades - but nothing like the scale of the first half of the twentieth century, or indeed most of history in most of the world up to this point.

In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking that the UK was a fairly safe place to live.

The logical result of this is that there are many people in the West for whom being safe is the de facto state of being, and it then becomes an inbuilt assumption into our thinking. And so doing anything or going anywhere that challenges that basic assumption  is often seen as ill-advised, foolhardy or even just plain dangerous.

It's why some people asked us before we left the UK how we could take our child to a country that has had its fair share of tragic incidents over the last 18 months.

But guess what? This world is not safe.

We often find comfort in pursuing the illusion of safety. It gives us peace of mind and when something terrible and tragic does happen, we can console ourselves with the idea that we'd done everything we could. But terrible and tragic events do happen. Even if the UK seems relatively safe from war and famine, there are terrorist attacks, crime, motorway pile ups and all manner of accidents. And even if you skirt all those dangers, maybe your own body will betray you and you'll get a disease or illness.

Nowhere are we promised that we get to live life in a safe environment. Over the course of history, the world has not generally been a very safe place. And there's a good argument to be made that the period of stability and peace we have enjoyed will not continue to the same degree in the future.

Our true safety is not a location, it's a person. And our objective in life is not to live comfortable lives in as much safety as we can afford but to follow someone who was born in a land occupied by a foreign army, who escaped being murdered when his family became refugees in a neighbouring country. Someone who taught people while religious leaders plotted his death and who was tortured and executed when, in human terms, he had many years of life left.

We're not promised physical safety in this world. Is a servant greater than his master? But for those who believe and follow a man who death could not keep its hold on, we are promised eternal safety and security. And in an unsafe and uncertain world, it's that sure and certain hope that I want to cling onto and that I long for my children to hold on to.

"The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned."

How is it the end of November already?

Time flies - how is it December tomorrow?!

I started back at language school yesterday, doing the course that L did last month. My class seems quite different in make up to his. L's class included a few people who'd lived here a couple of years already and so spoke the Turkish that they did already know confidently and almost fluently. That changes the whole dynamic of a class while my class doesn't really have that sort of people in it. This month I'll be doing a lot of relative clauses and indirect speech. Until I started learning Turkish, I'm not sure I knew what a relative clause was (the unfortunate result of going through the British school system at a time when the powers that be had decided that teaching grammer was a bad idea). But my English grammer has definitely improved over the last few months!

My teacher also informed us yesterday that we each had to do a 15-20 minute presentation in Turkish, which wasn't really a surprise as L had to do one in his course. Mine's next week, so I've been busy starting to draft that - I had grand ideas of doing it about utilitarianism and how people usually make their decisions on what will make them happy, but then showing how there are some fundamental problems with this philosophy that acts as many people's de facto moral compass. But then I came back down to earth and realised that communicating those concepts in a way that is easy to understand is pretty hard in English, never mind in Turkish.

So my brainwave yesterday was that it is almost December and therefore will soon be Christmas! Perfect timing for me to talk about a traditional English Christmas, which means that I can also talk about the reason we celebrate Christmas.

On a different note, the weather here has been decidedly English the last couple of days - cold and very wet. So other than a couple of excursions to go splashing in puddles, J's spent a lot of time inside. But he hasn't minded too much - a friend who has young children and very conveniently lives a 5 minute walk from us came over yesterday. Interestingly, there aren't really any volunteer-run toddler groups like there is in the UK, and as the weather's been getting colder, that's something I've found myself really missing. Today J spent a long time playing with his coloured rice, pouring it from one container to another (or just straight onto the mat) which was a great way to entertain him other than the fact that the rice seems to get everywhere. We resorted to hoovering the rice out of his cot in the end...

Our playground conundrum

Language learning brings a number of puzzles that we never anticipated, particularly when combined with a small child.

Here's one we're wrestling with at the moment.

We speak English to J, although sometimes J is around when we're speaking Turkish together (which doesn't happen as often as it should).

But when one of us takes him to the park and there are other parents and children there, what language should we speak?

If I want to be able to engage with other parents and for them to know that I can speak some Turkish, it really helps if they can hear me speaking Turkish. Otherwise they might just assume I don't speak any Turkish and won't say anything to me. The easiest way to do that is to speak to J in Turkish in the park, so when I'm overheard by others they know I can speak a little of the language and are more likely to talk to me.

Plus, it's surprising how much I end up speaking to J partly in order to communicate to others. For example, when he's plonked himself down at the top of a slide and there's another child who wants to come down, the natural thing to do is to say to J "come on, come down the slide, there's another child waiting". Part of that is for J, but part of it is also for the waiting child (and their parent!) to let them know that I've seen that they are waiting and I'm trying to do something about it. But if I'm speaking for J's benefit, I'd speak in English. If I'm speaking for the benefit of other people to J, I need to be speaking Turkish, even if J doesn't understand.

L and I were chatting about this the other day, and we don't have any easy answers. In time, J will learn some Turkish and also learn that while Mummy and Daddy generally speak in one language, sometimes there are situations in which they talk using a completely different set of words and grammar. But knowing what to do right now when he's in an intensive and critical period of just starting to speak is hard.

Our solution right now is a bit of a compromise. Generally we talk to J in English at the park, sometimes we talk in Turkish. Sometimes I talk to J in English but to other parents and children in Turkish. We think it's working for us at the moment, and we'll just have to see how it works out as he gets older.

November ramblings

This week it feels like winter has well and truly hit Istanbul. Today it was 9 degrees outside! Apparently it can actually snow here, though no signs of any yet.

L's in the middle of another month's language course and on Monday he had to give a 20-25 minute presentation in class - in Turkish of course - on a topic of his choosing. He spent much of the weekend working on that while J and I had a trip to Kadıköy, just across on the Asian side. I'd spent the best part of two weeks within a quarter mile of our flat and really felt I needed some open space and J hadn't been on a ferry for quite a while. So a trip on the public ferry across the Bosphorus, a quick lunch outside for us both, space for J to run around on the promenade next to the sea, cats for him to watch/chase and a return ferry journey in time for his afternoon nap was perfect. And it was warm - so warm that J was running around in a t-shirt and jumper without me getting told off by anyone for not having enough layers on him!

This is in contrast to yesterday, where despite having wrapped J up in a coat and hat over his vest and long-sleeved top for the approximately 10 minute (if you average out my walking speed while carrying J with J's walking speed) walk home from a friend's house, I still got told off by someone in the street for J not wearing enough layers. I think it was because there was a small gap between his coat and hat that meant part of his neck was exposed.

But I'm not complaining because as often as someone gives me advice in the street, someone else will offer to help me if I'm out by myself with J. Saturday was a case in point - to get to the ferry landing station required travelling a couple of stops on the metro and a short funicular ride. Generally, the metro system here is super-pushchair-friendly. As in, I can enter a metro station, take the metro wherever I need to go and exit without having to take J out of the pushchair.

However, if the lift you need is out of order, you have a slight problem. This happened to me on our way to Kadıköy at the worst possible place when I discovered that the lift that replaces four escalators, a travelling walkway and a couple of minutes walk was out of order. But, after making my way up one escalator carrying J in one arm and the pushchair with the other hand, a man offered to take the pushchair and carried it all the way out for me, even though I'm not sure he was actually planning to take the exit I took. And on our ferry trip out, someone else carried the pushchair as we were disembarking. And even better - by the time of our return a few hours later, the lift was fixed.

I guess this is life in a big city! Interestingly, L and I both feel that the transition to living in a huge city has been one of the biggest adaptations we have had to make in moving here. Although the transition to big city life has probably been compounded by the cross-cultural move, and vice-versa.

Oh, and if you wanted to know what L's presentation was on, it was about babies, cats and aliens as L presented his 'theories' that babies were actually either (a) a member of the cat family or (b) aliens with super-powers. Personally I think it was just an excuse to show his classmates photos and videos of J.

The H-word

I'll let you into a secret. People like us often don't like talking about (whisper it) holidays.

When we first mentioned in an update a couple of months back that we were looking forward to a holiday I actually didn't want to mention the h-word at all. Until my husband pointed out I was being ridiculous and we might have moved country but we are still human and people at home know that we will need a holiday now and then.

Deep down, I know he is right. But I've read enough blogs and books by others like us to know that I'm not alone in feeling like this sometimes. There is the temptation to feel like we have to at least appear, and preferably be, strong and effective, which somehow translates as not needing a holiday. There's a pressure to be seen to be spending money in a wise and thrifty manner and a holiday is a luxury. There's the nagging feeling that we haven't done enough to earn a holiday - we're only language learning right now.

I know (at least I hope!) that most of this is just in my head. And there's part of it that is based on good principles. We should be conscious of how we use our resources, and want to use them well. There is a not-so-great part as well, that highlights tendencies of pride and people-pleasing. There is also a more complicated part to it where sometimes the best/cheapest/most logical course of action here doesn't necessarily look like that from 2,000 miles away but neither is it practical or necessarily helpful to explain or justify those decisions to everyone who we update on a regular basis.

So, we went on holiday to Cyprus. I could throw in here that we went by plane, but that flights to North Cyprus are treated a little bit like domestic flights, and domestic flights are cheap here, and we don't have a car anyway. I could also add that a couple that we don't even know directly allowed us to stay in their home on very generous terms. Which perhaps demonstrates the point that while on the surface of things, going to Cyprus might not look like the most logical thing to do, it really was a very good option. And also allows me to sneakily make sure that you know some of the reasons why this holiday was a very good option.

We got to spend lots of time with L's parents, who were staying close by to us at the same time (another reason we went to Cyprus). We took J to the beach a few times and he delighted in playing in the sand fortresses that his father and grandfather built, trying to pick up as many stones as he could carry and attempting to run into the sea whenever possible. J discovered Lego at the house we were staying in and L enjoyed making Lego models for J (so much so that quite a few times I found L "building models for J" whilst J was napping...). We read books, rested, relaxed, and even braved the cold outdoor pool (but not for very long). We enjoyed spending some time outside of Istanbul, and indeed Turkey. And we came back refreshed and ready to get stuck into language learning again.

Aşure (Noah's Pudding)

Last weekend, our upstairs neighbour knocked on our door with a bowl of what looked a little bit like super jazzed up rice pudding and told us it was aşure. With no idea what aşure was, we thanked her and took it inside to try it.

Aşure

As it turns out (i.e. according to the Internet), there is no definitive recipe for aşure but it's a popular Turkish dessert and involves grains pulses, dried fruits, spices and sugar all cooked together at a minimum, with extras that vary according to the cook. This one seemed to have wheat grains, rice, white beans and chickpeas with raisins and nuts, spices and sugar and was garnished with cinnamon and fresh pomegranate seeds. 

There are lots of traditions surrounding this dessert but one of them is that when Noah's Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, they celebrated by making a special meal out of what was left of their supplies - grains, dried pulses, dried fruit etc. The name aşure comes from the Arabic word for 'tenth' but its English name is Noah's Pudding. Apparently it can be made all year round but in Turkish tradition, it is especially linked to the Day of Aşure (which falls on the tenth day of the first month of the Islamic calendar), and which this year fell on 12th October. This day is celebrated by some people as a commemoration of the landing of Noah's Ark (but also various other events as well) and Turkish people often make lots of aşure and distribute it to their friends, relatives and neighbours. 

If you've ever in Turkey and get the chance to try aşure, I'd definitely recommend giving it a go!

Autumn days

We got back from Izmir this week to discover that autumn has well and truly arrived in Istanbul. Izmir is further south than Istanbul, so stays a bit warmer for longer and it was a bit of a shock to emerge out of the metro station in Istanbul to discover it was raining. Our reaction was rather like the reaction of English people returning from a hot holiday in Spain to a dismal English summer.

I've had to unearth my cardigans and hoodies from a corner of the wardrobe. And after spending all summer constantly checking whether J was sufficiently hydrated, still had his sun hat on, had enough sun cream on, was developing heat rash again etc., I actually found myself wondering if he had enough layers on when we were out this morning.

But, there's something more important about autumn here that I need to tell you about. This week, for the first time since arriving here six months ago, we had cauliflower and broccoli! If you can't tell, we were a little bit excited about this. I'd post a picture, but you know what broccoli and cauliflower look like and they look the same here, just a little bigger (in contrast to the cabbages and leeks, which are ginormous, but I digress...).

Here, fruit and vegetables are very much seasonal. It's been a bit of a shock to us, accustomed as we were to imported fruit and veg. So, while in summer there was plenty of fresh peaches, nectarines and watermelons, there was most definitely no broccoli or cauliflower. But almost overnight they suddenly appeared in the shops. I genuinely couldn't wait to get out and buy one of each - and we have therefore eaten broccoli and cauliflower as part of our dinner for the last two evenings and it's looking like we'll be eating them again tomorrow. I'm even holding out for the possibility of finding a squash or pumpkin very soon. And, to top it all off, the domestically produced bananas are also available - which is good news when they are half the price of the outrageously-expensive-imported-bananas.

If that wasn't enough, J seems to have remembered that he likes broccoli and cauliflower and has been happily munching them. Which is probably a good thing, because I suspect we are going to be eating quite a lot of them in the next few weeks!

 

Some super-extra-helpful people

It's been a busy couple of weeks here. L's got a new language exchange partner, we celebrated our wedding anniversary a couple of weeks back and a couple of days later it was my birthday. I finished my lower intermediate language course with an exam on my birthday (good job I passed otherwise that might have ruined the day). Then later that week we went on our first proper out-of-the-city trip since we arrived.

The other fun thing that happened is that my sister came and visited over my birthday weekend. People like my sister are the unsung heroes of people like L and me. Well, we have lots of unsung heroes, who support us in many different ways, and we are thankful for each and every one of them. Most of these lovely people I knew we needed before we embarked on this adventure.

But before we arrived, I had never really considered the need for this type of person. They perform a really valuable and mostly mundane role that I had never previously even really considered the need for. When they visit, they bring items out for us. When they return home, they take things back for us. And when they are at home, they help us sort out lots of things that are just a bit harder to do from a distance.

A fair few times in the month before my sister's visit, I messaged her telling her that another parcel would be turning up at her house soon and asking what instructions I should give about leaving it if no one was in. Consequently, the rather large suitcase that my sister brought with her was mostly filled with things for us, with some of her belongings squeezed in as well.

Some of these are things that are either not available here or can be found if you look hard enough, but are prohibitively expensive. For example, English books for J - you can buy English books here but they are much more expensive than the UK and with less choice. So it made a lot of sense to order cheap children's books online and get them delivered to my sister for her to bring out.

Some things are things we can get here but are expensive enough that it makes sense to get them brought out from the UK if someone has some spare space in their suitcase. When my lovely in-laws visited they brought us, among other things, coconut milk, dried red kidney beans and lasagne sheets. All of these I can get here - but it saves us quite a lot of money to get them in the UK instead. And some things are just nice-to-haves. Dairy Milk chocolate, extra mature cheddar cheese, Yorkshire tea bags.

This is not mentioning the various belongings that we purposely left in the UK for my parents, L's parents and my sister to bring out for us. Thanks to them, we have some of our English books (and L's complete Calvin and Hobbes collection), board games and our winter coats.

And then, when our visitors go, sometimes they take things back for us. Usually mail to post in the UK, which gives us the peace of mind that our letters are likely to arrive at their destination and won't cost a fortune to send either.

When they are at home, these people help us with some of the UK bureaucracy that comes with moving abroad. When I needed to get J's birth certificate apostilled (i.e. embossed with a special stamp to show it is a genuine UK document), one of the methods I used was to order a new birth certificate to my sister's address, she filled in some forms and sent it off the next morning to get apostilled and then when she got it back, immediately posted it out to us. Not a huge task - if you're living in England. But for us, it was incredibly helpful because getting documents sent out here to send them straight back to England entails a significant time delay, greater complexity, increased probability of things going wrong and a higher cost.

In a similar vein, my parents' home (when they have one!) is our official address in the UK. They faithfully open our mail for us and send us pictures of letters. Again, not a big task - but a critical one as it meant I could get my student loan status and NI voluntary contributions sorted somewhat easily.

When our families do come out and visit, we don't just dive into the suitcases they bring. We love to be able to spend time with them and are very grateful that they make the effort to come and see us. But I for one had never really thought much before about the time, money and stress that people like us are saved by people like them going a little out of their way - so a big thank you to everyone who has helped us in this way already!

Language learning insight #1

We talk about language learning a lot, unsurprisingly. So I thought I'd try and give a quick insight into one of the bits of grammar that I've been trying to absorb into my head this week, in the hope that it might possibly be interesting to a couple of language geeks, and even if you're not a language geek, you might be interested to get a little insight into our language studies. If neither of those options appeal to you, feel free to ignore the rest of this post. Apologies if this gets too technical, I'll try and keep it as simple as I can but it might get tricky.

First off, Turkish is an agglutinative language, which is a posh way of saying that you just keep adding suffixes onto words to get the meaning that you are after. So one word, with the appropriate suffixes, can convey what would be translated as a sentence in English.

I've been working on the Turkish equivalent of 'can' and 'might', which when you're speaking positively, involves either -ebil or -abil being added onto the verb, then adding the verb tense, then adding the appropriate pronoun ending. So, for example:

gitmek = to go (infinitive, denoted by the 'mek' ending)
git = go (said as a command to one person i.e. you go!)
iyor/ıyor/uyor/üyor = present continuous tense suffix
im/ım/um/üm = pronoun suffix for I
gidiyorum = git + iyor + um = I am coming (the 't' changes to a 'd' because it is followed by a vowel)
gidebiliyorum = git + ebil + iyor + um = I am able to go, I can go

There are various vowel possibilities for the tense and pronoun suffixes because Turkish has this concept called vowel harmony. This means when you add on a suffix, the vowel you use in the suffix depends on the preceding vowel in the word, because the vowels have to 'match' or harmonise. This also explains why some verbs take -abil and others take -ebil. (There are two types of vowel harmony but let's not complicate things). When you change the tense, you just change the tense suffix. Then the pronoun ending might also change, due to vowel harmony.

gidebiliyorum = git + ebil + iyor + um = I can go (using the present continuous tense, so either 'right now, I can go' or I have the general ability to go)
gidebilirim = gid + ebil + ir + im = I might go or I can go (using what in Turkish literally translates as the 'wide tense', but the nearest approximation in English is the present simple tense. It means 'probably but I haven't done it before', or suggests possibility)
gidebilirim mi? = can I go? (either a polite request or asking permission)
gidebildim = git + ebil + di + m = I was able to go (past tense, for a one-off event e.g. 'last week was a special event so I was able to go')
gidebiliyordum = git + ebil + iyor + du + m = I was able to go (past tense for a continuous action or ability e.g. 'When I was a child I was able to go every week')
gidebileceğim = git + ebil + ecek + im = I will be able to go (future tense, and the 'k' changes to a 'ğ')

Followed all that? Good! I've been spending some time practising trying to say some of these conjugations. For example:

fırçalamak = to brush
fırçalayabilacağım = fırçala + y + abil + acak + ım = I am going to be able to brush

By the way, if you were wondering why a stray 'y' popped up in the middle there, generally in Turkish you can't put two vowels next to each other, so you have to insert a buffer 'y'.

Now it gets really interesting. The English expressions of 'can' and 'might' usually use the same Turkish suffix (-ebil/-abil) when speaking positively. However, they negate in different ways. The negative version of 'can' uses an extra 'e' or 'a' in front of the negative verb tense (with a buffer y thrown in if necessary, of course). But the negative version of 'might' uses -meyebil/-mayabil as its negative and the positive tense.

gidemiyorum = git + e + miyor + um = I can't go (present continuous i.e. I am trying but right now there is a problem so I can't go)
gidemem = git + e + me + m = I can't go, in all likelihood it is not possible (present simple/wide tense negative)
gidemedim = git + e + me + di + m = I couldn't go, it wasn't possible (past tense for a one off event)
gidemiyordum = git + e + miyor + du + m = I couldn't go (past tense meaning I wanted to but I didn't have the ability, permission, or something happened that prevented it)
gidemeyeceğim = git + e + me + y + ecek + im = I won't be able to go, for definite
gitmeyebilirim = git + me + y + ebil + ir + im = I might not come, either because I can't or I don't want to (present simple/wide tense negative)

And the really interesting part? You can combine the 'might' negative with the 'can' present simple/wide tense negative.

gidemeyebilirim = git + e + me + y + ebil + ir + im = I might not be able to go i.e. it might not be possible for me to go even if I wanted to

Which means that once you add suffixes and buffer letters to nice long verbs, it can end up being quite a mouthful.

saklamak = to hide something or keep it secret
saklayamayacaksınız - you (plural) might not be able to hide it

If you made it to the end, congratulations!

Bayram and Emirgan Park

It's Bayram at the moment here. Bayram is the word for a national holiday, which can be either secular or religious, but not every secular national holiday is called a Bayram (I think). But right now, we're in the middle of the Eid al-Adha holıday, which here is called Kurbanı Bayram, or just Bayram. If you can't tell, we're still getting our heads around how exactly the term 'Bayram' is used.

Anyway, as the Bayram holiday lasts 4 days from Monday - Thursday, the government made Friday as a national holiday too. And made public transport half price for Monday - Thursday! So my language school is taking a break for a week, lots of shops are closed, and people are enjoying spending time with their families (or sneaking in a holiday somewhere).

We've mostly been doing the usual routine here - Turkish studying, trips to the local playground, etc. But we took a half day today to go to Emirgan Park for the first time.

Emirgan Park is now officially my new favourite place in Istanbul. It's one of the largest public parks in Istanbul (117 acres according to Wikipedia) and is just outside the main city area, which meant that we had to get the metro to the nearest stop then walk half an hour. Unfortunately, it's on the side of a huge hill (like most parks here). But, having learned from our Üsküdar picnic attempt a couple of weeks back (where we walked all the way up a steep hill only to find there was nowhere to sit, so walked back down the hill, only for it to start raining as we got to the bottom), we started off at the top of Emirgan Park.

Our first stop was, of course, the children's playground, before we started to explore the park.

We then slowly wended our way through the park, which is full of random cool things. Like pavilions - there are three Ottoman pavilions here that were built in the 1800s. 

The White Pavilion. The other two are the Yellow Pavilion and Pink Pavilion.

There were quite a few fountains around. We made up for the one that J couldn't climb into when we found some mini-fountains that were perfect for J to investigate.

There are lots of tulip references in the park too as Emirgan Park hosts a famous tulip festival every April, which is why the 'I' and 'S' of 'Istanbul' in the photo below make a tulip shape.

This park looked so much fun. Unfortunately J is nowhere near old enough for me to use him as an excuse to play on it myself. 

Half way down, the Bosphorus can just be seen through the trees

As well as wandering around and seeing all the fountains, ponds, random sculptures and flowers, we also managed to pick up some conkers. They had already started falling from the trees (which felt slightly incongruous as it isn't exactly feeling much like any autumn we're used to yet!) and J enjoyed collecting them and wandering around with one firmly clutched in each hand. We finished with a quick picnic before heading home.

It was lovely to get outside, see trees and enjoy some fresh air. J enjoyed himself thoroughly too - in fact, he tired himself out so much that keeping him awake on the bus and metro home ready for his afternoon nap back at our flat was quite an effort.

Definitely on my list of places to visit again!

Roots

Last week, my parents moved out of their house and to a village 300 miles away. And I spent a couple of days feeling a little bit sad about it. I've known the move was happening for a while - when we left England, I knew we wouldn't be coming back to that house. So this took me a little by surprise. It took me a day or two to put my finger on why exactly.

Then I figured it out. I'd put down roots in that house. When I came home at the end of university, I came back to that house. I invested a considerable amount of time painting three walls of my bedroom with a paintbrush, because my dad didn't trust me with a roller. In amongst the change of navigating the university to work transition, my first adult job and moving to Manchester, I kept coming back to that house. Even once I'd moved out, I lived close enough to pop back for a night, or a Saturday, or when my car needed to go to the garage. When L and I got engaged, we told my parents by turning up unannounced and unexpected at the front door of that house one evening. I got ready for my wedding in that house, and my sister's wedding too. I sat around the kitchen table drinking cup after cup of tea more times than I can remember. When L and I sold our house ready for the move out here, we moved into my parents' house, spending weekdays there and weekends back in Bradford. Of course I put down roots there.

And now, those roots have been all up-ended. Don't get me wrong, I'm really excited about visiting my parents' new house when we are next back in England (and when they have a new house). I'm very fortunate that they have moved to a place where I already feel like I have a few little root tendrils, thanks to many holidays there over the years. And experiencing grief at change is a perfectly normal and emotionally healthy thing. If you've ever seen the Pixar film 'Inside Out', you'll understand what I'm talking about as it captures this concept pretty much perfectly.

But I'm also conscious that we've been here in Turkey pretty much 5 months now. Our plan has always been to spend 2 years in this city, then move to another city. And 5 months isn't far off 6 months, which is a quarter of our time. A quarter sounds like a proper chunk of time. And so I continue to try and plant myself deeply in this city, knowing that in a year and a half, we plan to be uprooting again. And that we will continue putting down roots in this country, where our ability to remain here rests on being able to acquire a residence permit each year or two and feels so fragile.

There's another thought lodged in my mind as well. L and I chose this path, where uprooting ourselves is part of the job description. But we are also making J into a 'Third Culture Kid' (TCK for short). This term refers to children who spend some years when they are growing up in a different culture from their passport country. The idea of the 'third culture' is that it is the amalgamation of the two cultures because a TCK never feels like they completely belong to either culture. If J spends a large amount of his childhood here, then he will probably never feel entirely British, and he'll never feel entirely Turkish. There's been a growing amount of research into TCKs in recent years, but one of the key characteristics is rootlessness that results from much change and not feeling that they truly belong anywhere. One researcher summarised the effects of rootlessness when he said that "most TCKs go through more grief experiences by the time they are twenty than monocultural individuals do in a lifetime." (Though it does also need to be said that there are many benefits as well to being a TCK as well.)

I don't have any easy answers about J being a TCK, any more than I have easy answers about the roots I've put down in different places. (In fact, even less, as I haven't been a TCK).

A couple of days ago we were thinking about a passage that talks about One who is like a shepherd, carrying his sheep close to his heart, and yet who is incomparably mighty. It reminded me that I don't need to be looking down at my feet to carefully nurture the roots I'm putting down, but should be lifting my eyes up to to the heavens, where my help comes from and where I can see the stars that are known each by name (although not literally, because unlike a couple of months back, we have power and so I can't see the stars through the light pollution).

Holding onto this truth and the hope we have will anchor us, but it won't negate the sadness and that's okay. There is no neat ending to this story. I'm already over being sad about my parents move, but there will be other uprootings in the future that I will be sad about. J will experience lots of changes that he'll be sad about, which will make us sad too. There are, and will be, lots of great things about living here, but there will also be sadness and we don't have to pretend it doesn't exist or be ashamed of that.

A riddle for you

Earlier this week, L was talking to a Turkish friend about driving in Turkey. L explained that one of the difficulties we would have about driving here would be that we are used to driving on the left but in Turkey, people drive on the right.

At which point, L's friend interjected to say that in Turkey, you drive on the left. Now, Istanbul driving is best understood as a cross between the daunting intensity of London driving combined with the anarchy of Bradford driving, but even so, L was fairly confident that people drive on the right here.

Both L and his friend were correct. But how?

I'll leave you to think about it for a few days (answers on a postcard please) and will edit this post next week to provide the explanation, though I'm sure you can probably work it out for yourselves!

Edited 11/09/2016:

I'm sure you figured it out, but just in case you wanted confirmation, Turkish people talk about which side of the car the driver's seat is on, while we talk about sides of roads. A perfect example of cross-cultural miscommunication!

Gas bottle ordering, second time around

About 3 weeks after we moved to Turkey, J and I left L assembling Ikea furniture in our new flat one morning and set off on a quest to get a gas bottle for our oven and a big container of drinking water. I managed to get both ordered, from the gas shop and the drinking water shop respectively, and they were delivered to the flat not long after.

I was so proud of myself that day. It was probably the first major-ish task I'd undertaken by myself. Neither the man in the gas shop nor the man in the water shop spoke any English and my Turkish was incredibly basic as we hadn't started our courses yet. I remember standing in the gas shop, trying to communicate, as the man there asked me whether I wanted a big or a small bottle. And I could just about piece together what he was asking me, but I had no idea which one I needed and couldn't even remember the word for 'oven'. I had to resort to looking up words in my pocket dictionary while the shopkeeper waited patiently for me. And then I had to give our address in Turkish when I still wasn't completely confident with my Turkish numbers. So when someone turned up at our flat door with a gas bottle, I viewed this as a major achievement.

In fact, if you'd have asked me at the end of our first month here what I was most proud of, it would have been a toss up between successfully ordering the gas bottle and surviving 3 Ikea trips in 3 days.

Earlier this week, our gas bottle ran out and so J and I called in on the way back from the park to order a replacement. (I could have phoned, but it's a bit harder to make not-quite-correctly-accented-Turkish understood on the phone so I'll leave that for next time.)

I walked into the shop, I knew what I needed and what to ask for, I made my request and gave our address. When I was asked if we had an empty bottle, I understood the question and could confirm that our old bottle was finished. And I walked out. It took all of 2 minutes and was no big deal, just one of those things on my Monday morning to-do list.

Sometimes it feels like we've come a really long way since we arrived!

August goings-on

We're most of the way through August now! To be honest, August feels like a month just to be 'got through', mainly due to the temperature/humidity.. Here's a quick snapshot of some of the things we've been doing the last few weeks:

• L has been getting his head round causative verbs, conditional forms, some relative clauses, must/should/need/can, various other bits of Turkish grammar and more vocab.

• Now that J is walking, he and I are becoming regulars at the local playground. Most days we head off there at 8am-ish, just as L's leaving for school. 

• I miserably failed to explain to my language helper the set up of the United Kingdom and how England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are different countries, but they are all part of the UK, which is also a country, but how Welsh and Scottish people will get very offended if you suggest that they are English, even though they carry UK passports and the capital of the UK is London, which is in England. Slightly inconveniently, the most commonly used word here for British is İngiliz, which sounds suspiciously like 'English'. I usually try and write a page of Turkish each week for my language helper to correct, so this week I think I'll be writing about the UK.  

• We've been making some new friends and meeting up with others... with a mixture of English and Turkish spoken. (But probably a bit more English than Turkish to be honest.)

• We had our residence permit (ikamet) appointments this week, which ending up taking over most of the day before and the day after as well due to various tasks that were necessary.

• We went out one Saturday morning to Belgrad Forest, which is a little outside Istanbul. Riding the metro to the end of the line, taking a bus and then walking a little gets you to the forest entrance, but as we discovered, it is then quite a way to get to the forest paths etc.

• I've been celebrating the imminent return of the Great British Bake Off (even though I will be unable to watch it on iPlayer) by making English muffins, cinnamon rolls and doughnuts.

Language fails - part one

I think language fails must be a rite of passage for language learners. At the very least, they provide some amusing anecdotes - and so here's a selection of some of our finest blunders to date. I've titled this 'part one' in the full expectation that there will be subsequent parts to follow over the next months.

• In Turkish, the verb 'to talk' is konuşmak and the verb 'to run' is koşmak. My language helper had just told me that she'd been running in the park that morning. So I, instead of asking if she did a lot of running in the park, asked if she did a lot of talking in the park.

• A traditional Turkish snack is a simit, which is a bagel-shaped, crusty, sesame seed covered bread snack, and there are usually lots of street vendors selling them. There is also a softer, more doughy version, which is called açma. And the word for uncle (father's brother, to be precise. There's a different word for mother's brother but that is beside the point) is amca. When feeling peckish on the walk to language school one morning, L completely confused a simitçi (simit seller) by asking for 'one uncle please'.

• A few weeks back, a couple of Greek friends needed a bed for the night in Istanbul and stayed at ours. Now, the word for a Greek person is Yunan and the word for Greece is Yunanistan. But, if you accidentally shift an 's' in place of an 'n' and duplicate the 'u' instead of using an 'a' (which, in my head at least, is a perfectly understandable thing to do), you end up saying yunus instead. So I thought I was explaining to my language helper that we'd had two Greeks stay the previous night. What I actually said was we'd had two dolphins stay the previous night. 

And these are just some of the ones we know about! What worries me more is what I've inadvertently said to some poor, unsuspecting person without ever realising my mistake...

We saw the stars!

If we were back in England, we'd be on camp for at least one week this summer. It seems a little strange to sit here in 30 degree plus temperatures and think a little wistfully about a muddy field in Wales, but this is the first year ever that L won't be on camp (yep, you read that right. He's been going since he was a baby!). I've been on camp for the last 9 years and last year we took J at 5 weeks old (and my mum. If you ever go to be assistant leaders on an outdoor camp while in possession of a 5 week old baby, always take your mother).

One of my favourite things to do on camp was to look at the stars. Being as the camp is in a small valley in a very rural part of Wales, there is no light pollution and the stars are amazingly bright. On a clear night, you can see the Milky Way. A few times we've taken campers bivouacking out on the hills and it's coincided with the peak of the Perseid meteor shower and I've gone to sleep watching shooting stars. (Just in case that seemed a little too good to be true, it's worth adding that at that point I'm in a sleeping bag inside an orange survival-bag-slash-reinforced-bin-liner surrounded by a bevvy of teenage girls chattering away.)

I hadn't seen the stars since we moved here. There are no street lamps here, but with the buildings so densely packed, there is always some light of some kind in the streets and so, like any big city, your chance of seeing the stars is fairly non-existent.

However, earlier this week, we saw stars! Electricity and water cuts are not uncommon here but when the power suddenly went out at about 9.30pm, it was our first power cut at night. And suddenly not only was our flat completely dark, everywhere that we could see was completely dark. Before that sounds overly dramatic, from our front window we can only see up and down our narrow, one way street so it wasn't exactly surprising that we couldn't see any lights. And after grumbling to myself about it for a few minutes, I realised that there might be an upside.

And so, leaning out of our flat window, we looked up and slowly, as our eyes adjusted, we could make out a handful or two of stars. I never thought I'd see stars from our flat's window! No matter how many times I look up at the stars, they never cease to amaze me, to remind me how small I am and how astounding it is that each of them are known by name. But also that the One who is mighty in power, who determines the number of stars in the sky, is also the same one who knows each of us so intimately. How great he is! The same yesterday, today and forever. The same in a canvas-covered field in Wales, the same in Turkey. The one who does not change, the one who will fulfil every promise he has made. How amazing, how wonderful!

Comfort zone moments

Sometimes our lives look quite different from how we lived in England. Most of the time, our lives are pretty similar but with a slight twist. Or, depending on the occasion, a bit more than a slight twist and more a 'turn 180 degrees' kind of twist. You get used to it, but the first time time of doing most things is usually involves some twists and turns. Or multiple twists and turns - J's vaccinations being a prime example and a saga that is not yet complete.

But sometimes I get to stay in my comfort zone and do something for the first time exactly the same way I would have done it back in England. Getting biro marks out of the sofa (yep, I was foolish enough to leave a pen unattended on the sofa within reach of J) - my mum was still my first port of call and the supermarkets here also sell Vanish. Trying out a new recipe. Doing flour and water finger painting with J.

(Although for the finger painting, I have to confess that I found the instructions online but L chivalrously did the finger painting with J while I studied.)

I know the times I got to stay in my comfort zone because when I look back on the first time doing them, I look at the 'what' and not the 'how'. I see the end result and don't think about how it got achieved. I look back at them and there are no associations of uncertainty, stress and helplessness that pop into my head.

Moving here is a huge change, don't get me wrong. Even when things here look outwardly very similar to Western countries, this country has a different soul. I'm not always particularly thankful to be living in such a big city, but I am also trying to remember that the upside of spending our first two years here means that we can adjust to Turkey a bit more gradually and enjoy those comfort zone moments.

What's this 'consolidating language' thing about?

In a recent update to some of you, we said that this month we aren't going to language school but are working to consolidate our language studies so far.

So I thought it would be good to explain a little about why we're doing it and what it looks like for us.

Intensive language school is pretty intense. Sounds obvious, but there it is. You cover a lot of material in one level and add quite a bit of vocab as well - the list of words I have either learned or am in the process of learning is now just under 2000 words. It also seems like there's a step up between each level in terms of expectations of listening and fluency. For example, the first course (according to L) was mostly conducted in English, moving into partial Turkish at the end of the course. The second level course has been almost entirely in Turkish.

It is therefore very common, and often recommended by other foreigners, to take a month between intensive courses to practice and to absorb the material so far. And after two intensive courses back-to-back (which takes us to about GCSE level), L and I both knew that our brains needed a little bit of time to take in everything we've learned up to this point. 

So how are we consolidating our Turkish this month? Here's a list of some of the things we've been doing, in no particular order.

• Going over grammar notes and doing grammar, listening, comprehension and writing exercises
• Learning vocab - we both use a phone app called Anki that allows us to create our own flashcards and uses spaced repetition to help us learn. A lot of the vocab we learn is from conversations in class or from other students giving example sentences, which means that there are quite a few words I covered that L didn't, and vice versa. So we are also plugging holes in our vocabularies
• Getting out and about to practice listening and speaking. There are often opportunities to have a quick couple of minutes conversation with people as we go to the shops and the park and use the metro, or just chance to be listening out for the snippets of conversation you hear as you go about your daily life. Some of our best practice has been while either waiting for ferries or on ferries
• Watching Turkish TV on Youtube. Sometimes L and I watch a Turkish sitcom. We get some of the words used but to be honest, most of it passes us by at the moment. However, we have discovered Turkish children's cartoons on Youtube, which is much more our level! (i.e. we understand maybe one third to one half of what is said!) There's one called 'Can' which is a particular favourite of ours and J's. Recipe videos are also useful, as they tend to be nice and slow
• Practising speaking with each other
• Meeting up with language helpers
• Reading (slowly, with heavy use of a dictionary and accepting that we don't yet know all the necessary grammar) children's books in Turkish and a favourite book of ours (with the English version open next to us). (NB: narrative passages in our favourite book only. Letters from an author with a penchant for long and complex sentences are definitely too advanced for us right now!)
• Tackling our to-do list, which usually necessitates Turkish practice. For example, phoning up to get new drinking water, reading the text messages from our mobile phone carrier to find out how we get our next month's plan, buying some of the household things we still needed

So far, we're finding this consolidation time to be really valuable - although I'm sure we'll be ready to go back to language school when the time comes.

One of Istanbul's best kept secrets

Did you know that Istanbul had islands? Neither did we until we moved here.

Adalar (as they are called in Turkish) is a group of 9 islands located in the Sea of Marmara, not too far from Istanbul. Four of these islands are open to the public - and with some of our family making some quick weekend visits, it was the perfect opportunity to explore.

The islands

The islands are reached by public ferry, with the ferry calling at each of the four islands in turn and it takes about 90 minutes to get to the last (and biggest) island. The ferries themselves are part of the experience - the islands are a very popular day trip from Istanbul, so on a summer weekend it's necessary to get to the ferry in plenty of time to queue up (with bonus points if you can strike up a conversation with a Turkish person whilst waiting) and then rush onto the ferry to try and bag some outdoor, shady seats. Being out on the ferry in the Bosphorous gives a completely different view of the city and almost immediately brings a sense of calm at being surrounded by open sea, in contrast to the density of the city - until someone comes round loudly selling simit and çay. 

My dad entertaining J on the ferry

We've visited two now: Büyükada and Heybeliada. Both were lovely - full of forest and greenery, with a small town on each.  Private vehicles are not allowed on the islands, so transport is either by (a) horse and carriage, (b) electric scooter (if you're a local), (c) bicycle, or (d) foot. The horse and carriage is a very traditional way to tour the island, but we chose to walk.

Look! Green space!

Exploring Heybeliada

The perfect way to escape from the city for a day!

Water-y tales

Some of you know that there's been some uncertainty surrounding our utilities.

I'm glad to say that our water, at least, is now on a much surer footing!

Last Friday, a man from the water company knocked on the door (never a good sign). He told me that there was a problem with our water, but as his English was non-existent and he obviously didn't think my Turkish was good enough to understand what he needed to tell me (he turned out to be correct), he gave me a piece of paper to take to the water office.

There were a few slight issues at this point - I couldn't decipher the piece of paper, I had no idea what the problem was, and I knew the water office was somewhere not too far away but didn't know the address (I think utility companies have offices in most districts here).

At this point, I handed the problem (along with the baby) over to L as he was coming home from language school and I was going to school. To cut a long story short, my very lovely husband sorted it all out that afternoon by enlisting the help of our estate agent.

It turns out that before we moved in, the water was officially disconnected (perfectly normal here, usually when moving out, you would get all your utilities disconnected) and the access point sealed. However, while our access point was sealed, our water had never actually been turned off - the only explanation we can think of is that the engineer somehow forgot to turn the water off before sealing it.

So we got our water reconnected, only it was never actually disconnected, just officially disconnected, so it actually didn't need to be reconnected, only to be officially reconnected. Following?

But, whatever way you look at it, it's pretty amazing how this has worked out. We've had water for the last 6 weeks that by rights, we really shouldn't have had. And we could have got it sorted sooner if necessary, but it has worked out easier to get it sorted now.

We're very thankful :-)

Language learning, timidity and Asking vs Guessing Cultures

Can I just say, right from the start, that this is in no way a comment on Turkish culture. I've been here about two months and I would be foolish to even attempt to formulate opinions on the culture of a country in so short a time. Particularly when I still count it an achievement to hear and understand the cashier telling me how much I need to pay at the supermarket without me looking at the till register. So please do not read into this anything whatsoever about Turkish culture.

So, with that caveat over, I've been thinking recently about Asking vs Guessing cultures. This is a concept we came across back in England, when L and I were involved in some work with international students. It's the idea that there are two different types of cultures. In an 'Ask' culture people believe they can ask for anything and don't mind being told 'no' - and in fact often expect to be refused. In a 'Guess' culture, you avoid asking for something unless you're pretty sure the answer will be 'yes' and that it won't be too much of an imposition, especially because it's usually awkward and uncomfortable for someone to have to say 'no'. Ideally, you don't even ask at all but manage to convey the impression without asking that you'd like something and are then offered it, then correctly gauge if it is a genuine offer or just somebody being polite. Of course, this is a somewhat black and white explanation and in reality, if you buy into this theory, there seems to be some sort of spectrum onto which people from different countries fell.

One of the joys of working with international students is learning about different cultures, but one of the harder parts is often communicating when there are different expectations of asking and offering! To give an example, British people tend to fall more into the Guessing camp. You usually don't ask for something unless you are fairly sure you'll receive the answer you want. However, we're not as much of a Guessing culture as some other cultures are, where great subtlety is required. Yet there are other cultures where it is completely normal to ask for something and not expect a positive answer, so an international student may ask a British person something that the British person finds presumptuous or even rude, and the student can't work out what was wrong with their request while the British person finds it awkward to decline. Interestingly, this seems to be something we develop as we grow up - children often innocently ask straight out for something (sometimes to the embarrassment of their parents!).

Personally, I really value the friendships I have where one of us can make requests knowing that the other person feels comfortable enough to say no, but when it comes to making requests of people I don't know particularly well, most of the time I'm British through and through. Although there is enough Yorkshire blood in me to think that sometimes (but only sometimes!) it is worth taking the risk of an awkward moment to try and negotiate a price down.

What has this to do with language learning and timidity?

I think that there are parallels with being from a mostly Guessing culture and language learning because in both cases, you fear imposing on people and what people will think of you.

I don't like knowing that I'm inconveniencing people. I am self-centred enough to worry about what people (who I've never met before and may never meet again) think of me. My pride says that I don't want to need people to go out of their way to help me or to have to find a polite way to refuse me.

But if you are living in a new country and learning a new language, it doesn't matter what kind of culture you live in, you are going to have to inconvenience people. When I walk into a shop, I can pretty much guarantee that I am not going to be their easiest customer that day because I am going to need more time and help than the average customer. It's going to take longer because I often won't understand what is said and will ask them to repeat themselves. I once walked into a shop and, while trying to explain what I needed, had to make the assistant wait while I looked up words in a dictionary. When necessary, we have resorted to pen and paper, photos on phones, Google Translate and/or phoning a friend to translate on our behalf - all things which do not lend themselves to quick and straightforward transactions!

Just as we don't ask for something unless we know the answer will probably be what we want it to be, there's a temptation not to speak unless you know you're going to be understood. You know that when you speak there is a strong chance you will have to repeat what you just said because your accent isn't great and a good chance that even after you repeat yourself, you'll still be met with blank looks. And so it feels like it takes courage to even try and initiate a conversation.

But then there's the fact that we're here to learn a language and you just have to get over it and start talking, plus necessity breeds desperation - if I want a new bottle of drinking water, I really don't have a choice but to phone up the drinking water store and request some water.

However, repeatedly doing this takes a huge amount of mental energy. Sometimes it feels like we have to psyche ourselves up to go and do what would, in the UK, be a very trivial errand and some days it's easy to wish for everything to have a self-service option.

And in the midst of all of this, a friend gave me some words a few weeks back that talk about us not being given a timid spirit, but a spirit of power, love and self-discipline. I've never thought of myself as a particularly timid person (to be honest, I don't think those who know me have ever been tempted to describe me as timid either!) but these last few weeks, I think I've seen in a new way the temptation to be timid. There's a part of me which thinks how much easier it would be to stay in our flat, learning grammar and doing listening exercises, rather than go out and see what conversations I can have just going about my daily life. And that's with the advantage that when I go out with J, people will fairly regularly try and strike up a conversation with me.

But instead, I try and check with the man behind the bread counter what the word is for 'sliced' even though he has resorted to hand gestures the last two times I've been in, as he clearly thinks that is the most efficient way to communicate with me. L takes J to the park and instead of nodding and smiling at the man next to him who is also pushing his son in the swing, L asks the man how old his boy is. Of course, there are also times when we stay in, times when we could say something and we don't, and the other night, we were very happy when we managed to successfully pay our Internet bill online even though we could maybe have paid it over the counter in our bank - but these things are okay too, in the right amounts.

There's so much more I could write about this - about identity, rejection, acceptance, motivation, fear of failure, parallels to other things. But for now, I'm just grateful that I don't have a lot of choice but to get on with things, and more importantly, I'm thankful that I've been given a spirit of power, love and self-discipline.

Favourite word of the week so far

At the moment, I generally find myself with a minimum of 30 new words a day from my lessons. (I actually just counted - 35 new words today, 44 yesterday.)

But my favourite word that I've learned so far this week is Kurabiye Canavarı.

Kurabiye Canavarı aka Cookie Monster

Definitely a priority word to learn!

Back to school

Pencils neatly sharpened. Pens of varying colours acquired. Notebook at the ready. Yesterday I started at language school, which was a bit of an odd feeling having not sat in a classroom for a few years.

To rewind, L started language school a month ago and last Friday completed the first level through an intensive course (and passed his exam with flying colours! #proudwifemoment). An intensive course is 20 hours of classroom time a week, plus homework and vocabulary learning, and is every week day morning or afternoon for four weeks. There's a lot of material that is covered in a course, and a lot of speaking and listening, so there's a constant feeling that your brain is about to explode.

For the last month, I've been studying the first level material at home with a language helper, as we'd decided it was too much for us both to be out at language school so soon. However, for the second level, I thought I really needed to be in the classroom and getting some more speaking and listening practice. And it has worked out with J that I'm now able to leave him in an afternoon, so language school was suddenly a real possibility.

It's usual to take a month to consolidate an intensive course before starting the next level, however you can just about get away with it between the first and second levels. And, considering that it's already getting fairly warm here and that it will be even hotter in July, L decided to continue onto the second level course and dive straight back into another intensive month.

And then we decided to bite the bullet and see if we could make it work for me to do the second level at the same time as L. This means L being at language school every week day morning and me there every week day afternoon.

I managed to pass the placement test for the second level course, but up until yesterday morning, we didn't know if the afternoon course was going to run or not - but L messaged me when he got to language school in the morning to say that the course was running and starting that afternoon!

So, yesterday we started our slightly crazy month. Our language school is about a 40-45 minute walk from our flat, a few minutes less if you take the metro one stop. The class schedules mean that L goes off to school in a morning, whilst I look after J and get on with things in the house, vocab learning etc. J and I have an early-ish lunch, then we set off for language school and meet L halfway-ish. We swap J between us, I continue to language school and L takes J home for the afternoon. The biggest challenge is to get J swapped between us and back to the house without him falling asleep, otherwise he won't nap in the afternoon and we will have a super-grumpy baby the rest of the day.

Heading off yesterday lunchtime to meet Daddy half way between home and language school

Two days in, and it is working okay, so far. It is hard work, but we knew it would be. And on that note, I'm off to do my homework (yes, we really are back at school!). And before someone asks, we have different teachers and so different homework assignments, so no copying!

Guess what I found last week

(There's been a bit of a lull in blogging but now we have Internet at home (hurray!) and no longer have to carefully conserve our mobile Internet. So now I should be able to blog more regularly.)

The other day I was having a quick look around in a 5 lira shop which is basically the Turkish equivalent of a pound shop, except that it specialises in kitchenware and lots of the things it sells are not 5 lira. And guess what I stumbled across?

This isn't any old casserole dish though.

This is a George Home casserole dish, which I found somewhat amusing. I have no idea how it ended up in a small shop here. And, readers, I bought it (because I did genuinely need a casserole dish). Although with the weather heating up here, I'm not sure I'll be making many hearty stews any time soon.

Note - for this post to make any sense, you really have to know who I worked for, pre-baby. Otherwise it's a slightly random picture of a casserole dish.

A fairly typical afternoon (or, how I nearly flooded the bathroom)

My afternoon started off in a fairly straightforward manner. J and I waved L off to language school, I washed up the lunch dishes, played with J for a little bit and then, after putting J to bed for his nap, settled down, with a cup of tea and a biscuit, to some language study. After a while, the door buzzer sounded. Someone from Türk Telecom had come about our Internet – at least, that's what I pieced together from the words 'Internet', 'Türk Telecom' and 'Süperonline' (the Internet company), plus we've been waiting for something to happen with getting our Internet set up.

Unfortunately, this gentleman didn't speak much English, and my Turkish is currently limited to the present continuous verb form (though that's pretty shaky). He asked some questions, located our cable socket and tried to tell me something about getting the Internet set up and phoning Süperonline. With the aid of Google Translate, he managed to communicate something about Süperonline connecting a modem, 24 hours, a text message and me phoning Süperonline. Further exchanges (conversation would be too generous a term) meant that I managed to work out that we should wait for a text message and then phone Süperonline. In addition, there's some kind of issue with our modem wires that someone from Süperonline will need to fix. So we are still mostly in the dark about what's happening with our Internet and will wait for a text message to arrive, before figuring out how exactly we are going to call Süperonline (or, to be more precise, who we are going to ask to make the call on our behalf).

At this point, you might be wondering why this is such a typical afternoon. But it's this sort of interaction that is becoming quite normal for us – the combination of not knowing how things work here and not speaking Turkish means that we frequently have people try and tell us things that we don't understand about processes that we don't know about. So, as we continue to set up our home here, we are learning to live with a fairly constant level of uncertainty about what is happening when. Some days this is harder than others. But then I remember that we are slowly making progress. Today I knew how to say “I am telephoning” and the words for earlier and later, which definitely did not lead to grammatically correct sentences but did mean that I could work out that we should wait for a text message before phoning, rather than vice versa.

And after the man from Türk Telecom had left, I took my dictionary into the bathroom to decipher the different cycles on the washing machine (rather than just relying on the one cycle which I did understand, the 30 minute express cycle). I figured out which cycle I needed, pressed start and then suddenly remembered that I should definitely not leave the waste water pipe hanging loose but that it would be a really good idea to put it over the edge of the bath (which seems to be a fairly normal way to operate washing machines here)

So we may not know when we will get Internet, but at least our bathroom isn't flooded. 

Week One

What do you do in your first week in a new country?

Well, here's my helpful guide-slash-recap-of-what-we-did-in-our-first-week:

• First job: get the essentials. Food, water and toilet paper, enough to keep you going until the next day at least.
• Clean your temporary flat, and in the process, make your first purchases of household equipment: a mop and bucket, and a dustpan and brush.

Our first purchases of a durable nature! J's a fan of the brush and likes to wave it around. Me? I'm loving the mop. The mop head clips onto the bottom of the bucket and it swirls round and fills up with water, then it clips into the drainage bit and you push down on the mop and it swirls round fast to drain the water out of the mop. The day we bought this, it pretty much made my day. 

• Start working out (or trying to work out... we're definitely not there yet) what foods are readily available here and how much they cost. It turns out that fresh vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers and aubergines are fairly cheap here compared to the UK, as are apples and kiwis. And then try and work out what meals you can cook with the additional constraints of very limited kitchen equipment and 2 gas hobs and no oven. Shop pretty much every day for what you need. Then cook! (added bonus: learn to light a gas hob with a cigarette lighter. I realise this is a talent that most people acquire before they get to my age, but as my in-laws well know, I used to have to get someone to light the hob for me when I cooked in their kitchen. Now I can do it myself! I'm quite proud of this.)
• Get introduced to a few different people e.g. one of my language helpers and another friend who is helping us sort out all the things we have to do and translate for us
• Get your İstanbulkarts, which are a bit like Oyster cards for the Metro, trams and ferries here
• Go to the tax office to get your tax number and to pay the fee to register phones. It's recommended to take a baby with you who can make friends with the officials whilst you are waiting.
• Go to the phone shop and get your new SIM cards. Hello mobile Internet :-)
• Explore!! Walk around some areas to (a) start getting your bearings and (b) start thinking about which residential areas to live in
• Find a friendly emlak (estate agent) and start flat viewings. A great thing about living here is that lots of things happen immediately. A friend had recommended an emlak, so we went with them to meet him and once he knew what we were after and had made a few calls, we immediately went and did 3 viewings and scheduled another for the next day.
• Open a bank account if possible.
• Start learning some language, even if your language course hasn't officially started yet. For one thing, it makes food shopping easier (a lot of dried herbs look very similar).
• And of course, do all the usual things that you do with a baby and try and introduce some semblance of routine as far as you can. Unfortunately, J had a bit of a nasty cold and sore throat in his first few days here which made things a little harder, but he's much chirpier now, and enjoying being chased around the house by one of us crawling after him.
• Aaaand smile. There will be harder weeks and there will be easier weeks, but we made it through Week One!

First impressions

We've been in Istanbul a few days now - so here's a quick fire list of first impressions:

• Istanbul is hilly!! It's like being back in our home city... just quite a bit sunnier. We're getting some good exercise walking around and pushing the buggy up and down the hills.
• Turkish people love babies - particularly blue eyed, ginger ones! When we were in London a couple of months ago, J tried desperately to make eye contact with someone on the Tube - but nobody was looking. Here, there's always someone on the Metro ready to smile at him.
• There's a lot of concrete buildings, and often with fairly narrow streets. Stating the obvious maybe, but I'm new to being a big city girl and I've never lived in such a built up area before.
• There's history around every corner. On a walk yesterday, we walked past not one, but two Ottoman palaces.
• And anywhere where you can buy an ice cream from the corner shop for 1 TL (which is about 25p) is good with me!

And my favourite Turkish word so far? Bebek arabası, which is the Turkish word for pushchair and literally means "baby car".

Being All There

Naming a blog is a funny thing. You want something that sounds clever and possibly witty, if it can be managed - something that other people will see and wish they'd thought of that themselves. Something a little intriguing, maybe a little literary even (after all, you are publishing your thoughts to the entirety of the Internet). And of course, original. And if it could give some clue as to the theme and focus of your blog, that would be ideal. 

Being singularly unable to come up with anything original, never mind witty, I've settled on a reference to one of my favourite quotes from a person who lived out his words, well and truly. 

"Whatever you do, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."

I want to 'be all there' in this new situation that we'll soon find ourselves in. I want to be living 'to the hilt', giving ourselves to this new country for as long as God would have us there.

So, pull up a chair and join me as I try and figure out what it means for us to 'be all there' -  the adventures, the adjustments (both the good and the more challenging), the ups and downs of daily life in a new country, and of course the inevitable language fails.

And just to let you know, comments will be disabled on this blog but that doesn't mean I'm being anti-social. I'd love to hear from you - whether comments, questions, or just a quick hello - but by email please! (To email me, click on 'View my complete profile' on the right, in the About Me section, and it'll take you to my profile page. On the left hand side of that page, click or hover over 'Email' under Contact me.)