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!
