Christmas is coming!

It's December - Christmas is coming! Last year J didn't really 'get' Christmas in any way, shape or form but now he's a little older, he's understanding a little more - even if he doesn't really get the concept of waiting and putting a new figure on the advent calendar each day when he'd rather put them all on at once.

This has also meant that L and I have had to start having the sort of discussions that we will undoubtedly have multiple times in years to come. How do we celebrate Christmas in Turkey? What traditions do we transfer from our childhoods and the UK? Do we introduce the children to parts of Christmas that are more culturally Christmassy in the UK than religious? Advent seems to be becoming a bigger 'thing' again - what do we do about that?

Those questions are part of bigger issues relating to bring up 'third culture kids' and culture transfer. We live in a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas but we are passport holders of a country that has made celebrating Christmas into something that we're often not comfortable with. But we also believe that celebrating Jesus' birth is a really good thing to do.

We don't really have any right answers and that's okay. We don't have to have everything figured out now, our ideas and practices and traditions will evolve over the years. We're reading and talking and listening and asking questions and slowly plotting our way forward, for this year at least.

There are several balls we're juggling (or plates spinning, or insert alternative metaphor here) here.

First is a desire to teach J and S the (to use a well worn cliche) 'true meaning of Christmas'. The wonder and upside down logic and messiness of a long-expected baby king being born, not in a palace but in much more humble circumstances. The divine love that led to 'heaven's son, sleeping under the stars that he made', to quote one of J's books, and that would lead on towards Easter. Christmas really is good news!

Second is a confused context. Christmas is understandably a normal working day here. There is an inflatable Santa on an inflatable ladder hanging out of a second storey window on a building on our street. There are several shops that you can buy either fake or real trees from, but instead of being called 'Christmas trees', they are called  'New Year Trees' (Yılbaşı ağaçlar). And last year I saw an advertisement with a picture of Santa and a warning not to celebrate New Year because it was a Christian festival. The area where we live has a nominal Christian minority population but even in that culture, from what I understand, Christmas isn't really celebrated on the day and presents are often given at New Year. That's quite a mixed assortment of ideas and practices!

Third is our own family traditions and practices, that L and I have grown up with in our individual families and since our marriage have continued, adapted and incorporated into our own family unit.

And fourth is the British culture of Christmas, that says a 'white Christmas' is a special kind of Christmas; that puts the Nativity alongside Santa and cheesy Christmas hits from the 80s; that involves gravy and Brussels sprouts and Christmas jumpers and board games and big boxes of Quality Street. I'm not condoning all of the above, just trying to explain that there is so much of what we naturally associate with Christmas that is very British and cultural.

So how do we make sense of all of that?

This year, as a family we're making a slightly bigger deal of Advent - we have a new advent calendar with a figure to stick on the nativity scene for each day that will get used each year now. We had a special breakfast on 1st December, then got out our Christmas books and added a new one to the collection. We're doing Advent-themed readings in our family time each evening.

Although this plan did completely derail rather quickly on account of me catching flu on the 2nd December and generously giving it to the rest of my family. (I feel the need to point out here that this was 'proper flu' not just a cough-and-a-cold or man flu. It's been a tough couple of weeks!). But our Advent is now getting back on track.

In addition, J and his friends will probably do some Christmassy crafts together at their weekly play group and I'm hoping we'll get chance to make Christmas treats to give to our friends and neighbours, if I manage to get my act together in time.

Last year we were spoiled as Christmas was on a Sunday, which made it natural to host a Christmas dinner for a group of friends in the afternoon. But this year we're going to do a Christmas dinner on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, because it's a Sunday and our friends will be able to come. Although definitely chicken not turkey, given the price of turkey here. An American friend is probably going to spend Christmas Day with us, maybe some other friends as well, but I'm not sure what that day is going to look like exactly. It's a bit weird trying to figure out how to shape a Christmas Day when there's no morning service, possibly no big dinner to make and no big groups of friends or family. But it is kind of fun having the freedom to do different things.

Now J has figured out that Christmas is Jesus' birthday, he thinks that Jesus needs a birthday cake (and probably candles too). J is a big fan of birthdays and of cake! So I have a suspicion that we'll be starting a new tradition this year of a birthday cake for Jesus. Discussions with J about a birthday present for Jesus are still ongoing, as J's suggestion was 'a yellow one [present]'.

There are plenty of things we're still trying to work out and will be doing for quite some time. Do we try and choose more Nativity-based Christmas books compared to culturally Christmassy books for our book collection? How do we respond to believers who do not have a cultural heritage of Christmas but who want to celebrate Christmas? Should we be encouraging them to start their own traditions? If so, what traditions? What if they want to incorporate traditions such as a decorated tree? How do we go about explaining Christmas to our friends and neighbours who wrap the Nativity and Santa and presents and Christmas trees all up in one big Christmas concept in their minds and whose understanding of the Christmas story horrifies them?

But these questions and issues are too big to sort out now, once for all, so in the meantime we'll keep going with our little traditions and maybe step by step, year by year, we'll start figuring out some appropriate ways to answer some of those questions.

Thankfulness

It was American Thanksgiving last week but as I'm not American I can be thankful on any day! (also known as "I meant to publish this post last Thursday but I didn't manage to finish it in time").

Here are just a few of the things that I'm thankful for today:

• Family and friends who are able to come and visit us. We're looking forward to my parents visiting this weekend and then L's parents coming the following weekend. We are so grateful that they are willing and able to come and see us and that all things considered, Turkey is not that far from the UK. The ongoing tourist visa situation between Turkey and the USA, which prevented my friend's sister from being able to come here last week as she had planned, makes me especially grateful for family visits.

• A toddler who makes me laugh, who loves books and trains and stomping like a dinosaur, who daily drives me beyond the limits of my own reserves of patience - and who sometimes does all of that at the same time!

• A baby who has just turned 6 months old (how time flies!), who laughs out loud at the sight of his big brother, who has decided that being mobile is fun but so are cuddles.

• A husband who daily exemplifies self sacrificing love and who gets up with the boys at a time that begins with a 6 (and occasionally a 5) every morning so I can sleep a bit longer.

• Friends here. When we came here, I asked our Father for two friends - one expat who could help me navigate the system here as a foreigner and one with whom I could meet and talk to . 18 months later, those prayers have been answered and I have several friends from a variety of countries. 

• Electricity and water. Whenever we have water or electric cuts (which happens rather more regularly here than in the UK) and then the water or power returns, I'm always so grateful for it for a few minutes/hours/days (depending on how long the cut has lasted!). But then so quickly I forget and start taking these for granted again. 

• And for drinking water - no one who has any choice in the matter drinks water from the tap here. You either install a filter on the tap or buy 19 litre bottles of drinking water. I'm thankful that I only have to call a number and someone brings a new bottle of drinking water right to our door.

• Routine. I was reading a blog the other day which talked about the 'luxury of routine' and it was right. To have predictable days, to know where you will sleep each night, to know you can open the cupboard and find food, or go to the shop and buy some, to know (on the whole) what to expect when you walk down the street. To have relatively settled and stable lives is something I am thankful for. 

Of course there are many more, but these are just a few that came to mind...

Peace and joy

I'm reading a devotional book at the moment that looks at one characteristic a week.

Last week the focus was on joy. Monday's reading started off the week by talking about the source of our joy and how our joy is not contingent on our circumstances. Approximately 2-3 hours after reading about how we should rejoice always and give thanks in all circumstances, I was turning the flat upside down looking for my purse. There are only so many places a purse can be hidden (or so I thought) and I looked everywhere - on the top of the shoe cabinet, which functions as our entering/leaving the house dumping ground. In the shoe cabinet. Down the back of the shoe cabinet. On every surface in the house. Under every cushion in the house. I realised I hadn't seen my purse since the day before when I'd paid at a nearby cafe and L had emptied the rucksack that it had been in before he took the rucksack to school.

So I phoned L, no answer, tried to phone again, sent WhatsApp messages. I couldn't find it anywhere and my mind was already jumping to worse case scenarios. Had it fallen out of the rucksack or been stolen? If it had been stolen or fallen out, might it still be on the road somewhere? Inside my purse was not only cash and bank cards, but mine and the two boys' residence permits. If I thought we'd lost those, we'd have to go to the police station, then go to the migration office, would we be able to get new ones easily, how long would the process take...

I grabbed some of our emergency cash (because we needed bread for lunch and all my money was in my purse), and with the boys I retraced my route back to the cafe. No sign of it but I did manage to get hold of L, who thought he'd 'seen it around somewhere'. I got home slightly frazzled and short tempered while trying to remind myself that I was meant to be joyful no matter what the circumstances and after all my eternal future was secure.

But I still really did not want to have to deal with lost residence permits, never mind cancelling bank cards with the hassle of phoning my Turkish bank plus working out how to get replacement bank cards from the UK. I walked in the door and had a sudden thought. I went straight to J's sit on plastic car that has a lift up seat and small space to stash things under the seat, and there was my purse. J was obviously not as past the hiding-things-in-his-car stage as we thought he was. So that was me being joyful in all circumstances.

Roll on the following Monday (yesterday) and the focus this week is on peace. I read yesterday morning about how we should have peace in all circumstances because our peace has already been achieved for us and is not contingent on things that happen in our lives. So when things don't go our way, we do not need to be anxious but can bring our requests to our Father and his peace will guard our hearts and minds.

And so as the weather was miserable, I made plans to go over to a friend's house with the boys so J could play with (or at least alongside) some friends, packed my rucksack (with my purse in it) and spent 15 minutes getting the three of us ready to go out the door. I'd got J into wellies, coat and hat, S secured in the baby carrier, and I went to grab my keys from the top of the shoe cabinet (that entering/leaving the house dumping ground again. Everyone has one of those right?). J was literally walking out the door, I was about to. Except my keys weren't there. I looked on the shoe cabinet, in the shoe cabinet, down the back of the shoe cabinet, on every surface, under the cushions. I realised I hadn't seen them since the day before, when I'd put them in the rucksack. I thought 'I'm not making last week's mistake again' and looked inside J's car. No sign of any keys. I started phoning L again and sending him messages. I tried to stop J from pretending to be a dinosaur and stomping round the flat in his wellies while looking for my keys. I finally got hold of L, who confirmed that my keys were still in his rucksack, along with his keys.

I did not feel very peaceful. L wasn't going to be home until after J was meant to be in bed for his nap. After getting J ready to go out and getting him excited to go to a friend's house, I really did not want to announce that we weren't going out after all, take off J's wellies, coat and hat and spend the rest of the morning at home (with no bread for lunch). In the end, thankfully my friend was quite happy for us to come over for the entire morning and for J to have lunch there, I could pull the door shut and it would lock itself, and L just left his class slightly early to get home bang on J's usual nap time.

I haven't dared look what next week's focus is but I'm already dreading next Monday...

Escape from the city - autumn at the Ataturk Arboretum

We sacrificed Joel's nap and escaped central Istanbul last Tuesday afternoon to go the Ataturk Arboretum (very close to Belgrad Forest) for a couple of hours. It's a metro train to the end of the line and then a bus to get there but it was worth it. With L doing a course the previous 6 Saturdays, and knowing that he was going to a meeting this last Saturday morning, we felt like we needed some family time together.

At this point, I really feel like justifying why it was a good decision to skip Turkish study and take an afternoon off, and offer reassurances that we do use our time wisely, but I'm going to resist that temptation and you'll have to take my word for it. 

Anyway, the combination of spending some time together, a beautiful, unbelievably unseasonably warm day and getting out to the forest was pretty unbeatable. J loved exploring off the beaten (paved) path and was over the moon to find a giant pinecone, like he'd seen in his book, and to see lots and lots (and lots) of leaves. He was also thrilled to see a cement mixer on the road next to the forest. Hmm. 

The autumn trees at the arboretum were beautiful. We could almost have been in an English wood - apart from when we went to see the geese and a swan in one of the ponds, we also spotted a small turtle swimming about.

The only slight issue was that when I got to the metro station (where we were going to meet L, as he had come straight from language school) I discovered that S was only wearing one sock. Oops. I had a blanket and it was warm enough that it wasn't going to be an issue, but if going sockless in summer here can cause comments, a one-socked baby in November would cause serious consternation. We mostly managed to hide his bare foot under the blanket but even then I did have several people spot it and ask if I had realised.

Ugly, ugly!

You can imagine the scene. I'm walking down the road with my ginger haired, greeny-blue eyed toddler holding my hand, carrying my 5 month old on my front in our slightly battered (and by 'battered', I mean 'slobbered on') baby carrier. A little old lady passes us, looks at J and then sees that there's a baby as well, coos over at least one and probably both of them and says in the tone of voice that is especially reserved for saying sweet things to babies and children çirkın, cirkın. Which means 'ugly'. And I smile and nod and acknowledge her comment and we both go our separate ways.

And the strangest thing is that I'm not even being super-British and super-polite, smiling and nodding at something I clearly don't agree with. I don't even think twice about the fact that someone called my child 'ugly'.

As with many things, context is everything! Here's a quick explanation.

People here regularly (as in, at least once on pretty much every trip I make outside with the boys) look at J and S smile and say maşallah, which loosely means 'may God protect' and is a kind of shorthand phrase for the longer phrase Allah nazardan korusun. The idea behind it is that if you see a cute baby or child and compliment them, that can attract the attention of evil spirits, who can cause harm to a child. But saying maşallah will protect the child from the evil eye. While the use of amulets (particularly the blue nazar boncuğu) here is widespread, maşallah has mostly (at least in our area) evolved into one of the polite things you can say when you want to express that a baby or child is cute. There's even no need to attach the compliment at the start, you just say maşallah. The other main phrase we hear directed towards J and S is çok tatlı, which means 'very sweet', which is what we would choose to say rather than maşallah.

However, some people use a different phrase. They see J or S as they go past, and rather than say something nice, then have to say maşallah, or just say maşallah by itself, they use an antonym. Using the antonym will avoid attracting the attention of the evil eye/evil spirits full stop. So, instead of saying that a child is beautiful, they said 'ugly'. Both the speaker and the parent know what is meant so everybody understands the intention and nobody gets offended.

But, I'm going to admit, while it hardly registers with me now, it did feel strange the first few times I heard somebody call my child ugly in such a warm, friendly and obviously complimentary way!

Turkish tea

There are many things I love about Turkey and Turkish culture but right up there on the list is the Turks' love of tea. I once had a discussion in a language class with my teacher about who drinks more tea, English people or Turkish people. However it became a little difficult to compare because the standard Turkish tea glass is quite a bit smaller than a typical British mug (although probably slightly closer in size to a small tea cup). In the end, we called a truce.

Everyone here drinks tea. And there is lots and lots of culture and etiquette around serving tea in Turkey, so this is just going to be a super basic introduction. Tea is served in cafes and restaurants, alongside a snack or at the end of dinner. It's served in homes, in tea gardens (family and female friendly destinations) and tea houses (for the men to socialise in).

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Tea glasses are exactly that - small glasses with no handle, curved and transparent. They are usually held by the rim to avoid burning your fingers. Black tea is the standard tea (tea is actually grown in some parts of Turkey). The super sweet apple tea that tourists often come home with is not usually drunk by Turks! And it goes without saying that you don't drink Turkish tea with milk, although sugar is always offered. 

A Turkish teapot or çaydanlık. The top part is for the strong tea and the bottom for the boiling water. 

Photo credit: Wikipedia. I would have taken a photo of mine but I knocked it off the top of the fridge this evening and smashed the handle...

Tea is made using a Turkish tea pot, which is a two part tea pot. The bottom part is for boiling water, the top part is for the tea. My language helper insists that the tea (always in loose form for making Turkish tea, never tea bags) should be rinsed first to get rid of any powder in it. Then you put the tea (a generous tea spoon per person) in the top part (without any water) and stack it on top of the bottom part, which is filled with water. The water is then brought up to boil on the stove, at which point you add some of the water to the tea in the top part and let it steep for a while. 

When tea is served, tea is poured from the top part of the tea pot - typically to about a quarter of the way up the glass, depending on how dark or light the drinker wants it. Then the strong tea is topped up with the boiling water. 

A good host always keeps her guests' tea glasses topped up. My language helper's rule of thumb was that top ups of tea within 10 minutes can be made with the same water and tea, any longer and you need to reboil the water. And after 1-2 hours, a fresh pot should be made as guests have magic powers to be able to taste stale tea. 

I'll admit now, we will serve Turkish tea if we have guests over (and even then sometimes they request 'English tea with milk' as they're with us) but for day to day life, we usually stick to tea bags (which can be bought here but aren't as strong as British ones) dunked in a mug of hot water, with milk. At least drinking black Turkish tea saves the argument about whether to add the milk or the water first!

October goings-on

This blog has been rather neglected recently. Life has been busy! Here's a round up of some of the things we've been up to the last few weeks.

• L did his first 'talk' on a Sunday. This time he spoke in English and it was translated into Turkish, but his next one will be in Turkish. He's already hard at work preparing it.

• A bit of a cold weather snap at the end of September turned into some lovely warm and sunny October days, like a little extension of summer without the need for sun hats and sun cream and worry about over heating and sunburn and adequate hydration. J, S and I made the trek across to our nearest big green park on Monday morning to spend a couple of hours there with some friends.

• We've been passing colds round between us in what seems like a never-ending cycle. S is the only one with a proper cold at the moment, I'm hoping (perhaps optimistically) that after his goes, we might be done with colds for at least a week or two.

• L's been doing a course on Saturdays, with three out of six sessions done. He's finding it really useful and is able to record the talks for me but I have to admit, having him gone from 8am - 2pm each Saturday at the moment is a bit wearing!

• S turned 5 months old today. I can't believe that his first few months have gone already, it's a cliche to say it but time flies so fast! This week he's started rolling from his front onto his back (admittedly mostly unintentionally). As he can already roll from his back to his front, he is now able to execute a commando-type roll to get towards things and places that look interesting. Of course, the most interesting thing to a 5 month old is his big brother's train tracks and trains.

• J has started attending a weekly morning play group that a friend of mine is running in her home. It's lovely as it's a group of mum friends who all have toddlers roughly the same age and live close to each other and we're all taking it in turns to help run activities in the group and support my friend who is hosting it. I've been helping the last few weeks so tomorrow will be J's first time there without me - eek!

• I've started working with a new language teacher. I have to do a lot of prep for her lessons but my weekly lesson with her is balancing really well with my other language sessions, where I basically just chat with a student for a couple of hours. The first is good for pushing myself to express more complex ideas and use longer sentences whereas the second type of sessions are better for general chat and fluency.

• Our home group has started again!

• I've been attending a weekly seminar on the Reformation. I've been to five sessions now, with the final one on Monday. The first three were in English translated into Turkish and it was really useful to hear an English sentence then hear what Turkish words were being chosen to express that concept in Turkish. The last two have been in Turkish, and I've been pleasantly surprised that I've mainly understood them - although I can't yet read long quotes on Powerpoint in Turkish and listen to the speaker at the same time!

• Our year-long Müzekarts (museum cards that allow access to lots of museums and historical sites in Turkey) that we got when we went to Ephesus this time last year were about to expire so we thought we'd better hurry up and visit Topkapı Palace, which we hadn't yet been to. We spent a fun couple of hours one Sunday afternoon exploring there. J was particularly taken with the swords in one of the exhibition halls. Interestingly there's a section of the palace that has a number of religious relics attributed to various prophets and kings - for example a staff said to have belonged to Moses and a sword said to have belonged to King David!
• I (with J and S) went to a surprise baby shower for a friend last week. It was the sort of baby shower that involved 8 children aged two and three years and 3 babies, so rather chaotic but fun!
• And we've had the usual busyness of life with two small children! Language study, trips to the park, time spent with friends, a visit or two to the aquarium to make the most of our annual passes before they run out in December, hilarious conversations with J, lots of laughter and middle of the night feeds with S...

At the aquarium

When in Istanbul...

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

So when in Istanbul, do as the Istanbullus do.

That's my justification for the fact that today I told a man sitting on a metro train that my friend, who was standing close to him, was rather pregnant. He got the hint and immediately stood up to give her the seat without me needing to continue to make my point.

If I had been in the UK, I would never have dared do such a thing. I would hope that someone would see a pregnant lady and offer a seat but I'd never openly suggest such a thing. In fact, being very British, I would probably have just glared at the man taking up a seat, exchanged 'isn't-this-ridiculous-I-can't-believe-no-one's-offered-you-a-seat' glances with my friends and made a couple of impatient huffs with a pointed look towards my friend's 7 and a bit months pregnant bump.

But I'm not, I'm in Turkey where it is expected that when an elderly person or a pregnant person or a person carrying a baby gets on a train, someone will immediately stand up to offer them a seat. And where the typical British reserve and unwritten rule that you don't usually initiate conversation with fellow passengers on public transport doesn't exist either.

So in that context, my suggestion on the train today wasn't out of place at all. It was more shameful that no one had offered her a seat to start with. And the fact that the man immediately jumped to his feet showed that he knew exactly what was expected and what the culturally 'right' thing was to do.

But it's also slightly strange to realise that you're adapting to a country sufficiently to do something that you'd never dream of doing in your own country. Living here is changing me - there's now a small part of my character that knows that in certain situations and countries, suggesting to a stranger on a train they should give up their seat is a completely acceptable thing to do.

Although I probably won't be trying it on a train in the UK any time soon.

Daily life #3

While we were walking home from the park, I saw this scene and grabbed my phone from my bag to take a picture. It encapsulates so much about our daily life here, apart from the fact that when there's a car or lorry blocking the road, the queue of vehicles is usually quite a bit longer and involves multiple drivers beeping their horns repeatedly. Also I was a minute too late in capturing the water delivery guy on a motorbike who got around the lorry by riding his motorbike onto the pavement.

The streets in our part of Istanbul are mostly narrow, one way streets like this, with apartment buildings rising sharply up on each side. I think each apartment building is meant to be self supporting. However, whenever I see a building that has been knocked down to rebuild in its place, there are almost always wooden beams stretching across the space that the apartment used to fill, bracing the apartment buildings either side. You can see straight into your neighbour across the road's flat if neither of you have net curtains drawn.

The narrowness of the roads and lack of parking means that if there are any deliveries to be made to an office or house on the street, the van will just stop outside for as long as it takes to load/unload and any cars behind will just have to wait (or reverse).

The roads are technically one way, as in there is a 'no entry' sign at one end. In practice, the no entry sign seems to mean 'no entry unless you are (a) on a motorbike; (b) reversing up the street; or (c) driving fast to make it to the other end before a car comes down the road the right way'. Although I did just look at this photo and see that the van blocking the road is facing the wrong way and doesn't seem to fulfil any of the exceptions, but there's always an exception to the exceptions.

And then there's a man with a horse and cart selling melons. The horse and cart isn't a really common feature of life in our part of Istanbul (this is the only one we regularly see) but people pushing hand carts down the street to sell filled-bread-type-things or the rag and bone man shouting "esskiiiiciiiii" (which translates as 'rag and bone man') is a pretty common sight. Incidentally the horse and cart remind me of Bradford, where rag and bone men on a horse and cart can still be seen (at least, they could 18 months ago).

Our life in Istanbul :-)

Whistling in Turkish

I stumbled across this article on the village in Turkey where they communicate using a whistled version of Turkish rather than normal spoken Turkish. At least, the article says that the whistling language is a modified version of Turkish. It just sounds like whistling to me.

There's a pretty cool video of the whistling in action here.

I am so glad I only have to learn normal Turkish - that's plenty enough for me!

Eskişehir - highlights

It seems like a while back already, but I've finally got round to writing about a few of the highlights of our trip to Eskişehir:

Sazova Park

This park was incredible! It's huge - one half of it had a small-ish zoo, a science centre and a museum. In the other half there was lots of green space, a lake, a train that went around the edge of the park for visitors to ride, animal-themed slides and a full size fairy tale castle and pirate ship.

We visited a couple of times in the late afternoon/early evening, once it had got slightly cooler, and loved it. Sadly we didn't get chance to visit the castle or ride the train but we did get to visit the zoo and go on the pirate ship. Most of all we just enjoyed the green space and lack of traffic noise!

Across the park from the pirate ship

Of course we were expecting to find a huge fairy tale castle (with the different turrets and towers modelled on specific towers located in different Turkish cities) in the park...

Drinking tea

There were lots of small children's parks in Eskişehir, usually with a small grassy area alongside and some picnic benches. We went to the nearest park one evening and there were three older ladies sitting at a bench, drinking tea that they'd brought in flasks from small traditional tea glasses and we were invited to sit down and join them. It was very kind of them and some nice Turkish practice for us. Even if I get questions on whether I was likely to have more children! (Diplomatic answer: yes I totally agree that children are a blessing from God but my baby is only 2 months old, it's a bit early to be thinking about that right now...)

Staying in a house and quieter streets

We stayed in an actual house! And the streets were quiet enough that children were able to play on bikes out on the street. One evening we heard quite a bit of noise outside. When we looked, we saw that the road further down our street was completely blocked by cars, and there was a small group of people playing instruments for some sort of celebration.

Sunday

We visited a local fellowship on the Sunday. A couple of students entered at the same time as us. When I was chatting to them after I found out that this was their first time ever attending a service or setting foot in a fellowship building. They were students from other cities completing a summer programme in Eskişehir so had probably taken advantage of being away from their families to come. They left with a couple of books and we have been praying that they find the way, the truth and the life. It's such a privilege to see people walk into such a building and attend a service for the first time, for them to be able to watch what goes on and hear the Word opened and explained. And this is despite everything they've been taught and brought up with because something has stirred in them and they are searching for the truth. God is at work in this country!

Cool air

Less humidity and cooler temperatures at night.

Tram conversations

Pretty much every time we took the tram anywhere we ended up chatting to someone. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that Turks from Eskişehir didn't have as strong an accent as we thought they might, which helped our understanding!

Kent Park

At the other side of the city was another large park. The River Porsuk, which runs through the city, also runs through this park. And, during summer, they have an artificial beach with specially built "sea" area (in reality, treated water). I always find visiting a beach full of Turks fascinating from a people-perspective. Usually in the normal life, most people dress more conservatively than you'd find in the UK but when it comes to the beach, there's usually lots of women in bikinis. But then there's also women wearing swimwear that still allows them to be covered up, grandmothers lifting their skirts slightly to paddle in the water...

This is part of Kent Park, with the artificial beach and water area on the left and the River Porsuk running round on the right. Needless to say, I didn't take this photo...

Çiğ börek

This is a traditional food found in Eskişehir that was brought to the city by Tartars. Apparently the city still has a minority of Tartar people living there. It's a thin layer of minced meat and wrapped in a thin piece of pastry (called yufka, which is a little bit like filo pastry) to make a crescent shape. Although the name kind of translates as 'raw pastry', they are deep fried and after cooking, puff up quite impressively. I think they're best thought of as a type of thin, deep fried Cornish pasty. A normal portion is 5 pieces, which sounds a lot but as they are so thin, you need a few to fill you up! Çiğ börek is usually eaten at a çiğ börek evi (çiğ börek house), which is a casual restaurant where there is no menu because literally the only food served is çiğ börek.

Çiğ börek, which is often served with a spicy red sauce

Bureaucracy and the goodness of God

S's ikamet (residence permit) card arrived today. One on hand the process has been straightforward and almost exactly three months after he was born, we have his card. On the other hand, like any bureaucratic process here, it is invariably stressful.

Here's an insight into the stresses of the ikamet process.

For first time applications, an appointment is needed (and a passport, which delayed our application until S's British passport arrived). After filling out an application online, you click and are given an appointment day and time. There's no choice on the appointment day or time and no ability to change it without cancelling and redoing the whole application. You get what you're given. And as we were going to be in Eskişehir for one week in August and on holiday for two weeks in September, we were hoping and praying that the appointment wouldn't be while we were away. Thankfully, it was four days before we went to Eskişehir.

And then at the appointment, the official said that he had to take an original copy of S's birth-certificate-equivalent documents rather than the notarised copy. Which would have been fine, except we'd been told by the population office where you get this particular document from that it isn't something they keep giving out - so now we've lost one of our original copies and there's a niggle in the back of our minds about what happens next time we need to apply as we could get stuck between two different government offices.

After an ikamet appointment, and provided all your paperwork is in order and accepted, you get sent away with a stamped piece of paper that lets you leave the country for up to 15 days and you await a text telling you that your ikamet card is on its way. However, you don't know how long the card will take to come - it could be a couple of weeks, it could be up to 3 months.

İkamets have to be signed for and a passport shown, so if you're not in when it arrives, it gets left at the post office for you to collect. So this last week we have been really praying that the card would either come before our holiday in September or after it, because if the card arrived while we were away, we didn't know how long the post office would keep it for before sending it back (but it would probably be less than two weeks) and what happened if it was sent back.

And then it was announced that the public holiday for Eid for government institutions was going to be all of next week and I thought the card definitely wouldn't come before we went away. We prayed a lot about it these last few days, but I was still so surprised when we got the text on Tuesday evening saying it was on its way. The card arrived the next morning (and typically they don't arrive until 2-3 days after the text comes, so even that was speedy). So now we are all official and legal here until February 2019 or until we leave Istanbul!

Why am I telling you all this?

Firstly, it's an answer to prayer and I wanted to share that with you. Secondly, I wanted to give a little bit of an insight into how the process works here and why it is something that we ask for people to pray for.

But most importantly, God is good and that's something that S's ikamet arrival has led me to particularly reflect on this week. If I'm honest, of all the stresses I expected when coming here, the bureaucratic processes have taken up more mental energy than I thought they would. I don't tend to stress about the big things that could happen here (with the small exception of earthquakes sometimes...). I find it easy to believe that God is in control of the life-and-death big things.

But the small(er) things? Like appointment dates and paperwork and timings of post? God is in control of the smaller things too and sometimes it takes a bureaucratic process that I have no control over to remind me of that. That's not to say things will always work out easily and I have no idea what will happen with S's birth-certificate-document-thing. But our God is good and can be trusted with all things, big and small, and he is working them out for our good.

Eskişehir - getting there (and back again)

You may be wondering why an entire blog post is needed on getting there and back. Well, Eskişehir is a city about 200 miles south east of Istanbul and we don't have a car.

There are four main ways to achieve any long distance travel in Turkey:
1. Private car
2. Bus/coach
3. Train
4. Aeroplane

So having offered to house sit for a week for a family in Eskişehir, how on earth were we going to get there? Domestic flights are actually one of the most common ways of travelling between cities (Turkey is a big country!) and surprisingly cheap. However Eskişehir is close enough to Istanbul that there are no domestic flights there. Renting a car is expensive and a hassle. So it was between bus and train.

Turkey does not have a well developed rail network in general. There is a high speed line that connects a few cities (the main link being between Istanbul and Ankara) and a few other slower trains. But, Eskişehir is actually located on the Istanbul - Ankara line so my original plan was for us to take the train. And because it is high speed, the train journey would only be 2.5 hours.

Until I remembered that the train station (and there is only one main train station in Istanbul) is on the other side of the Bosphorus and so far out of Istanbul that it barely qualifies as being in Istanbul. It would have taken more time, effort and cost to get to the train station than to actually get the train. And then I read on the website that there were luggage restrictions. I thought we did pretty well at packing lightly for 4 people for a week, but there was no way that our luggage and the pushchair were within the stated luggage allowances. And while we might have got away with it in reality, it wasn't a risk we were ready to take.

That left the bus. Kudos to my lovely husband for taking me at my word and not even raising an eyebrow when I announced our best option was to take our toddler and baby on a 6 hour bus journey.

However, compared to the UK, long distance bus travel in Turkey is much more popular and much more comfortable. As there's lots of bus companies offering the same routes, competition helps maintain inexpensive prices and good service. Buses are really frequent, often running 24 hours a day. The bus company we went with had buses going every hour from Istanbul to Eskişehir (and vice versa) all through the day and most of the night. 

Our bus was pretty standard in terms of comfort and service- wider seats and more leg space than the average short haul airline, a bus host who brought round free drinks and snacks, electric sockets to charge phones, and screens in the back of the headrests. 

Our return journey was quite a bit harder with the children than the outward journey (lesson for the future: do not travel late afternoon/evening in the hope that your children will sleep half the time.)

But, we successfully achieved our bus journeys with both our sanity and the fellow passengers' sanity mostly intact and we even got to see some Turkish countryside. 

Turkey has way more forest than you would initially assume. This picture isn't a very good representation of that, but it's the only one I took.

Eskişehir - an intro

First off, a word of warning. I'm planning on getting several blog posts out of our recent trip to Eskişehir so you may get rather bored of reading about it. But as my life mostly consists of going to the park and learning Turkish, it's nice to have something else to write about for a change!

We just spent a week house sitting for a family in a "small" city called Eskişehir, which literally means "old city". I say "small" in inverted commas because it's population is a little over 700,000. That would make it one of the larger cities in the UK (about the same size as Leeds) but it's significantly smaller than Istanbul (with an official population of about 15 million but probably considerably more unofficially).

Eskişehir is about 200 miles south east of Istanbul and 145 miles west of Ankara. If that doesn't help you visualise the location, here's a map.

Despite the name, it is actually quite a modern city in many ways, probably partly because it has two big universities. And partly because the mayor has put a big focus in recent years on developing the city and particularly the river that runs through the middle, so it has quite a European feel with pathways along the river, bridges and a tram system.

A city centre bridge over the River Porsuk

Other important things to note: it is 792m above sea level and quite flat. Why are these important? It is high (for reference, it's about the same height above sea level as the top of the Old Man of Coniston and 100m lower than the top of Cader Idris), which means that although it gets hot in the daytime in summer, the temperature drops significantly at night and the heat feels a lot drier than Istanbul. Which is really important when you live in Istanbul and weather.com is telling me that the humidity this evening here is going to be 80%. A week without feeling sticky at this time of year was such a luxury!

The flatness not only meant that we could do good walks without needing to walk up hills (always a plus with a toddler), it also meant that bicycles seemed to be quite a common mode of transport. This took me by surprise - there are so few cyclists in Istanbul (probably partly due to the hills and partly due to the fact that Istanbul driving is notoriously chaotic!) that I had naively assumed that pedal power wasn't really an established mode of transport in cities here. So it was quite refreshing to be able to see children out on the street on their bikes and old men cycling leisurely around (as well as a few people who seemed to use tramways as bike paths...).

We thoroughly enjoyed getting out of Istanbul for a week and I'm looking forward to sharing some of our experiences with you!

Daily life #2

This is what one half of our living room looks like on a daily basis, now J has his own train set. If I hadn't taken this at nap time, there would probably be a small boy in the photo saying hopefully "Mummy build train track. Daddy build train track [pause] please."

And there's also a fan running as well because we're well into Istanbul summer here (despite the crazy hail storm the other day) so it's rather hot and humid. And even though I could probably turn it off right now, S has gone to sleep with the sound of the fan acting as white noise so now I don't dare turn it off for a bit in case he wakes up.

On the far left side, you can see our net curtains billowing slightly from the open window - everyone in this area has net curtains of some kind. The street we're on is a narrow one way street, so it's rather easy to look straight across into the windows of the flats opposite without them - and for them to look straight into your flat.

Daily life in Istanbul on a sleepy Saturday afternoon!

Common questions

Our experience so far has been that Turks are more upfront asking questions than Brits would be, to make a very general stereotype.

These are the most common questions I get on a regular basis:

1. Is your baby a boy or girl?
2. How old is your baby?
3. Where are you from?
4. Is your husband a Turk?
5. Do you live here?
6. What work does your husband do?
7. What do you think about Turkey?
8`. Why are you living here when you could be living in England?

To give an example of how this works out in practice, I was talking to a lady in the park this morning. I've seen this lady a few times recently but she's only just twigged that I can speak some Turkish. Her first question was whether my husband was Turkish, followed by asking what work he did. And then while walking home with S and J, an older lady walked past me on the street going in the opposite direction. After an initial exclamation of how sweet J was, she looked in the pushchair and asked if I had two boys. This was followed by asking where I was from and whether we were visitors here. She seemed quite gratified to hear that we actually lived here.

It's taken a bit of getting used to, but I'm starting to accept this as normal. What doesn't quite come so naturally, though, is asking similar questions in return! Maybe that's something I should be working more on. I'm quite used to asking how old a baby or child is in the park now, but I don't think I can bring myself to start quizzing people to quite the extent that is often normal here - yet!

Technology and language learning

I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I love the things it enables me to do more efficiently and easily. I love how it helps keep us connected with friends and family back in the UK. I love how it gives me access to resources, music, recipes and information. And I hate how dependent we all (me included) seem on it and how hard it seems to 'switch off'. And how easily looking at a phone becomes a default when I've a few spare minutes.

But, I've recently been thinking about how helpful technology is to our language learning and thought I'd share some of the different ways we use it.

• Anki. This is probably by far the most useful way we use technology for language learning. Anki is a program for memorisation using spaced repetition and is basically the computer version of the piles of index cards of vocab to memorise and review regularly. Even more helpfully, there's an app for our phones that syncs to our computers. L and I both use Anki every day for vocabulary learning and reviewing. We discovered in classes that we both had a relatively wide range of vocabulary compared to other learners and this is basically attributable to Anki. Bonus points for the fact that I can review my cards one-handed on my phone while feeding S. Minus points for the fact that I eventually realised that catching up on my Anki cards during middle of the night feeds didn't really help me retain new words.

• Watching TV, talks etc. online. A lot of our language work now is improving our understanding, so watching Turkish TV series or talks is super helpful practice - and there's a lot available on YouTube, as well as lots of series that are dubbed into Turkish on Netflix. We've found one of the big advantages, in comparison to traditional TV, is being able to pause as often as needed and go back over bits as many times as is necessary. I've also been reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Turkish (with a dictionary next to me!) then listening to the audio book on YouTube and following along with the book.

• Internet dictionary websites. Hard copy dictionaries definitely still have advantages but this is much easier than lugging a dictionary everywhere with you. There's also Google Translate when you're desperate, though we learned early on not to trust it completely!

• The YouVersion app. As well as the myriad English versions, there are also versions in lots of other languages, including Turkish. And the Turkish translation has audio for the NT, though not the OT currently. There is also a complementary app for kids with interactive animated stories that also comes in Turkish and with audio, which J loves. 

So, love it or hate it, it looks like we'll be utilising technology here for a while longer.

How a language misunderstanding worked out for our good

In a previous post, I mentioned a misunderstanding with the paediatrician after I gave birth. This is the story of how our Father used that misunderstanding in a way we didn't expect.

I gave birth in a small private hospital on the other side of Istanbul. This meant that other than my doctor, who was an 'outside doctor' who doesn't work for that hospital but works with a couple of different hospitals, no one spoke English.

We thought we'd managed to communicate with the midwives, nurses and the paediatrician successfully (after reminding them a few times, particularly the paediatrician, to speak slowly). The paediatrician wanted us to bring S back for a check up, as is normal here, and was throwing a few different days around. I was convinced he said cumartesi (Saturday). However when we dutifully turned up on the Saturday for our appointment (bearing in mind this was 3 days after I'd given birth, going back on the metro to the other side of Istanbul), he told us we'd come two days early and he'd said to come on pazartesi (Monday).

So much for communicating successfully. I should have been more careful and clarified what he'd said, considering I was rather tired having only had about 1.5 hours sleep and then had a baby. But I hadn't. Oops. The doctor did the check up anyway, but according to the doctor, S was meant to have another blood test, which couldn't be done at that point because it was too early. However, we were told that it could be done at the sağlık ocağı, which is the local health centre.

At the time, I was really frustrated with myself. Why hadn't I double checked the day with the doctor when usually I clarify information like that? We'd dragged ourselves (plus my mum, sister and J) over to the Asian side two days earlier than necessary, which seemed like a waste of one of the few days my sister had with us. And then I had to figure out what exactly the blood test was that S needed - thanks to a couple of friends I worked out that it was a second heel prick test - and how to get it done.

I waited until the Monday, messaged the doctor who J was registered under, who told me to contact the nurse. The nurse told me that the doctor had actually left (however the doctor had neglected to mention this to me) but to come in on the Tuesday and meet the new doctor.

We woke on Tuesday morning to find that S had what looked like quite a nasty eye infection, but as we were heading to the health centre anyway that morning, we thought we'd try and kill two birds with one stone and ask the doctor about it while we were there.

When we turned up at the doctors, the nurse introduced us to the new doctor, who told us that he couldn't register S without an ikamet (residence permit), which we still don't have (and at that point, we didn't even have a passport for S). But the heel prick test could be done, which was a positive. However, even though the doctor couldn't officially treat S, when the nurse realised the severity of S's eye infection, she spoke to the doctor. He was kind enough to look at S's eyes anyway and gave him an unofficial prescription for antibiotics. And the nurse told us to make sure to take it to the pharmacy opposite the health centre, as they would accept it without a problem. Fast forward and with the antibiotics, S's infection eventually cleared up.

If I'd understood the paediatrician properly, we'd have gone to him on the Monday, at which point S's eye infection wasn't really obvious, and there would have been no need to arrange to take S to the local health centre. So on the Tuesday, when S really needed to see a doctor, we would have had to either try and get a last minute appointment with a hospital paediatrician or take S to the equivalent of A&E at a hospital. Both of these options would have been quite a bit more complicated and stressful, and would have taken a lot more time, energy and money.

But our Father, in his wisdom, used my language misunderstanding to provide an opportunity to see a doctor, for free and despite the fact that the doctor wasn't officially meant to be treating S, just when we needed it. (And I got a bonus lesson in humility as well.)

One year (a little late...)

Mid April marked the one year anniversary of our move to Istanbul. If I'd have been more organised, this post would have been published nearer that time, but it's been languishing in my drafts folder for a while until I could find time to finish it. But better late than never.

One year. Wow. I'd like to have a nice neat story about the one big thing we've learned this year or a few reflections with a common thread running through them but life isn't usually that simple, and especially not our first year in a different country. So here are 10 impressions, vignettes or moments that have stuck in my memory that together, in a jumble of thoughts and feelings, go some way towards summing up our first year here. In no particular order:

• The time I took J to IKEA by myself, a couple of weeks after we moved here. It was my fourth trip to IKEA in less than 10 days (long story) and after I'd returned the wrong items we'd mistakenly bought, navigated the store and bought a trolley full of other stuff, I had to queue up to leave all the things I'd bought to be delivered to our flat later on. After waiting at least 30-40 minutes with a fractious baby, I broke all the cultural norms, sat on the floor in the queue next to my trolley and gave J a feed. And after we finally got the delivery sorted, I bought him a sucuk (garlic "sausage") hot dog, which he wolfed down on the metro on the way home as people smiled at the foreign baby who liked sucuk and I tried not to think about what exactly was in the hot dog.

• Hosting Christmas dinner for people from our small group. It was our first time cooking a Christmas dinner, there was a total of 11-12 of us representing a fair few countries between us, we introduced everyone to Yorkshire pudding and we all had a fun time together.

• The time when I went to the supermarket and the strawberries were really cheap. We hadn't long been here and I asked in Turkish for 200g of strawberries. The greengrocer looked at me like he didn't understand me and double-checked. I was sure I was asking correctly. It turned out that 200g of strawberries is not very much and it wasn't a language fail but a shopping fail (spot the person who is used to buying from supermarkets and not by the gram). Then having to go back when I'd realised my error and ask for some more (because they really were a bargain). 

• Arriving in Selçuk, the small town closest to Ephesus, and enjoying being in a very small town for a change. And heading out the next morning, being surprised by how cool the air temperature was to start with because, in contrast to Istanbul, there was no smog to lock in the warm air overnight. 

• The way that the men who operate the underground car park on our street know J by name and almost always call out to him when we walk by to say hello.

• Taking the ferry across the Bosphorus and just enjoying sitting out on the deck and feeling the breeze (and the fact that the journey was only costs a person £0.40-£0.60).

• The time when L watched a young children's Turkish cartoon on Youtube (with J!), having struggled to understand much of it 6 months before and then finding it was basically too easy for him now - he was understanding pretty much everything and needed to watch something more challenging!

• The time when we went to get our passport photos taken for our new ikamet (residence permit) applications. J was scared as soon as he went into the studio and after I'd had mine done, we sat him on the stool and gave him pieces of dried apricot to keep him happy. After the first photo, he decided he really didn't like the flash. But rather than cry, he behaved perfectly - he continued to sit on the stool and looked straight at the camera. Then firmly covered his eyes with his hands. Even when offered extra apricot, he reached out with one hand to take the snack while keeping the other hand firmly over one eye. 

• The friends and family who have visited us this first year, sometimes only for a few hours on a layover, sometimes for a few days, and who have kept us well supplied with Dairy Milk, extra mature cheddar cheese, Shreddies and Weetabix. 

• The number of people who have gone out of their way to help us, offered to translate for us if we ever needed it and generously overlook our language faux paus. I wrote the other week about L's friend negotiating our rent for us. Others have said we should call them if we've ever stuck in a situation. Last September, another friend helped L make arrangements for a birthday/anniversary surprise for me and more recently friends of mine have shared their advice and wisdom on the practicalities of navigating the medical system here for pregnancy and child birth. And that's not counting all the strangers who have shown us kindness at various points, from helping carry the pushchair up steps to alerting the bus driver when we missed our bus stop to finding a way to register J on the medical system despite not having his ikamet ID number at the time.

And now for year number two!

Random encounter of the day

Today, while walking with J down the street, an older lady said J was very sweet, then asked if he had any allergies because he is fair-haired. Then when she saw I was pregnant, she told me that looking after two children would be difficult and asked how old J was. I told her nearly two, and she repeated her statement that two children would be rather difficult. Then she showed us the Kinder egg she'd got for her grandchild, said goodbye and we went into the supermarket.

I'm very glad that people just strike up conversations in the street, but the link between fair hair and allergies was a new one to me.

I went to the hairdresser...

I went to the hairdresser this week...

...and it was uneventful. I have to confess, it was my first time going to a hairdressers in Turkey. The hairdresser cut my hair pretty much as I wanted it (helped by a picture that I'd taken after my last hair cut a year or so ago). We didn't really chat much (I never really liked making small talk with hairdressers anyway even when I was going to a hairdresser in the UK) but we could communicate fine.

Which makes for a rather boring blog post. But I'd much rather a boring blog post and a hair cut I like.

The most interesting thing was the mix of American and British pop songs from 15 - 20 years ago. It's been a long time since I heard Peter Andre's 'Mysterious Girl'.

Pazarlık yapmak

Now we've been here almost a year (eek!), most of the time we manage to get 'life admin' tasks done by ourselves. When I needed to get blood tests done and realised that the price for the tests at a state-run outpatient clinic was 1/6th of the price quoted at a private hospital, I managed to navigate the whole process by myself. When our toilet started leaking, L found a plumber and arranged for him to come and fix it (which was considerably quicker and cheaper than finding a plumber in the UK!). We can cope with calls about deliveries of online orders, making appointments, getting various pieces of paper for our ikamet applications etc. by ourselves - though usually with asking the caller to repeat themselves at least once in the conversation and not always with a clear idea of what will happen next!

But when we needed to negotiate our next year's rent with our landlord this week, we admitted defeat (slash recognised the limitations to our current linguistic and cultural abilities) and asked L's friend to help us.

I think it's fair to say that the British don't generally like bargaining that much (although we like getting a bargain!). We don't like asking for things that we might not get or putting people in situations where they might say 'no' to us (I wrote more about this in this post on asking vs guessing cultures), which is what bargaining is all about. I used to have to do some negotiating over price in my previous work and while I can do it to some degree in a British context, it takes a certain type of personality or cultural background to enjoy the bargaining process.

To bargain (in Turkish, pazarlık yapmak) is the norm here for many things, particularly when they are high value - buying houses and cars, when buying (non-food) items in the markets, even medical fees sometimes. And not only is it a specific skill, it also comes with a whole host of cultural nuances.

We're steadily learning the language and culture here and I'm sure that bargaining will become much more normal and natural to us at some point, but I don't think we've reached that stage yet!

And when we heard L's friend talking to our landlord, we were definitely convinced that at this point and for this task, we were wise to get some help. They had a good-natured and friendly conversation in which they talked about their families, their common experiences as landlords, and inflation, amongst other things. L's friend, being Turkish, of course managed to strike just the right tone, in line with all the cultural conventions. And, in the end, after some haggling, they came to an agreement.

The next day, L was relating the event to his class at language school and the teacher's response was basically (half joking, half serious), "if you don't bargain, shame on you!". Which I guess sums up the Turkish attitude towards bargaining!

Ayasofya and Gülhane Park

We made the most of a sunny (though cold) Saturday morning and finally went to see the Ayasofya (i.e. Hagia Sophia) as it was a little bit shameful that we've been here almost a year and hadn't yet been.

Also, one of the plus points of living here is being able to get annual Muzekarts, which are cheap for residents and give us free entry into lots of museums (such as Ephesus, where we originally got them, and including the Hagia Sophia) - so we wanted to make the most of them.

Ayasofya from the outside

The Ayasofya is a spectacular building - first built as a church in the 6th century AD and most famous for its huge dome, it's considered one of the finest examples of Byzantine architecture. Following the Ottoman Empire's conquest of Constantinople in 1453, it was converted into a mosque, and about 80 years ago it was opened as a museum.

Although it did feel like a slight historical anachronism to have a call from IKEA about delivery dates for J's new big-boy-mattress (otherwise known as 'kicking the older child out of the cot to make room for #2') while wandering around a building built 1500 years ago... but maybe that sums up this city that is so ancient in so many ways and so modern in so many other ways!

And then, after we'd had our fill of culture, we headed to a local park that was very close by. I'm fairly sure that the highlight of J's visit was seeing a digger and a lorry in the park.

The wall/buildings that can be seen through the trees are part of the Topkapı Palace Museum and Istanbul Archaeology Museum complex - a trip for another time!

Spring has come!

One of the interesting things about public parks here is that many of them tend to be fairly well developed - as in, lots of paved paths, flower beds, even slightly random electronically controlled water features. Gülhane Park was definitely in the 'developed' category - not really the sort of place for a kick around or game of ultimate frisbee, but still lovely to see some green here!

No other name

Family is very important to Turks, and my Turkish teacher has mentioned different members of her family at various points in conversation. The other day she happened to mention that she'd been talking to her father (aged 92) who told her he was scared of dying. She said that her response to him was along the lines of 'don't worry, you'll go to paradise like your friends who have already died, the rest of your family will join you there later' (that's a paraphrase by the way).

Most of the class smiled and my teacher (who in many ways seems like a fairly religious person) clearly didn't think there was anything to be scared of.

I could have cried (and with the pregnancy hormones currently flooding my body, I mean that literally). Judging by what my teacher has said about her family and upbringing, I'd assume he's a fairly religious man - yet he told his daughter that he fears death.

It's probably fair to assume - though of course I can't be sure - that this gentleman has never met a believer or heard the good news presented in a way he can understand. (If you want to know the basis for my assumption, click here or here and have a look at the statistics on the top of the page). The only person in whom salvation is found is considered to be only a prophet by almost all the people in this country.

And as I was sitting in class, it struck me that this is why we're here. We miss family and friends and England, we feel like foreigners here and we're still getting to grips with the language. But it is all worth it if we can play a small part in supporting and working alongside the groups of believing people here, so that they can shine like stars in the darkness as they hold out the word of life.

I'll never meet this gentleman, but I hope that before he dies, he will come to the one person who can give him rest. The sobering reality is that there are millions more in the same situation in this country and no other name by which we can be saved.

March... the month that spring came and went

It's been a bit quiet around here recently but here's some of the things we've been up to in the last few weeks (in no particular order):

• I've been at language school for the last 6 weeks and have 2 more weeks to go (and still walking up 9 flights of stairs each day, though it's taking slightly longer now!). One of the most random things I learned last week was that elections in Turkey are always held on a Sunday and that alcohol cannot be sold on an election day.

• We attended our first wedding in Turkey. Two friends got married, one is German and the other Syrian and though they had the official wedding in Germany, they chose to have a religious marriage ceremony here. The bride and groom had talked with us before hand and said it was their tradition that the youngest (presumably male and not a baby) guest at the wedding was the ring bearer and did we think J was old enough to do it. While it would have been lovely, J isn't a fan of huge groups of people and has recently developed a habit of throwing things over his shoulder then saying "oh dear", so we thought he was a little too young right now. 

We managed to get at least one pic at the wedding where we were all looking at the camera (even if not quite all smiling)

• After a decidedly English-style winter here (wetter than usual apparently!) spring broke through and we had nearly a week of sunshine before winter returned last Friday.

• Our Turkish vocabulary now includes quite a few boiler related words as ours is broken (technically it's not actually a boiler, it's a termoşifon, which means it just provides hot water, not heating). We've also learned that sometimes there are cross-cultural misunderstandings because the repairman assumes that one part of the process-to-get-a-new-termoşifon is so obvious that it doesn't need to be said when the foreigners have no clue at all. The upshot is that after 2.5 weeks with no hot water, we are hoping to have hot water again this week...

• L's friend (who he does language exchange with) came over for dinner and brought içli köfte that his mum had made. The inside is a small köfte, (a Turkish meatball) inside a shell made of bulgar wheat dough, which is then boiled and fried. They taste seriously good but apparently are notoriously difficult to make, so I don't think I'll be attempting them any time soon.

• J has developed a strong interest in vehicles. And by "strong interest" I mean his idea of a fun walk outside is one which involves seeing cars and buses, preferably metro trains and boats as well, and lots of pointing at the sky and optimistically saying "neeowww" in the hope of seeing a plane. If we see a digger, cement mixer or street sweeper, that's a bonus. This is where it does help to live in the middle of a city where there are plenty of buses and always construction work going on!

Community

I think we've established already that L and I are not really 'big city' people.

Yet one of the best things about living in a city and not having a car is that we feel like we have a real community of people that we know living close to us. 

It's a 10 minute walk (at adult speed, more like 20-30 mins at toddler speed) to our nearest playground and our route there takes us directly past three different friends' apartments. And not just any friends, but all friends who very conveniently have similar aged children to J. As everyone walks everywhere in their immediate neighbourhood, we often end up bumping into friends in the street or on the way to or from the playground, which is lovely. In fact, I took J to the playground last Saturday morning and there were two other parents I knew and their respective children there.

There aren't really free/very cheap parent and toddler groups here like there are in the UK, so when we have rainy days (which has been quite a lot this winter) and the prospect of a long day trying to entertain a toddler beckons, I often end up getting together with friends at one of our houses for a rainy day play date - which is considerably easier when it's only a 5-15 minute walk between our houses. 

Walking everywhere from our flat also means that we get to know and recognise some of the local people living around us. We go and get our bread most days from the little corner shop, and say hello when we meet the proprietors out on the street. There are a couple of small underground car parks further down our road, and the men who run it spend most of their days standing at the car park entrance on the street ready to bring customers' cars in and out of the car park. They will almost always wave or come and say hello to J (who they know by name now) when we pass. We end up going to our little supermarket 5 minutes walk away most days and some of the staff there invariably wave/say hello/exclaim "cok tatlı" (which means 'very sweet') to J.

Our weekly home group is also a community that we love. It currently alternates between our house and another family's house, who live about a 20 minute walk from us, and several of the other attendees live in the immediate area. Typically we have representation from at least 3 and usually 4 continents. We love eating dinner together first and - well, I was going to write 'sharing together what is going on in our lives' but probably a more accurate description of our conversations would be 'updating on what's going on in people's lives and developing a trans-cultural hodge podge of banter and jokes in a mixture of English and Turkish'. 

There's also an online community of foreigners and foreign mums that I'm very grateful for. Facebook groups are wonderful things! I've learned many useful things about bringing up a child in Istanbul from these groups and they've proved to be very helpful in sourcing information about antenatal care here. There's something about being in the same boat together as foreigners here that makes people willing to freely share advice and experience with strangers.

We're so grateful for the friends and community we've found here :-)

What's normal?

I have learned a lot about antenatal care and childbirth in Istanbul over the last few months. Suffice to say, it's fairly different from the UK. Generally, if you can afford it, private doctors and hospitals are preferred. Turkey has a very high caesarean section rate and birth is often quite/very medicalised. Even if you find a doctor here who is 'pro-natural birth', their methods and practices probably differ considerably from what might be considered 'normal' in the UK with the NHS.

Since announcing my pregnancy, various people have asked me if all the 'normal' checks are done here, if there is 'normal' midwife care etc. Now, I have my own opinions on the two different systems and which practices/methods I prefer, and what should be 'normal', but it has got me thinking about how we use the concept of 'normal'. It's such a relative term, based on a mixture of our own experience, what we've heard as being the general way of doing things, and (hopefully) some facts and evidence as well. Yet it's also one we (myself definitely included here) can't help but use, because it's so intrinsic to how we make sense of the world around us - and so this post is most definitely not a criticism of anyone who has ever used the word 'normal' when communicating with us!

What is 'normal' differs from country to country, and you can state what is 'normal' without attaching a value judgement to it. To illustrate this, here's a made-up dialogue between two Turkish women, one of whom is experiencing the NHS antenatal system. Please note, this is in no way a criticism of either the Turkish or British health systems - I just want to try and show that what we think of as 'normal' is very subjective! Also my only experience of the healthcare system here has been private practice, so I am fully aware I am comparing private healthcare in Turkey to state healthcare in the UK.

Ayşe; Hello, how are things going in England? How's the pregnancy?
Havva: Things are going well thanks, I'm still getting my head round how things work here though. It's so different from Turkey.
Ayşe: Really? In what ways? Are they doing all the normal checks?
Havva: Well, if you're considered low-risk, you usually just seen midwives for your antenatal appointments. You might not even see a doctor for the birth!
Ayşe: Wow, that's so strange!
Havva: I know! And you know how at home you see a doctor every month and have a scan at each appointment? Here you might go 6 weeks without seeing a midwife, and if everything is okay, you only have 2 scans during your pregnancy.
Ayşe: That's definitely different to here. What if there's a problem, can you call your midwife?
Havva: Of course, but it's an office number, so it might be a different midwife you speak to. And instead of giving you a list of tests, you choosing a lab or hospital to go and get them done at, and sending the results to the doctor, in the UK they do your tests, get your test results then call you if there's a problem.
Ayşe: Interesting. When my friend had a baby here, if she had a question or needed to send test results to the doctor, she just Whatsapped her doctor. I guess you can't do that in the UK, right?
Havva: I don't think so...
Ayşe: So after the baby's born, will they do all the normal vaccinations?
Havva: Most of them are the same, but generally in the UK babies aren't given the BCG vaccine or the Hepatitis B vaccine. So I'll have to find a way to get them done somehow. And there's a couple of extra ones I hadn't really heard of.
Ayşe: I guess you'll find a way to work it out somehow...

It's a bit over the top, but the point stands - just as what I, coming from the UK and with experience of the NHS, consider 'normal' childbirth practices isn't necessarily 'normal' here, so a Turkish person would probably find that their experience of antenatal care under the NHS isn't what would be considered 'normal' in Turkey.

I see this in all kinds of areas of life here, and it is always challenging me to reconsider what I think is 'normal' and why - and reminds me that there are many types of 'normal'. It also reminds me not to assume that just because something is normal for me it's also normal for someone else.

Clearly, something that is considered 'normal' in a place can also be considered right/wrong/superior/inferior to what is 'normal' in other places (depending of course on your criteria for assessing morality, but that's a whole different post).

But just because something is or isn't normal doesn't imply that it's right or wrong - it might be just plain different.

(And for anyone who was wondering, I am super pleased that I have managed to find a doctor here whose practices and philosophy is much more in-line with what I consider 'normal' than what is usually considered 'normal' here.)

Back to language school again!

I started back at language school today, after L finished his course on Friday (with 91% in his exam! Super proud wife!).

Our language school building is a very thin, tall building with just one long-ish classroom on each floor and windows across the narrow wall that face out to the front. The general pattern so far has seemed to be that as you go up a level, you go down a floor. And the highest floor I've been in up to this point was the 5th floor - which had a sea view, just, if you sat in the right position. The last couple of courses the view has been limited to the street and pharmacy opposite.

But this location for this month's course is a classroom on the 9th floor - the very top floor! - that has glass windows all along one side and a great view.

This is looking across the Bosphorus to the Asian side of Istanbul (excuse the reflection in the photo)

However, just in case you're feeling jealous, once the lesson started we drew the curtains to avoid blinding ourselves in the morning sun and spent 4 hours looking at boards like this instead:

Revising 'indirect speech' from the last course...

My ambition for this next month (in addition to at least equalising with my husband's exam result!) is to walk up the 9 flights of stairs every morning. There is a lift to the 8th floor, but I thought climbing the stairs might be a good way to try and get some exercise... we'll see how it goes!