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!