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!