The Blue Mosque

A couple of weeks ago some friends from the UK visited us for a weekend. Having them (a father and son from a family we know well) come to see us was a real joy. So much so that J has asked almost every day since they left (and usually multiple times a day) if he can go on an aeroplane to visit his friend.

Another great effect of their coming was that it was a motivation to visit the Blue Mosque - officially the Sultan Ahmed Mosque or Sultan Ahmet Mosque, it's one of the most famous sights in Istanbul and one we hadn't actually visited yet.

The Blue Mosque was constructed in the early 1600s and gets its name from the thousands (estimated at 20,000)  hand painted blue tiles on the inside walls. It is the only mosque with six minarets in Turkey (apparently).

It is also still a 'working' mosque - Muslims have five set daily prayer times and the mosque closes to tourists for the prayer times that are within the normal opening hours, so we had to time our visit carefully.

Another Istanbul landmark ticked off - our time to see them is rapidly diminishing!

A Turkish wedding reception

We attended our first Turkish wedding reception yesterday. We've attended weddings here before, but they've been more international in flavour. Yesterday's bride and groom actually got married in America a couple of weeks ago (she's American) but they had a Turkish wedding reception as well.

We had fun and it was fascinating from a cultural point of view. I'm fairly sure that, just as you can't necessarily draw accurate conclusions about British wedding traditions just from attending one wedding, in this Turkish wedding reception there would have been elements that were traditional to the Istanbul culture we live in, elements more traditional to Turkish culture as a whole, elements traditional to the particular communities they are part of, and elements that were not as traditional at all. So this should not be read as an information-guide on Turkish weddings, but rather an experience of just one wedding reception.

The reception started early - 6pm - mainly due to the fact that there were lots of close family members with young children coming. It was scheduled to finish at 11, we made it until 9pm with our boys then quietly slipped out (having already outlasted some of our friends who were there with young children!). It was in a large hotel (a 10 minute walk from us - hurray!) and there were probably about 160 guests. Most people arrived between 6.00 and 6.30pm, the room was full of large circular tables and we had been assigned to particular tables. A starter meze plate had already been laid out for everyone and waiters came around taking drinks orders. Both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks were available.

Meze plate: from the top, a soft white cheese; a spicy red paste called ezme; a Stilton-like cheese; smoked salmon; a more matured cheese called eski kaşar; a yoghurt dip; tuna dip; sarma; roasted aubergine; lemon. And in the middle, hummus. And of course, bread on a side plate.

After the first course was cleared away, the lights were turned off so that the only light came from the candles on the table and at the climax of some incredibly dramatic music, in walked the bride and groom. The groom was wearing black tie and the bride a white wedding dress. In most Turkish weddings, the closer a guest is related to the bride or groom, the more formal and fancier clothes they can wear. So a bride or groom's immediate family of siblings, siblings' spouses, parents may wear full length (white tie) formal dresses or black tie but most other women would refrain from wearing very formal and fancy full length dresses and either go for a slightly shorter dress or a simpler dress. Most of the women there actually wore very dark colours or black - it is completely acceptable and normal to wear black to a wedding here.

While the second (starter) course was being eaten, the bride and groom went round every table and had their photo taken with every couple or person on every table. At the same time, the bride was carrying a white bag and when a couple had their photo taken with the bride and groom, usually a card with money inside was slipped into the bride's bag. Presents could also be given. This is one of the elements that definitely changes between weddings as at other weddings sometimes gold coins and gold jewellery is given or money pinned onto the bride's dress.

Between the second course and the third (main) course, the music switched to live Turkish band, which included the saz, a traditional Turkish instrument that looks a little bit like a guitar. And once the Turkish music started, the dancing started! There were at least as many men on the dance floor if not more (and they didn't have to be dragged there!). Everyone formed a circle shape that didn't join up, linked hands loosely and the person at each end waved a scarf in their free hand. You can't see it in the video below but the dancers were all following the same simple foot pattern.

There are traditional Turkish dances done at weddings that only the men do, but when the dancers took a break we headed home. Our boys were doing incredibly well and J had to be dragged away as he wanted to stay, but S was super tired and it was just too loud for him to sleep. So we missed some of the other dancing and the cutting of the cake but we still had a great time!

Grocery shopping and yoghurt

I was thinking the other day that if I wanted to give an accurate glimpse of life in Turkey on this blog, I should at some point write a bit more about Turkish food and the typical food that can be found here. I have to admit, this was partly inspired by a friend visiting Istanbul and realising that I had to rein myself in from giving her far too many suggestions of food to try.

I was pondering this the other day whilst doing my online food shopping order at the same time (because when I discovered online food shopping in Istanbul, it was a gamechanger. While we still go to the supermarket or greengrocer to buy nearly all of our fresh food, with no car, two small children and a flat that is not on the ground floor, having someone deliver the heavy and bulky items to your doorstep is so worth it. Although I'm pretty sure they've got my name on a list somewhere after my last order, which weighed about 20kg...).

Anyway, I was thinking "oh, maybe I'll mention yoghurt and how Turks love eating yoghurt alongside their main course and how crazy it is that I even found myself contemplating buying the 2.5kg carton of natural Turkish yoghurt rather than the 1.5kg carton but decided in the end to stick to 1.5kg."

Then my online order arrived and I realised that I'd made a mistake and ordered 2 lots of 1.5kg yoghurt cartons! So now I'm racking my brain trying to work out how we are going to use up 3kg of yoghurt. I made this cake yesterday, I've got my eye on this muffin recipe (although no blueberries here unfortunately), we'll have curry soon so we can have yoghurt alongside it, L's been dolloping it on his muesli, I'm planning on making some granola for a yoghurt/granola/fruit breakfast combo, we'll be having it for dessert with fruit and freezing it as home made "ice cream" for J.

Moral of the tale: always check your quantities while shopping online!

As an aside, did you know that the Turkish word for yoghurt is yoğurt and the the English word 'yoghurt' (or 'yogurt' if you're American!) derives from the Turkish word? The funny looking ğ in the middle is a slightly strange letter that doesn't really have a sound of its own but affects the letters around it. It always follows a vowel, is never found at the start of a word and usually lengthens the sound of the vowel immediately before it.

A fairly normal January Monday morning

Yesterday was a pretty normal Monday morning. Here's what we got up to, when we finally got out of the house mid morning:

• We headed up the street to our local stationery shop to buy some envelopes. At a local stationers, you don't buy packets of envelopes, you ask for the exact amount of envelopes that you'd like - five small envelopes and one slightly bigger one. 

• After continuing via a cash point, we bumped into an English friend on the street. We love that we regularly run into people we know in our local area!

• Next stop was the small bakers to pick up some poğaca as a snack for the park. Poğaca is a type of savoury bread/pastry that can be found at every bakery here. It's traditionally eaten at breakfast time, or as an afternoon snack - or pretty much at any time really - and goes really well with a glass of Turkish tea. They often come with different fillings (soft Turkish cheese, slightly harder Turkish cheese, black olives, etc.) or can be plain.

• Once we had our poğaca it was only a few minutes walk to the park. As it's the middle of winter, the park (more a playground to be honest, as there's no grass to play on) was fairly empty. A little girl and her grandfather were feeding the pigeons so J gleefully chased and scattered all the birds that had gathered to eat.

• And via a very quick trip into a tiny supermarket, we headed (very slowly) home for lunch.

After various coughs, colds etc. we're enjoying getting out and about again. Or rather, the boys have not yet fully got rid of their colds but we've all got cabin fever so we're returning to routine and going out to the park anyway. I'm currently ignoring all the comments made by random people who look at S and say he's ill, because he has a runny nose!

Poğaca - yum! Although this photo makes them look giant, when they're not *that* big

Cultural logs and specks

This week I was talking with my language helper about the concept of honour and shame in Turkey. 

To give a very brief explanation, cultures and societies can be understood through three different lenses: justice/guilt, honour/shame and fear/power. A member of a society strives to avoid guilt or fear or shame and aspires to the opposite value of justice (innocence) or honour or power, depending on their cultural worldview.

Western cultures can be primarily understood through a justice/guilt mindset that applies on quite an individualistic level (though there are elements of both honour/shame and power/fear in Western cultures too) - a sense of right and wrong is deeply ingrained. A person's standing depends on how guilty or innocent they are perceived (or perceive themselves) to be. We can see this clearly in children - from a very young age Western children tend to have a very strong sense of justice ("that's not fair!" or "I didn't do it") and are usually taught to follow the rules, with the warning that if they break the rules there will be a punishment. We see this in presentations of the good news as well - "imagine you are in a courtroom, everything wrong you have done is presented to the judge, but although you are guilty, the judge decides that his own son should take the punishment instead of you!". 

A fear/power culture tends to be found more often in animistic contexts (often tribal contexts). Fear of evil or harm (often originating from supernatural spirits) leads people to seek power over the spirits (and so in doing so, often over other people) through magic rituals, incantations, curses etc.

An honour/shame mindset usually goes with a more "collectivistic" culture. A person's standing is based on their level of honour. Actions that do not meet society's expectations bring shame. Shameful acts committed by a person not only bring shame on that individual but also bring shame on their family too. Actions can be taken by that individual or another member of the group (family) unit to restore honour.

To be clear, most cultures and societies combine elements of all three worldviews but will typically have one predominant one. These three worldviews are not 'right' or 'wrong' in and of themselves, they are just different ways of looking at the world. As mentioned, most Western countries are predominantly justice/guilt based. However, Turkey is more honour/shame based. Of course it has justice/guilt and fear/power elements too, but honour/shame is prevalent. 

To give an example, I was watching a Turkish drama the other day in which a senior police officer was berating some junior officers for a serious mistake they had made. The strongest way in which the officer could reprimand his subordinates was to call them a Turkish word which translates as 'dishonourable' or 'without honour'. There is no equivalent in English that I can think of that conveys the depth of emotion attached to it - it is not a swear word but it's a very serious term to use. As the watcher, you are meant to feel just how angry that officer was. Calling someone that in the street would be more than likely to start a fight. The honour/shame concept is important in Turkey!

That's a very brief introduction to the three worldviews concept - if you want to know more, I'd recommend googling. There are lots of resources available. 

So I was talking with my language helper about honour and shame in Turkey. I love this country but, as with any country where the honour/shame mindset can be found, sometimes (illegal) actions are committed to restore honour that both my language helper and I struggle to make sense of.

I've been pondering this the last few days, trying to de-Westernise my brain a little bit. As a foreigner here, coming with a Western mindset, I cannot fathom the depth to which honour and shame is embedded into a person's psyche and into society here. It would be very easy to pass quick judgments on this culture or make comparisons to a Western culture.

But as I thought more, I realised that before I call out the speck in the eye of Turkish culture, perhaps I'd do better thinking about the log in the eye of British culture. It's easy to be blind to our own cultural failings or compare every culture we experience to the benchmark of the culture we know best. Yet it didn't take long to start making a mental list of the brokenness of British culture. Over 180,000 unborn children aborted in England and Wales in 2016 alone. A culture in which girls and young women are bombarded with the message that their worth is based on their sexuality while the message broadcast to boys and young men is that women are merely objects for sexual gratification, to be used and discarded at will. A culture in which people pursue their own self-fulfilment and happiness regardless of the cost to those around them. 

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

The good news is that there really is good news! To look at cultural logs and specks is profoundly depressing. But we can lift our eyes up, to someone who was stripped of his clothes and in his nakedness was shamed so that we can have our honour restored. Who came to destroy the work of the devil and conquered every power, with that mighty power now at work in us. And yes, one who took the punishment we deserved upon himself so that we, the guilty ones, might be declared innocent. This truly is good news! And it is relevant and sufficient for every culture.

Ethical living in Turkey - clothes

Edit: Just to say that if you happen to have gifted any of us any clothes, we are very grateful for them, regardless of where and how they might have been bought! Friends and family have been very kind in giving us clothes, among other things, over the last couple of years and we really do appreciate them!

I've been thinking recently about how we as a family can live in a more ethical, 'green' and sustainable (while also being realistic and practical!) way. In some ways, living in an environmentally-friendly way is much harder here, in other ways it is easier. It's a topic I'm planning on coming back to but a recent post by a blogger I really enjoy reading made me start thinking again about the issue of ethical clothes sourcing again.

This is something I started thinking more seriously about back when we were still in the UK but I didn't get all too far before we moved abroad. And then, I'll admit, I put it straight to the back of my mind. But now it's one of the issues I'm wrestling with and it's symptomatic of many issues where I'm trying to figure out how to reconcile (still developing) principles with living in a country where I have to work out those principles in different ways to before. So this is just one issue of many that I am starting to think through and decide what is right, reasonable and realistic - and make my peace with the fact that the answers I come to here will necessarily be different to the answers I would come to if we still lived in the UK.

It would be really tempting to think that because I live in a different country, I automatically get a free pass on these kinds of issues but that's not a healthy or sustainable way to live long term. There are definitely areas where we've had to weigh up the pros and cons and have decided that the less-environmentally friendly option is the right one for us at the moment (disposable nappies comes immediately to mind) but it seems that the most important aspect is not the conclusion that is reached but to actually think about it and carefully consider the assumptions, motivations, and factors involved.

In terms of clothing, my most basic assumption is that how my clothes have been produced matters. I believe I have a responsibility to help steward the earth's resources well and also to 'love my neighbour' in thinking about the conditions of those who make the clothes I wear rather than just thinking about myself. This is not the sort of subject that has nice, simple answers but at the very least I have to work on the principle that, if there's an item of clothing I'd like to buy, its monetary price should not be the only consideration I have in making purchasing decisions.

Given that fairly basic consideration, I'm still thinking through (and will be for quite a while!) what other considerations there should be and how I should apply them while I live here. Just to emphasise, these are my personal thoughts and ideas. I fully expect other people to come to different conclusions but I would encourage anyone reading this to at least think about how they buy.

I tend to prioritise different buying routes: the best thing (for the environment at least) is not to buy at all. Second would be to buy second hand (either charity shops or ebay) with a close third being to buy from companies that ethically source their clothes, both in terms of production of raw materials and the actual making of the clothes. After that I'd put companies that ethically source their clothes in terms of either raw materials or the tailoring, followed by companies that make at least some effort ethically, and then everyone else.

In terms of not buying at all, it doesn't make much different whether you're in the UK or Turkey! I'll admit, this one came fairly easily to me before having children and now I have two, it is my default setting. The thought of trying to find clothes for myself with two children in tow fills me with dread and while my lovely husband is more than willing to look after them if I need to go shopping, (a) I don't want to unnecessarily take advantage of that and (b) if I'm going to have time to myself without children, there's things I'd rather do than go shopping for clothes.

However, charity shops as a concept don't really seem to exist here and neither does buying second hand clothes on ebay. I've also struggled to find companies that make a point of selling ethically produced clothes. In addition, I have an additional constraint of needing to be careful to make sure I dress modestly - right now it's not too much of an issue but if we lived in another city, I would probably need to be even more careful.

I'd be the first to admit that I haven't found any really good solutions yet, I'm just muddling along using a variety of different routes. Some are more ethical and environmentally friendly, others less so. I'm trying to get as much life out of everything I currently own as I can (this is a big plus of living here - there are lots of small tailors locally who can repair or adjust clothes, local cobblers to resole shoes, little workshops that will fix handbags and rucksacks). I have been known to get ebay orders sent to family in the UK ahead of them visiting here (yay for cheap bundles of barely used baby clothes!). I'm planning on buying some things when I'm next back in the UK. I'm also trying to buy from Turkish brands where the clothes are produced in Turkey. That's not a solution for the provenance of the material but there are at least laws concerning labour here. Sometimes I just buy from one of the cheaper chains here. Occasionally I've ordered clothes for the J and S from UK supermarkets and got them delivered to family who are going to be visiting us, for them to bring out. It's very much a work in progress, but it's something I'm going to keep thinking about.

How about you? How do you decide what and how to buy? Is this something you've given much thought to before?

A thought for a new year

It's been quiet on the blogging front recently. Truthfully, it feels like we've spent most of December hibernating with at least one of us, and usually more than one, ill in some form. I'd like to say that we are recovering, and we are, but after I caught a cold last week, the tiredness and lack of energy that often comes as an after effect of flu has returned with a vengeance.

I was very tempted this morning to write a whole list of resolutions for this new year because of course when you're trying to conserve energy the logical thing to do is to start planning all the things you can start when you've got a bit more energy. But then I turned to the devotional book I've been reading (the same one I was reading a few weeks back, which, in the spirit of honesty, I'll admit that I have not progressed very far through since mentioning it before). And it turned out that these words were exactly what I needed this morning:

"In my pursuit of perfection, I become worn and weary. Perfectionism is pride-based performance, a determination to live up to my self-appointed standard. The truth my soul needs to hear is that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Perfection is impossible. A chasm separates me from righteousness. It is a height I can never reach, an expanse I can never cross.

By accepting this first truth, I can believe in a second truth: I am justified freely by His grace through redemption in J... Grace means "undeserved favor." Salvation is a gift.... His grace is sufficient... Any failure that I fear is covered by his sacrifice. In J the performance pendulum stops."

At this point, I have to confess I started trying to list some of the ways in which I am tempted to chase after perfectionism. And then I realised how ridiculous some of them are, especially since I am also investing a significant amount of time in learning a foreign language. So I'm not going to list them publicly but imagine the Proverbs 31 wife updated to the 21st century and that would give you a pretty good idea!

So here's to a year of not trying to be perfect. Or at least trying to not try to be perfect. Happy New Year!