God Willing

Someone named Riza sent me this info about a post I had written before called Insallah. It was about Turkish people's inability to make plans further than 24 hours in the future without saying their version of "God Willing." It was posted under "Things that bug me" but I have learned to see the cultural point of this phrase and now I can put it in the "Things that are what they are" category. Thanks Riza!

Usage of Insha'Allah derives from Islamic scripture, Surat Al Kahf (18):24: "And never say of anything, 'I shall do such and such thing tomorrow. Except (with the saying): 'If God wills!' And remember your lord when you forget...'
The Spanish word ojalá and the Portuguese word oxalá (both meaning "I hope [that]") are derived from law šāʾ Allāh[citation needed], a similar phrase meaning "if God willed it" or "if God wished it". In šāʾ Allāh is used for the execution of real actions (I'm going to the store if God wills it); law šāʾ Allāh is used to express a wish or desire one cannot fulfill (If God wished [Ojalá] that I could go to the store, but I'm busy). They are an example of the many words borrowed from Arabic due to the Muslim rule of some areas of the Iberian Peninsula from the eighth to fifteenth centuries.

Weekend in Germany and Prague...yeah, it was cold

This week is the Bayram holiday in Turkey where everyone gets a whole week off of work and all the shops are shut down so I decided to take a little vacation to Germany to visit my sister. It was a great change from Turkey because I finally got to see some Christmas stuff! I had almost forgot it was that time of year because I am not bombarded with it in Turkey and it is almost like it doesn't exist. So I had some good times seeing the Christmas markets, eating some home-cooked food and getting to wear my scarf and mittens again. The best part of the weekend was the trip to Prague. I am in looooovvvvee with Prague. It may have jumped to the top of my Favorite Cities in the World List! Even though it was raining and 32 degrees and I had to be outside for 7 hours and almost got hypothermia, I still loved it. The Gothic architecture, the Charles river, the massive town squares...gorgeous! If only Matt Damon had been there as Jason Bourne, it would have been the best trip ever.

Okay, I didn't actually take this picture but it was better than the one I took of the bridge so there you go.

The funniest part of the day was when I went to get coffee and told them my name and the barista said "Like the Kelly Family!" (blank look on my face) "You know, the singing group of brothers and sisters! They all have the long hair? You know? .......The Kelly Family." I didn't have any idea what see was talking about so I Googled it when I got home and came up with this motley bunch who apparently have 23 albums. I still couldn't figure out what country they were from but something tells me not America.

So anyway, I got to see a Salvador Dali exhibit in Prague, do my Christmas shopping and walk about 15 miles and then it was time to return home. My sister and her family live in Grafenwoehr which is an Army base in a really rural part of Germany so the wide open spaces and sparse population was also a big change from Izmir. The highlights of the trip were going to a crafts fair with my sister where she was selling jewelry, going to the Christmas markets in the surrounding towns with my brother-in-law, Chris and eating this killer traditional potato pancake with Nutella inside. Yuuummm. Oh, and buying perfume at the PX for half the

price in a normal store!

So now I am back in Izmir and have the next 3 days off of work and I'm trying to keep myself busy without spending any money. Laundry is on the agenda for tomorrow.

Boo hoo, I have a funny accent Part 2

The one crazy thing about being a stranger in a strange land is how vunerable you are at times. Today I was feeling a bit homesick and definately misunderstood. I met my friend Fatih for dinner tonight and started crying for no particular reason. The funny thing is that I wasn't even sad really but started crying and crying and crying. To my credit, I haven't cried yet in Izmir and I only had 3 to 4 breakdowns while I was in Ankara and that was a 6 month trip. Me and Fatih laughed about it for a little while and then when I mentioned it again about how funny it was that I was crying, I started crying again!! I think it was because I bailed on Thanksgiving. Seriously, I'm not unhappy but living in a foreign land is harder than you think it would be (or maybe you already thought it was this hard). That's the best part of it and the worst part of it all rolled into one. Every day you realize how strong you are but some days you don't feel so strong. Good thing I just started reading "The Power of Now." I will just eat my baklava and everything will be fine.

"You remind me so much of that star...."

"Yes.....??" I asked tentatively...Cameron Diaz, Sienna Miller, a Victoria Secret model?



Fatih-"She's on a t.v. show..."

Kelly- Jennifer Aniston?, The hot girl from '24'? Molly Sims?

Fatih-"Oh yeah, I know.....Sabrina the Teenage Witch! You totally remind me of her!"







Ummmmm......compliment or total put down? You decide. Wow, wasn't expecting that one.

Castle in Cesme

This Week in Review

After my friend left on Monday, it was back to life as usual. As I said before, the owner of the studio decided that she was going to get a divorce about the fourth day I was here. She promptly left for Istanbul and hasn't been seen since. Interesting turn of events but I have gotten used to it. By Wednesday I was getting a little sad that I was going to miss Thanksgiving and even got a little teary-eyed when I heard "Little Drummer Boy" playing in Starbucks. Metin (who is the soon to be ex-husband and owner of Bistrom where I eat all my meals) went to the "American store" where the owner sells all the crappy US brands that he somehow smuggles out of the commissary. He was going to surprise me with a Betty Crocker pumpkin pie but wouldn't you know it, they were all sold out. Things were looking up when my client Seyda asked me to come over for dinner and she would make turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing but just hours after the invitation she called to say that her dad was coming in town and I wasn't invited anymore. This earned her the title of "Worst client of the Week" for getting my hopes up. I ended up just eating at Bistrom with one of my clients and her husband and pretending my chicken kabob was a roasted turkey with all the fixins. Everyone got into the spirit of things and I was forced to give a blessing before dinner so I laid it on thick by thanking Jesus for blessing the food and prayed for good health in the coming year.

Since I hang out at the restaurant so much, Metin and the waiters started getting very protective of me like they tend to do here. My friend Fatih came to meet me at the restaurant and Metin said to him in that special Turkish passive aggressive style "You remind me so much of my friend's little boy. You look just like him. He's about 4 years old and really a cute kid." It gets me a little nervous. The best part of last week was when I bought my ticket to Germany! I'm leaving on Thursday to see my sister and there is a day trip to Prague planned for Sunday. For some reason the tour leaves at 5am so that is no bueno but I have wanted to go to Prague for years so you gotta do what you gotta do.

The worst part of the week was when I texted my friend "Do you want to go get Chinese food tomorrow night?" and I accidentally sent it to my client, Cem. You remember Cem, right? Eighteen years old, braces, skinny as a reed, acne, probably never has spoken to a girl before? Well he ended up calling me and I had to explain that I didn't mean to send it to him. Awkward.

Ephesus

So this weekend marked my FIRST visitor to Turkey in all the time I've been here. Yes, I said my FIRST. This is meant to make you feel bad. My international traveling buddy Joanna whom I met at Semester at Sea, lived in Ireland with, live in NYC with and traveled with to Italy, now lives in London (she is a bit of a gypsy soul like yours truly). She got in Friday night and left Monday night. The first night at dinner someone mentioned that we should go to Ephesus which is an ancient city and sometimes on the list of 7 Wonders of the World ( I found out that there is no definitive list. Pretty much anyone can make up a 7 Wonders list. Look it up on Wikipedia).

I've never been one for tours or tourist traps so I wasn't that keen on going but I ended up getting steamrolled by a group of 7 Turks that I had to go. They were UNRELENTING. It's your national treasure-I get it. I know we don't have anything older that 250 years old in America-don't rub it in. However, I am very happy that we went because we had a private tour and the city wasn't crowded at all because it's off season so it was good times had by all. (Except when I had decided that our tour guide was going to be my next vacation boyfriend. Cute, perfect English AND he would be a wealth of information every where we went. Then he told me he had a girlfriend...wah wah wahhhhh.) Here are some of the highlights....