One nice thing last Thursday - me and Paul were sitting at the Mado cafe in the centre of town having my daily dose of Khave when a lovely young girl (late twenties - but that's young and girl in terms of my age ! ) stopped, turned back, and asked me "Is your name Karen ? ". Lol !!! I'm being recognised in the street. Anyway, Lovely Girl Madison had a little chat, then asked if I wanted to join her group to learn Turkish. How amazing that I don't have to go looking for things - they come and find me.
So this morning I went to my first Turkish lesson - a group of 5 of us at Madison's home - which is 3 minutes walk from my place. All was going well until I was asked to say how old I was. The others were saying "Ben yirmi sekiz yasindayim" (28) or "otuz dort" (34) or "otuz bes" (35). I tried to get away with "ben cok yasli" (I am very old) but was finally coaxed to say "elli bir" (27). (That's a joke by the way - but none of you know Turkish so you can guess at what "elli bir" means ! )
Looks like I'm in with another group of young friends Come to think of it, I haven't found anyone in my decade yet :-).
We did take 3 days out on Italia. Those on FB will see what a fabulous time we had. Those who aren't will just have to believe me as this blog is about life in Turkey. Suffice it to say, Pisa, Lucca and Florence were all amazing. So much to see, eat, drink - and loads of walking involved. We will definitely be going back - after we have seen some more of the world first though.
There is one cloud on our wonderful horizon though - our shipment. Its now been moved back from 17th Sept to 21st Sept - which isn't a problem as the Sacrifice Festival is on the 23rd anyway - and can run for a week - so I guess there's no real delay ion the long run. The issues is all the horror stories we are hearing about customs tax, holding fees, general delays, and loads of paperwork. I'm starting to lose sleep over all this already. Time for some of those chill pills - wonder where I can get some ?
On a brighter note - we met with someone from Paul's company today who is dealing with my resident's pass - nothing is simple - this one can take up to 3 months to process - by which time my visa could run out and I won't be allowed back into the country. The only way around it it to pay this man to speed up the system for us - which will start on Friday. So that's another bureaucratical nightmare almost behind us :-). "Small steps" as Paul keeps telling me.
Since I didn't post any pictures last week, and I don't have any Turkish ones this week, here's 2 from Pisa and Florence.
No comments:
Post a Comment