A Day in the Life

Many people ask what do we do on a daily basis, so I (jared) wanted to take a few minutes to describe what the past few days have been like just to give you a better feel.
Thursday: One of the interesting things about living overseas is that you don't have a schedule and if you try to make one, it looks very different from day to day. Thankfully we didn't have to be anywhere until 10am so we had a much needed opportunity to sleep in. We've had 3 different groups here over the past 3 weeks so we have been very busy with late nights and early mornings, so the chance to catch up on sleep was wonderful. We went our office for a 10:30 meeting with someone from upper management which only took about 45 minutes, then from 12-3 I met with my language helper for the first time. He is my age and a real cool guy and I hope to meet with him a couple of times a week to let him help me with Turkish and in turn I will help him with English. He doesn't have a job currently which is bad for him but good for me so that we can hang out during the day. Our language lesson consisted playing tavla (backgammon) on the balcony while forcing each other to speak in their foreign language. We are able to talk about any subject so I am looking forward to our time together. Before English class I did a little Turkish homework and threw some food down in order to meet up with Craig at our office to teach three Turks. These men are all professionals in their mid 30s and want to learn English to move up in their company or open their own business. The class meets on T & Th from 7-9pm and we are having a good time getting to know them and learn about each others cultures.

Friday: On M,W & F we have Turkish class at the office from 9-11 where we learn more grammatical stuff from our teacher Turkay. After lunch Jayme went to her English class where she teaches two young girls, and I went to my neighbor's furniture store. He's been out of town and we needed to catch up; unfortunately he wasn't there, but his father was. More unfortunately though is that his father speaks zero English. This is really good for my practice, but it's nice when they speak a few words of English so they can at least understand your frustration in searching for words. If they don't you get the impression that they are thinking, "This guy is an idiot, he can't even speak the language of the country he is living in." I'm afraid I am guilty of the same thought when I visit a Mexican restaurant back home. None-the-less we pressed on and when faced with an awkward pause in the conversation, sometimes lasting upwards of 2-3 minutes, I utilized it to thumb through the rolodex in my head searching for the next sentence. When I ran out of things to talk about, I drew a map of Turkey on his crossword puzzle and asked him where he had been and what it was like. He seemed to enjoy that activity as Turks have even more pride in their country than Americans. After visiting for an hour we ate lunch together there at the office (even though I had already eaten I still partook so as to be polite and b/c Turkish food is so dang good.) It was still another hour before his son showed up but when he did, he felt so bad for telling me to come by and not being there that he insisted on giving me a ride to our version of Yates Bldg. Supply and helping me pick out a western toilet to replace our squatty potty. A part of me hates to get rid of it but it wasn't used too often and it emits a terrible odor. So after getting the new toilet we stopped by a plumber's office to see if he could install it next week. He is coming monday morning and installing it for $30! My neighbor took us home at 6:30 and Jayme and I caught the 7:00 bus downtown to eat at a friend's house and watch a movie. We didn't get back home until midnight and I was up at 7am to meet my regular Saturday morning group of basketball players at the university.

Well that's just a few days into my daily routine. You can see that it's not quite as glamorous as it's made out to be but it sure is a lot of fun. Especially since other than learning the langauge and teaching English, our real job is to meet and build relationships with people. We are blessed to have many good friends who are willing to listen to our broken Turkish and we are excited to see walls and barriers slowly coming down.