My New Home!

After a very eventful flight (we ended up being stuck in Canada for over 8 hours! When we landed we busted 2 tires and so we had to wait for a new plane to arrive from NYC. Thirty minutes after taking off there was another medical situation, but PTL we didnt have to land again!), I finally arrived back home.

I was talking the other day with a friend about the word "home" and what it means. What is home? Some say you cant ever really go back home, some say home is where the heart is. Dictionary.com says that home is: "1. a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household. 2. the place in which one's domestic affections are centered" I agree with all that. I'll always think of Rose Hill as home, as well as Raleigh, but for now home is Turkey. My life is here and my home is here. I know this is where I am suppose to be and I am grateful to live and serve here.

Since arriving back HOME, I have been extremely busy!
Flew in late Monday night
Tuesday went to school to work in classroom and complete Report Cards
Wednesday cleaned my old apartment and packed up all day.
Thursday I moved into my new apartment (see pictures below, it is so cute. i can take NO CREDIT for any of the decorating, but am enjoying living in a place that feels like home! and I have a great roommate.)
In between all this I have hung out with and said goodbye to different friends going back to the states for a while!

Surprise Trip to Canada!

I've always wanted to go to Canada, and here I am...sitting at an Airport in Halifax, Nova Scotia! Why you may ask? Well, I was on the plane from NYC to Istanbul...I had a nice window seat and they had just started the beverage cart around. I ordered my cranberry apple juice (and had my dramamine ready to take). But before she could fix it she had to move the cart because of some commotion that was going on about 5 rows behind me. Turns out that a man had a heart attack, and we had to make an emergency landing in Canada!! The medical staff came on and treated him...not real sure of his status, but he was alert and talking when they wheeled him off. We stayed on the plane for about 30 minutes, hoping to take back off soon. But it turns out that we had to exit the plane in order for it to be reweighed and refueled (Because the plane was too heavy and big to land at this airport so we dumped almost all our gas in order to land).

That was 4 hours ago!

We are stuck in the airport lobby and they are feeding us food from the plane. They just started handing out blankets and pillows. It feels like something from a movie! I am just glad to have internet and phone service. We are waiting on a new plane to arrive from Atlanta, and the plan is to leave at 4am EST, and arrive back in Turkey around 4:30pm. But who knows if that will happen! This is definietly an experience I will never forget. I got the chance to practice my Turkish with this sweet old lady who had NO IDEA what was going on. And I met a few students from Maine that are studying abroad for the summer. I got one of them to take a picture of me :)

wait a minute

If you looked in our fridge, you wouldn't know that both my roommate and I are moving!! I leave for America in 3 days, Julie moves to London in 10 days, and then I come back and move to another apartment 4 days after that. Last week we decided that we were going to clean out the fridge and freezer. But somehow we keep going to the grocery store and cooking big meals. Part of the problem is that we keep having people over for dinner - which isnt actually a problem, but a delight. Anyways tonight when I opened the fridge I couldn't help but laught at the 4 containers of Labne (like cream cheese) that we have. And actually none of them contain labne...we REUSE every single container like its tubberware!

Football or Futbol?

Today I went to an AMERICAN football game in Turkey!

One of the teachers at my school...her husband is an American football coach of a team here called the Cavaliers! His team consists of Turkish college students and today they played for the championship. The championship of what...I have no idea! It was such a fun afternoon and a wonderful feeling to watch some football, not futbol. Since living here I have seen my share of futbol games, so it was nice to watch a sport I dearly love and actually understand!

With my friend Lindsey

Unfortunately the Cavaliers lost, due to some poor refereeing! We kept joking that every time the refs got in a huddle to discuss the play they would have to pull to the rule book, find the situation, and then translate it into Turkish, so they knew what it was saying. The other team was Boğaziçi Üniversitesi and most of their fans knew English. I heard a lot of... “TOUCH…DOWN…TOUCH…DOWN or D…FENCE…D…FENCE” They also cheered in Turkish, and for the longest time we thought one of their cheers was in Turkish, when actually they were yelling CHAMPIONS…just didn’t sound like it with their accent! After they won they went crazy…here is a picture of the players climbing the fence. Even though the outcome wasn’t what we wanted it was a very fun, enjoyable afternoon! I really miss football, I don’t know what I am going to do this fall.

Bosphorus Tour

Another great thing about all the holidays here is that we never just get one day off. Because the actual holiday is so busy and exhausting for the kids, the next day is a day off to rest!! I LOVE IT. So May 20th - the day after Sports Day -Selma, Julie, and I decided to be tourist and take a Bosphorus Cruise! (the Bosphorus Strait is the body of water seperating Europe and Asia). It was a little overcast and windy but we still had a great time being together. Going back and forth to Asia and Europe, I've gone across the Bosphorus several times, but it was neat to ride it from the bottom all the way to the top where it dumps into the Black Sea. The cruise lasted about 2 hours and then we stopped at Anadolu Kavagi for a few hours to eat lunch and explore. We climbed up to the top to see this famous castle, which was cool...but the best part was the view from up there. There is a picture of the 3 of us, where you can see the opening into the Black Sea (and see how windy it was!)

Sports Day

The longer I live here the more I grow to love this country and their holidays. The most recent holiday we celebrated was Youth and Sports Day on May 19th. It is to commemorate the start of the Turkish War of Independence and to honor Atatürk. Turkish children sing the national anthem, play sports, parade, commemorate Atatürk and are reminded of the values of democracy and Turkey. Our school celebrated by going to a local park, playing games, and having a picnic. It was a great day and very similar to field day in the states. All the kids (K-12) were split into different colored teams. I was part of team yellow...I wanted to join in the games so bad, but had fun coaching and helping :) Here are some pictures from the fun event.

Everyday

They say you learn something new everyday. Since I started teaching, this has definitely been true for me! For example, Thursday we were talking about the explorer Fernando Magellan and how he named the Pacific Ocean because of its calm waters. Several of my students asked me "Why...what does pacific mean?" I honestly no idea so I went to the dictionary and looked up the word pacific. This is what I found: pacific (adjective): tending to make or preserve peace; conciliatory; calm, tranquil. It makes sense...when thinking about a pacifier or a pacifist, but I never knew that pacific was an adjective that you could use to describe!

Here's another: yesterday my kids told me that there is a word googol that means a really big number. So I look in up in the dictionary and sure enough googol means a number that is equal to 1, followed by 100 zeros. Google apparently got its name from this word because of the large amount of information you can get from google.com

And just for fun a picture I took recently, while on the bosphorous.