Punk snowman

Here's the punk snowman Dorotea and I made up in the hills!

 

Cold hands = Fun!

Today I went for a drive into the mountains close to where I stay. I went with a family who have been helping me here a lot. We drove into the mountains to see if any of the snow from last week was still around. And we found it, only a 20 minute drive from where I stay! Not huge amounts, but enough for snowballs and little snow... dwarfs (can't call them men...) Of course the downside to playing with snow is that it happens to be freezing! I thought my fingers were going to fall off!

Despite the cold it was a fun afternoon out. Throwing snowballs, making scum angels...um...snow angels, building snowmen and appreciating the beauty of the surrounding mountains.

On a lighter note... I just finished double glazing the window in my bedroom. In an attempt to keep some of the heat inside! I went for the cheap option...2 strips of clingwrap taped to the inside of the window frame; trapping a layer of air between it and the window.

Don't knock it till you've tried it. I'm told it works...time will reveal the truth...

ADSL is here!

Well, it's only taken a few months, but I finally got ADSL installed. What a relief to be able to sit online and type emails and this blog and not have to worry that each second is costing me more and more! It's great!

The weather here has been absolutely freezing lately. That's all relative of course, since compared to most of Russia our weather is positively toasty. But I'm from South Africa. And South Africa doesn't get this cold! Ok, some parts do, but I never lived in them! We even had some snow fall which doesn't happen too often here. So I'm told...

Well I knew what I was getting into, so no use complaining.

My flatmate has returned to his home country for 6 weeks, so I'm home alone. I've decided to take the opportunity in his absence to do some spring cleaning. This place could do with a good all round clean. Round 1 starts tomorrow.

With ADSL in place I'm hoping these updates will become more frequent now. We'll see...

Friends

I've been thinking this past week how important friends are. You don't really appreciate it until they're not around. I have met a lot of nice people here, but none that I can really say I have "clicked" with. Cultural differences and age differences account for some of the issues. While being nice people, I just can't communicate with most of the people I know. It always seems to me like we're having 2 totally different conversations. I'm not even talking about locals here. I'm talking about other foreigners that I know.

I realise that I am totally missing real stimulating conversation. There's a big void and it's starting to get to me a bit. So like I said, sometimes you just don't appreciate your friends until they're not around.

Oh, and just in case you're all wondering... I'm not getting all depressed again. I just been thinking, is all.

Outside view

This is an outside view of one of the underground churches we visited. Erosion has worn away the walls, exposing some of the interior. I cannot even begin to describe how amazing this place is. 

The coolest place!

This is taken inside one of the underground churches in Cappadocia. The churches really are underground! Carved into the rocks like caves. Most of them feature really beautiful paintings of biblical scenes. I recon you should all be able to guess who the big guy behind me is. 

The Clock Tower in Izmir

 

Time for a rest

Well I'm off to Capadocia tonight for 1 week. I'm looking forward to a nice relaxing time where I can rest and reflect on the year past and the year to come. I'll also be able to meet some more people over here, which will be fun. I'll be meeting with some of the people I met back in February last year.

I expect it's going to be a lot colder than here!

Christmas trees do exist in Turkey!

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Ok, I'm 3 days late!

But Happy New Year anyway.

A big thanks to all the people who sent me greetings for Christmas and New year. And a special thank you to those who sent me gifts. I really did not expect anything so it was a wonderful surprise. (Even if the postage did cost more than the gift...)

This year start with no real excitement, but I expect life to get interesting again soon. Next week we're all off to Capadocia for a bit of a retreat. Should be cold. Should be fun! I hear they make some good wines there...

Post Christmas

It's a real pain to have to write an exam on the pay after christmas. Worse is to write 4 exams in one day on the day after christmas. The exams were no fun. I've never enjoyed exams. I don't see that it in any way effectively tests a persons knowledge or the ability of the person to use such knowledge. All it really tests is short term memory skills!

So I don't think I did very well. FOrtunately passing is not a requirement to continue my studying. So on I go. I can only hope and pray that some new opportunities avail themselves because the study is driving me nuts!

I had to say goodbye to some more friends this weeks. 2 of the friends I made in class are leaving. One returning to Germany the other to Australia. Hopefully though they'll both be back here soon.

Now all I have to do is get somebody to read this again....

Christmas

Christmas comes and christmas goes. We had a great christmas. İt was cold! Very Cold! But we had a great service followed by a shared meal. Good food and good company means we soon forgot the cold. We also had a party on Friday nıght, for foreigners. There we exchanged gifts under the christmas tree. Also fun!

Today then I had to write exams. Tomorrow another exam. Judgıng from gut feeleıng I'm still a long way from where I need to be.

More later!

An excellent weekend

This past weekend was the best I've had since coming to Turkey. I had a really fun time. On Saturday I visited a friend who's from Guatemala. He just moved into a new house and invited a few people over for lunch. We had a cool time socialising and eating. It was good fun and we had people there from all over the world; USA, Ecuador, South Africa, Romania, Moldovia and more. We had to speak a lot of Turkish because not everyone could understand english very well.

In the evening we went to the International church, which was having a youth evening. Quite a lot of young people from all over the world were there. Including quite a large number of locals. Again we had a great time of worship together. All in Turkish of course. The songs were mostly Turkish versions of well known english worship songs. So we all knew what we were singing, even if we didn't understand all the words.

Sunday morning we had church and I actually could follow a bit of what was being preached. That's a real change!

Then after church I went to visit another university friend. He's from Germany. We did some studying together and then his girlfriend made us all supper. Another good social occassion that lasted well into the night. Of course that left me totally exasted today.

Now I need a break to recover from the weekend!

2 in 2

Amazing isn't it? 2 updates in 2 days!

I missed the bus this morning....again...! This is a common occurance, but what can you expect when I have a 25 minute walk to the bus stop. The result was arriving 2 minutes late for class (as opposed to arriving 18 minutes early). But 2 minutes is late and late comers are not allowed in class! Go figure. I feel like I'm back in primary school! Only thing missing is being sent to the principals office. That may yet happen...

As you may guess from my sporadic updates, I have no ADSL line yet. No ports available in our area = unknown time to installation. Well, there are worse things than having to wait for ADSL.

Slow Updates

Well it seems I'm not doing to well at keeping this updated. It's mostly laziness!

I read something interesting this week that I hadn't thought of before. We seem to think Judaism as in the OT was a religion of works. That people obeyed the law in order to gain salvation. But that's not true. Gods plan has not changed at all. God initiated the covenant with Isreal, choosing them as his people. The law came later and was seen as a way to show God how much you loved him. Obedience to the law was in thankfulness to the covenant that God had made.

It seems that the coming of Jesus only changed one thing in this respect. The difference now is that we are no longer God's chosen by ancestory inheritance, by being a jew. Now we are God's chosen by believing in him and in the sacrifice that Jesus made on this earth.

I don't understand the significance of Jesus' actions in the spiritual realm, but somehow his presence on earth and eventual death and resurrection have broken the hold that death had. Somehow it signified the expansion of God's chosen people beyond the nation of Isreal.

Life is about choices

Each day we get choices to make. We choose to wake up or get out of bed. We choose to go to school/work. And most importantly we choose how we react and respond to things that happen to us. Simply put, I can choose how I respond to the challenges that each day presents me. To be honest I don't think my choices here have been very good so far. I seem to have been choosing to look at the negative all the time. I fear this is a personality trait of mine. I'm a perpetual pessimist. Sometimes I am just being realistic, but other times I am failing to see the positives in a situation.

So here I have been focussing on my dislike for studies. How hard it is to motivate myself. How useless I feel. And it occurs to me this is only a downward spiral. It can only lead to me becoming depressed. Instead I need to look at the positives. School offers me an opportunity to meet and make friends with some really interesting people. I don't have the extra stress of a job. I can relax and just learn Turkish. It's gonna take about 2 years anyway!

So the major thought... We can't always choose our situation, but we can always choose how we respond to it.

Too fast, too cold

Wow, I can't believe a week has flown by since I was last on here. It's really ridiculous how fast time is passing. Hello! Christmas in 1 month (+ a few days...) Where does the time go? I guess we all just get busy with stuff and when next you look, *poof*, you're in retirement!

This morning I woke up to a beautiful day. It was raining on the weekend, but today the sun was shining and the sky was a beautiful blue! The I walked outside and my earlobes froze! Looks can be deceiving. It's been absolutely freezing today, all day! It's a good thing I don't mind the cold. Our house isn't heated and to save on costs we don't really have heaters running. Unless we have guests, then the heaters are out. As it gets colder we just keep adding layers.

Hopefully my bought of depression is over and done with now, and I can get on with learning Turkish. My mind has been working really hard to figure out what the problem is. I guess I just have to decide to accept my current situation and make the best of it. Instead of crying about it.

Difficult time

I'm having a bit of a difficult time at the moment. Thus the lack of real posts the last few weeks. I'm really struggling with motivation, has can be guessed. The apparent futility of the university classes and the difficulty with grasping the language. I'm also missing everyone back home. I don't really have people here I can be social with yet. I really miss being able to call people and go out on Friday or Saturday evenings. I just haven't found anyone I'm confortable with yet.

I was also a bit sick this last week. I don't know whether it was a real bug or something in my head. You know, hypochondriac style. A way to avoid class....

Somebody once told me this happens after about 2 months. A real bad patch of loneliness and home-sickness. I'll see how long it takes to get over it.

Motivation

Well, today I had little motivation to go to university. So I didn't! I'm struggling with motivation as I was never really the student type. So this studying business is a real test. Add to that the fact that we have the rest of the week holiday, because of the end of the holy week, and you can see how my motivation could be low. But I did do some constructive shopping, preparing for winter, so not all is lost. It's getting pretty chilly here now. No rain yet though...

My ADSL application is done. Should be connected in about 10 days. I can't wait! This dialup is sooooooooo sloooooooow! And costly too!

The earth continues to move. We've had over 2000 tremors in the last 2 weeks. It really does make you feel seasick. And just when things got a bit quieter we had another big jolt yesterday. It still has the "experts" guessing.

Missing

Well, it seems I tried to send some news here via email, but it didn't work. This last week has just flown by.
This weekend is Turkey's republic celebrations. İt' quıte a bıg deal here. Most people have flags flying from their balconies, and the government buildıngs have huge Turkish flags displayed. They're really patriotic!

Next week we'll only have 2 days of school. The rest of the days will be holidays. Should be real fun!

Apart from that there's not much to report. I'm still waiting for my ADSL!