Happy Birthday to me

So yesterday was my birthday. I had planned a normal Sunday. Wake up late, go to church and while away the afternoon with friends. Unfortunately it didn't go as planned. I woke up early and discovered I was rather depressed. Depressed about getting 1 year older. Depressed about being away from friends and family. Just plain depressed. Not a good way to start a birthday.

This is possibly the first year that I've really been concerned about being a year older. Mostly I've never cared much. But this year I'm thinking, it's 1 more year. What have I done? I'm still single. I'm still not getting to make the difference I wanted to make when I started out 1.5 years ago.

Sure I know I am making a difference of sorts. I've been able to affect the lives of countless people by just being here. But, I don't know, I want to do more. I just can't see what it is I want to do, or how to do it. My little niche if you will.

Fortunately friends and family came to the rescue of my poor struggling birthday. Sms', emails and phone calls started to make my day much more worthwhile. Crowned also by the surprsie invasion of my house by my friends here. Bringing cake, chips and coke and all those usual party type things. They just arrived, Turkey style, and started having a party. Those who know me well, know that this is probably the only way to get me to have a birthday party!

So the day wasn't completely lost and I did actually have a good day after all.

And now it's Monday and back to real life...

Time is getting short

So time moves on. And still I'm not sure what my future here is. I don't really know how to proceed. Getting long term residence in Turkey is rather difficult, with only a few options available. So far none of my contacts have panned out.

At the moment I am suspending my studies so that I can visit a few people around the country that I know. Hoping some ideas may come out of it all. But as things stand my stay here in Turkey may be coming to an end.

We shall see what the future brings.

On a brighter note, the days are getting longer and warmer again. Summer is on the way!

As before

I'd like to say that things are getting better. They're not. If anything school is getting worse. I find myself missing more and more of the classes. None of my teachers inspire in me any desire to actually learn. In fact they actually drain away any motivation I manage to build for learning.

On top of that is the lack of opportunities for me to extend my stay. And time is fast disappearing. I find myself more and more thinking that this is not going to happen the way I thought or planned. I am inclined to start thinking about "what if things don't work?" There is still time of course, so anything could happen.

We'll see...

Start cleaning!

My back hurts. My head hurts. My finger are raw. I really feel for housewives and housekeepers/cleaning ladies. I started the first of my major cleaning projects.

The Kitchen!

(dun-dun-DUH!)

Skipping school for the day I spent my time scrubbing and cleaning and scrubbing and mopping and....well you get the picture. I had to use some industrial strength grease stripper around the stove. I think that's why I now have a headache. The stuff was pretty potent! Still, potent or not, it took a lot of effort to get the floor clean.

But it's all done now. A worthwhile days work. How long will it stay clean? Nobody knows...

Where did the time go?

January is gone already? Where did it go? Time is just passing too quickly!

Anyway, it's Friday and that means the weekend is about to start. I have a busy weekend ahead of me. We're having an all day movie marathon tomorrow! It'll be at the house of one of my classmates. Don't remember what the movies are going to be.

My flatmate has gone home....may have mentioned this sometime....so now I'm home alone. I'm taking the opportunity to perform a big cleanup. The place really needs it! When he comes back it will be to a totally transformed home. Hopefully he will approve...

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.