Time Change

I didn't realize until mid-afternoon, but apparently Thursday night the time changed here for Daylight Savings. So, now, instead of 8 hours difference to Iowa it is now 7 hours, and 6 hours to the East Coast. For any of you who happen to keep track of the time here, I wanted to make sure that you changed along with me. :)

Sunset...

I have enjoyed a very low-key weekend, although I wasn't feeling the best health-wise. Yesterday my roommate and I went out on the roof again to enjoy the chilly weather and the gorgeous sunset. I am finally able to wear my fleece and be comfortable which is wonderful feeling after the heat of earlier. It is supposed to rain today, and the breeze coming in my bedroom window makes my room almost cold. :) Anyway, here are some pictures I took from the roof last night. Enjoy!

Early Start to the Weekend

Today I woke up before my alarm and realized that I would starting my weekend early. It seems I caught the flu-like bug that has been going around and so I'm staying close to home today. I don't feel that bad necessarily, but being across the city at school sounded not so fun so I skipped out on review and listening lab. I'm not too sorry to miss listening lab, but I was planning to see some Arab friends today so that is a bummer.

Maybe later I'll think of something to update this with and I can write more.

Friends, Cookies, Water Heaters, Bracelets & Cooler Weather

These things may seem very unrelated, but they are the big events in my life in the past few days. :)

First, friends...on Friday night we hosted a few women here at our apartment and it was a wonderful time of sharing, laughter and blessing. It was fun to help host here for the first time.

Second, cookies...Friday afternoon I attempted for the first time to bake here. I made chocolate chip cookies and they turned out pretty well, and seemed to be a hit with my roommates. :) They tasted a bit different from when Mom makes them, but I think it was because the vanilla was different.

Third, water heaters...this is one of the most exciting events, to be honest. :) We didn't have any hot water for showering and such, which wasn't a big deal since it has been so hot, but to be perfectly honest I'm not a fan of cold (or even cool) showers. So, it was wonderful yesterday when a couple of men came and installed a hot water heater in our bathroom. And it even can be used in the rest of the house, so we can wash the dishes in hot water as well. :) It was with a great deal of joy that I took a hot shower yesterday afternoon.

Fourth, bracelets...today in class I commented on a classmate's bracelet, not realizing the murky water I had just gotten into. :) She is Turkish, and I forgot that in this part of the world if you complement something you might end up owning it. So, after class she comes up to me and hands over the bracelet! A good lesson in humility and culture. :)

Fifth, cooler weather...no joke, this weekend I think the heat finally broke and is gone for awhile! It is still warm in the day, don't get me wrong, but this morning I was actually cold in a thin sweater when I was walking towards the language center. It is a relief to not sit on the bus and have sweat dripping down my back. I said this in an earlier post, but I want to say again, I have a lot of admiration for the women here who cover themselves completely, or even just wearing the hijab (scarf to cover their hair). I cannot imagine how hot they must have been during the summer.

Taxi Drivers and Scarves

I have a feeling tonight is going to be another random post. :) I am sitting out on our balcony enjoying the refreshing breeze, looking up at the moon as night overtakes the city below me. It is too nice to not enjoy it while I can.

Today it was still hot out in the sun, but not as hot as the days before, and the breeze is cooler. Finally, finally, finally we might see cooler temperatures set in.

So first of all, taxi drivers. The past few days I have gotten two different taxi drivers who took it upon themselves to teach me a bit of Arabic. The first one made sure I knew straight, right, left....important words for giving directions. :) This morning my taxi driver spent most of the drive to the university teaching me and then quizzing me on the words for traffic, car, plane, hospital and I forget what else. :) It was good practice, but I feel so inept at the lack of useable language skills that I have at this point.

Secondly, scarves. :) Now some of you may find this really silly, but those of you who love scarves can identify with me. I could buy so many scarves here...there are shops full of them! It has taken a lot of self-control not to buy them whenever I see some. :) However, I have bought a couple since I've arrived. One I bought in Turkey, actually, and I got it because I hadn't seen the design here at all. The second one I bought this evening at a souk (marketplace) near the house of a friend. Anyway, there's not much more to the story...I am just excited by having new scarves, even though with the weather at 90+ degrees there is no way I'm wearing them any time soon. :)

Oh, and since I'm excited about them, I took a picture of my new scarves to share with you all. :) The black and green scarf is from Turkey and the purple and white one is the one I bought this evening.

I hope you all have a great weekend...I know I'm planning on it. :)

Election Time

It is election time here and there are posters and banners everywhere. I haven't been brave enough to pull out my camera on the way to and from school yet, but I found a picture in one of the English papers that gives you a good idea of what the streets look like here.

The elections are November 9th, and they are for the Lower House of Parliament. Other than that, I don't know a whole lot about why they're having the elections, and who the popular candidates are. I think they are trying to fill all 120 seats in the House. 

I'm not expecting the elections to be anything other than just that, and I really don't think they will affect me much, since in reality the King carries the weight of the power here (and his power is pretty secure), but I'll let you know if anything exciting happens. :)

My First Shwerma

Tonight I had my first official shwerma here. What is shwerma, you may ask? Well, shwerma is delicious, that's what. :) Shwerma is a wrap-type of sandwich, similar to a gyro. They put the meat (lamb, beef or chicken) on a huge upright spit and as it turns the meat is cooked. Then they shave the meat off so that it is in smaller pieces and wrap it with tomatoes and onions and other various condiments into a thin wrap and it's ready to go. :) And the best part, it is super cheap. As in, half a dinar kind of cheap. (1 dinar = 1.30 dollars) Even better than the dollar menu at McDonald's and much tastier. I was going to take a picture, but when I remembered I was already halfway into it, and my hands were a bit messy, so no picture of this first taste. However, I do have a picture from Turkey of basically the same thing, although it's called by a different name there.

As you can see, there are two spits with two different kinds of meat. I wouldn't be able to tell you what the meats are though. :)

Anyway, maybe next time I get shwerma I'll take a picture.

Turkey Pictures

My time in Turkey was very refreshing, although it went by quickly. My friends came from different parts of the region and was a good time of renewing relationships. We stayed at a resort along the beach and so it was wonderful to walk just a couple of minutes and get to the sea. Our time also included a day trip into the old part of Antalya, where we did a scavenger hunt, shopped and then in the afternoon took a boat out onto the sea for a few hours.

Here are some pictures from the week.

The view from our first room. We switched rooms after the first night because it just so happened that the disco was right below us, which made it a bit difficult to sleep. You can see the sea just beyond the trees.

The two women I did the scavenger hunt with. Both are women I admire and it was a joy to spend some time with them. You can see what a gorgeous setting we were in. :)

One of the items on the scavenger hunt was to model a pair of these pants, called shalwars. They basically are a skirt, with the bottom sewn together except for holes for the feet. The village women wear them so that they can be up and down and doing all kinds of things without having to worry about modesty.

The Antalya harbor...because the stone is so hard, they say that the harbor looks almost exactly like it did 2000 years ago.

On the boat on our way out to sea

A lovely waterfall we passed on our sea trip. We anchored near it for awhile.

And while we were anchored we had the chance to jump off the boat and swim. :) The water was actually about the perfect temperature and although I got a mouthful of salty water at times it was well worth it.

Good-bye to Turkey

I had an absolutely marvelous time in Turkey these past few days. It was so refreshing to be with my friends and to spend time together. I have some pictures from the resort, and from our outing on Monday, but they aren't on my computer yet, so I will post them over the weekend when I have a chance to unpack and get settled back in at home.
I am sitting in the Istanbul airport now, at Starbucks waiting for my final flight in about 3 hours. This is the first time I've been able to access the internet on my laptop so I am taking the opportunity to update this a bit. I'll have more stories and lots of pictures to share when I get the chance. :)
Now it's back to the daily routine of classes and studying. I was intending to work on my Arabic while I was gone, but I didn't get much accomplished. I'm afraid tomorrow will not be fun trying to get back into class after missing four days. :( At least I'll have the weekend to try and get my feet back under me.
Well, I'm going to keep moving...you'll hear from me soon.

Turkey

I'm here in Turkey and it is beautiful! However my computer is not behaving with the wireless so I'm on my iPod at the moment. That means I probably won't be updating this any more until I get home. So hopefully next Thursday I'll have lots of pictures to share. :)

Reflections

I'm at the end of another week of classes, and I am leaving for Turkey in less than 12 hours!!! I feel a tab bit spoiled that I get to have a vacation after being here less than a month, but I'm also so excited that I don't really care. :) I am so grateful for the chance to connect with some friends and to spend time being "Western" again. Because I live in a more conservative area of the city, I have to dress appropriately. And honestly, most of the time I really don't mind wearing longer shirts and long sleeves and pants, (even though that doesn't hide the fact that I'm a Westerner) but I do remember the feeling of being able to actually be a tourist in India and wear what I would normally wear, and I'm looking forward to that again.

As far as classes go...we are starting to be able to write sentences! Small accomplishments to be sure, but I'm hoping that soon there will be bigger accomplishments to mark. :) We are working with a list of about 60-70+ nouns, and 24+ verbs, and now I can conjugate those verbs into the past tense to create sentences. We also have added to our list most of the question words (i.e. how, where, who, what), pronouns and today we added some prepositions and learned how to make a word possessive (i.e. my book, your house).

All of what I am learning is what they call "foosa", or classical Arabic. I have had a lot of people ask me why I didn't learn the spoken Arabic first, since it is different than foosa, but I feel like this is a good starting point, for me at least. In a few months I'll be able to read and write pretty well, and from there I can work with a language partner to adjust the vocabulary to spoken Arabic. Right now it's hard for me to even wrap my tongue around the sounds anyway, so I feel like at least I'm moving ahead, instead of being mired in a mess of trying to get sounds to come out of my month that I haven't used before. :)

Look for pictures from Turkey in the next few days!

Relief...

...as in, relief from the heat! Today it only reached 28 degrees Celsius, (or at least that all the warmer it was supposed to get) which means only about 82 degrees Fahrenheit. And now after dark, I was sitting out on the balcony and it was chilly enough that I put on my long-sleeved t-shirt!
Al Humdilallah!

Friends

The past couple of weeks I've made a couple of Arab friends that are also attending the University. The first one is named Roa'a. She's studying law and most days I find her outside the language center when I come out after classes. I've had some great conversations with her. :)

The second friend is named Haneen. I randomly sat next to her on the bus on the way home one day, and now I've seen her a few times, and one day soon I'll hopefully be able to visit her home and meet her family.

Yesterday Haneen took me to the balad to show me some of her favorite places. As we were walking from where we got off the bus I took a few pictures of the jabel where I live. :)

This is from the bottom of the hill

And I even picked out my apartment building from the bottom :) It's the one with the corner balcony.

Haneen took me me to the Roman amphitheater, but we didn't go in since there was an admissions charge.

I took a picture with Haneen before we went our separate ways then. In the background you can see the servees, or shared taxis. These taxis run on specific routes, but they are the least expensive kind of transportation.

Today I took a picture with Roa'a. She's quite opinionated, but very fun to talk with. 

Shopping and Weather and Other Exciting News

Today I went out with another friend from the building to Mecca Mall. This mall is at least 4 stories (maybe more) and has about anything you could want, including a grocery store and Ace Hardware. :) I got some groceries (I want to make cookies sometime this week) and also some measuring utensils so that I can actually get the correct portions into the cookies. :)
It was super hot today and then late afternoon the wind picked up, slamming doors in the apartment, and blew in a dust storm. This one didn't last very long, and I managed to get the apartment closed up tight before it got too dusty, so that is one thing to be grateful for.
Anyway, I'm on a countdown now 'til Friday when I leave for Turkey! I'm going to meet up with some friends who are also living in various places in the region. I have to leave super early on Friday morning, but it will be worth it to spend some time with these friends. I'm going to be gone from Friday morning 'til Wednesday night, so hopefully my Arabic studies won't suffer too badly while I'm gone. I'm planning on taking along my book and working on the lessons while I'm in Turkey...maybe. :)
Another exciting thing I am anticipating is an early morning (for me) skype conversation with family. My parents, Reggie, my aunt Brenda and my Grandma all traveled out to Indiana to cheer on Ross and Andrew in soccer. Also on the itinerary was a stop in Ohio to visit Jeryl's and to watch Tanner and Lauren run cross-country. Anyway, I'll get to hopefully talk with all the people in Indiana and hopefully that will help the jealousy I feel at missing out on such a fun time. :)

Girls Night

On Wednesday night my Korean roommate shared some Korean facial masks with my British roommate and I, which we had a lot of fun with. :)

Here are the packets...I used the grape one.

Here are the 3 of us wearing the facial mask things. I also believe that this is the first time since I've been here that I have a picture of myself. :)

I realize we look a bit scary, but these women have become dear sisters already. I am truly blessed to have ended up rooming with them for this fall.