October News

10/18

Today we went to another area of this beautiful land and drove down a gorgeous road stopping often to take pictures and look for chestnuts or just enjoy the road. Then we hiked even farther into the beautiful mountains before returning home tired. The day was super nice and almost hot with clear blue skies and the trees are just starting to turn colors. The mountains here are covered in bushes and trees and vines and unlike our mountains it is all leafy trees with almost never a pine tree so fall here will be very colorful.
We where not very successful in finding chestnuts but did get around 50 or so. They are much harder to find and the trees our huge so we have to search for the prickly seed pods on the ground and then crack them open and get the seeds out. They are super poky so we had to step on them or crush them with rocks. I could carefully pick the seed pods up but Lucy wouldn't touch them.
We did not find any apples or anything else edible although we did look. We drove and then hiked along a really beautiful river and ended up getting pretty high up in the mountains. We went where we did so we could get pictures of some super old cool houses and pictures of the tea fields and how they get the tea from the super steep mountain fields down to the towns where they can sell it. We always bring along books with teachings and stuff so we have really cool times where we read and pray and discus what we have been learning in our quiet times through the week. We both also fasted from sun up to sun down today so we only ate diner it was a good day.

10/21

I am a bit of a distraction for the kids who still find me fascinating and want to ask me questions....I just seem to make things a little more interesting when I show up so if Lucy knows that class will have a lot of students or go for a shorter time than usual I stay home or go some one where my own. They have a cafeteria where I can go and read and see if any one else shows up and talk to them. It has a cool balcony where I can watch people and take pictures. I can stand on the balcony and see the sea and the mountains and watch the kids fight in the streets it can be pretty interesting.

10/22

When we had the study time I went along but just sat with the receptionist instead going into the class room because there where a lot of kids so they wouldn't have behaved. I got to see a hawk up close. They bring them in when it rains so one of the other teaches brought it out and was holding and petting his hawk. They are kinda cool but I think I would get tired of it pretty quickly and they feed them live little birds every day and I don't think I would like doing that. I am not sure how they get the little birds and I would think it would be easier to get mice then birds but I couldn't ask any of these questions.

It seems like I used to be able to learn 15-20 words a day and now I am happy when I learn 5-10 my mind must be full.

10/24

I met a really nice family that works there and the 2 sisters are close to my age 22 and 25 I think. So I stayed and tried to talk with them. We used a dictionary and they wrote stuff out so it was easier and they know a bit of English. I really like talking with them because they use helpful hand motions and will repeat what they say and try different words. Lots of people will only say things twice and if I don't get it they give up. So we actually talked quite a bit and then they started teaching me Lasja which is what a lot of the older people speak. I am not sure who all knows it or where it came from or really much about it. Lucy has just mentioned that the older people speak it so sometimes if the grandparents are the ones to raising or watching the children then they will speak it. Like the little 2 year old who likes me sometimes says things in Lasja. Lucy does not speak it and it is quite different from the local language. I learned how to say things like what is your name, and the sea is good. Then it was the lunch break so the girls had to work but then a bunch of the students came over to talk with me. For like an hour I always had at lest 6 people gathered around and trying to talk with me but people kept coming and going. Different people would ask questions at the same time and things got kinda loud and crazy but it was fun. I was able to talk quite a bit and answer their questions and ask some of my own. I can ask about family, sports, hobby’s, and class/school and age so with the people changing that was about all we had time to talk about before they some one would go get to food and some one else would came over. One girl who came over was actually pretty good and English and all the others would tell her what to ask and say. So then they wanted to talk about boy's and Obama and traveling.
After about an hour they all had to go to class though. I hung around for a bit longer but then decided to leave before they had another break. It is fun to talk with them but it also makes me tired because I have to think so hard and when their is a lot of people trying to talk at once it gets tiring to try and understand everything and come up with simple answers to all their questions.
They gave me lunch too and that was really nice. It was good but it was hard to try to talk and eat. They gave me salad, bread, rice, and the chicken meat that they put in the sandwiches its the meat they cook on the spit like thing and shave off with a knife.

10/25

Right after diner our neighbor called and asked us to come over for a visit so we made a cake and then went and visited them. They wanted us to stay for a long time but we had a great time. We watched a football and they are a cool family. Lucy had not met her sons before but one of them was their this time and he was really funny. He would keep trying to say things in English but he didn't know much and would get all the words mixed up. So the time really went by quickly and Lucy says her cheeks hurt from laughing so much. So we had a really good day.
Lucy says people here don't make cinnamon rolls so they are a cool thing to make for people when they come over so we will probably be making them often. Lucy also thought making the home made ice cream was really cool. I told her about making it and showed her how and she said it was good and that the people here would be amazed so tomorrow when we have some girls over we plan to make it with them.
10/26
After running practice we had to go straight to a private lesson. We where kinda hungry since we usually have time to eat but this time our run took too long. We had a good lesson though and the kids where a lot of fun as usual. Then we went straight from the lesson to visit a family. We thought they just wanted us to come over for tea and to entertain their little girl but they ended up feeding us diner. We where very surprised but happy to see the table set for diner. It was a good meal with the main course being flavored rice wrapped in cabbage leaves and then steamed. It is lucy's favorite meal I liked it pretty good but it isn't my favorite. We also had soup, salad, bread and they also served pickled veggies. They pickle all vegetables here so I got to try pickled tomato's and carrots they tasted weird but they where pretty good.

10/30

We had a pretty busy day and then a very fun evening. They where having a holiday here it has to do with Ataturk and the founding of the republic so all the schools where closed and they had a lot of speeches and stuff. We didn't go hear the speeches but the kids all lined up and marched through the streets and they came by our house so we saw that. Also the high school students have to do this presentation where they beat drums and play horns and march around. So for the last week or maybe it was the last two weeks we have been hearing the kids practice. We are close to the high school and can see it from our kitchen window so we had been listening to and watching them practice for this for what seems like a long time. The thing is they play this one easy rhythm and well that is pretty much it and the trumpets just blow the same rhythm and they only have to play one note. So for at least an hour every day for the last week we have listening to them playing this same rhythm over and over but yesterday they played it for the last time.

Since kids weren’t in school but parents where still at work their was a lot of kids running around and we ended up baby sitting a little 6 year old for a couple of hours.
In the evening the family we visited on Thursday called to ask if they could come over. We said yes so then we had to quickly make sure the house was clean, and find something to feed them. When ever any one visits you have to serve tea and some sort of snack usually people give you something sweet and something salty. So like pretzels and cookies or cake and nuts. We ended up thawing out some pizza we had made awhile ago and I cooked the cinnamon rolls that I had made before.
We had a very fun night the family that came has a girl around 7 a boy who just turned 14 and 17 teen year old boy and then one older boy who is always busy so I haven't met him. The father didn't come he was probably working late since lots of places stay open until 8-9. We played dutch blitz and then we played a game called mafia and another game called killer wink. The family stayed until almost 11 and we laughed so much. Mafia and killer wink where so funny they had trouble understanding mafia at first and then the mom kept cheating during killer wink and the 14 year old would get so mad and dramatic. We had a great time.
Lucy has always visited a lot of people that is the main way she shares. She can't really share at work since if she looses her job she will pretty much have to leave and that would stop her from being with kids and she doesn't see kids outside of class unless she gets to know their family. So her and her parents try and visit as many people as possible and so she is used to going out and at least 3 times a week to visit people. They prefer to go out rather then have people over because then they would have to cook stuff and it is always up to the person visiting how long they stay. So once you get a guest you expect them to stay for at least 2 hours and would never ask them to leave or even hint that they should go unless you had a really good reason like if you had to go some where.
I have been given a new nick name because no matter how many times we correct the one boy (the 14 year old ) he can not remember my name so now the whole family has started to call me Jamerica. The girls we visit down stairs call me Jaida because they too have a hard time with my name and Jaida is not as unusual to them.

10/31

I spent an hour today hanging out and talking with different kids. I like it and am starting to recognize kids and so I hope to be able to make some friends and to be able to keep talking with the kids their. Lucy thinks it would be really good if I could make some friends there she says she has always wanted to meet and hang out with the highschoolers but that she has never had the opportunity but they are the ones that are hanging out with me the most so this could be a chance for her to get to know some of them. Plus she says that it is really good that they try and speak English and that talking with me could motivate them to study harder and work on their English. One of the girls I have met is actually pretty good at English and seems to know way more then any of the others. The younger kids would like to talk to me more but the highschoolers break starts first so by the time the younger kids get to the cafeteria there are to many older kids for them to talk to me so they go complain to Lucy that it isn't fair and ask if I will be coming to the study times so they can talk with me.
We had the power out all morning and usually lose power when ever it rains so when I realized that the power was back on I came home to do laundry and start diner. But now for what ever reason the stove isn't working I think it has run out of gas so now I am not sure what we will do for diner since all the food we have needs to be cooked and we can't buy more gas until tomorrow. Our hot water heater is also out of gas so we have been taking cold showers for the last couple of days or not showering. I did shower today and with it being so cold outside it wasn't very nice but we should be able to buy more gas tomorrow. We couldn't buy it any sooner since it ran out the first day of the holiday and the store was closed.
Their is this strange black American lady who is here. We don't really know how she got here or who she is but she is definitely a little crazy. We had noticed a black lady one day while out and then a couple of days later saw the police following her so we asked what was up and people said that she was an American and that she ran out of money and is now stuck here but that seemed a little strange so when we went to the boarder we tried to find out more. They said that she is American and that they don't know where she was going or what is up with her. Every one seems a little freaked out by her and she dresses crazy and carries around like 10 purses. Then on Friday we ended up passing her in the street and she was talking quite loudly to herself in English and what she said was " every one who lies has holes in their throats " I kinda wanted to see what she would say next but also didn't want her to realize I spoke English. There have been storyies of her yelling at people and acting violent which I guess is why the police where following her. No knows what her story is or what she will do or anything really people don't seem to know what to do with her either. We kinda want to follow her and see where she is staying and if she is eating and we would like to know where she was going and what she plans on doing but we are afraid if she finds out we speak English that she will follow us around all the time and cause trouble and Lucy is afraid because she could be violent. So we both agree that we would like to at least follow her so if we see her again and can we will probably see if we can find anything out by following her. Lucy could follow her easily enough but we are worried that she might realize I am American because of my hair but I think she is crazy enough that she wouldn't catch on and she did walk right by me and not react.
So that is our exciting story.