Happy Thanksgiving!

This was my first Thanksgiving away from home, and it was different, but still great! I have so much to be thankful for here in Antalya. In the morning, we still taught at the kresh, and introduced a little Thanksgiving fun to our lessons. We made turkeys out of cookies, marshmallows, and candy corn. At home we use frosting for the glue to hold the pieces together, but here we had to use pudding instead. I think frosting is much more appetizing... but the kids loved them, and had fun making them! (On Wednesday and Thursday at the center we used our activity hour to celebrate Thanksgiving with some hand-turkey art, some feather math, a Thanksgiving picture book, and of course, cookie turkeys.) At lunch we went downstairs, and were surprised to find a table laid out with a feast for us! Tansule was so sweet, she said that this was as much of a feast as they could come up with, and it was beautiful! Then she surprised me even more, and said that all the teachers would like to pray over the meal with us, and she translated the prayer. So touching, that they went out of their way to celebrate the day that they knew was special for us, to help us celebrate in a familiar way. I am so thankful for Tansule, and all that she does for us at the kresh. So many new friends to celebrate with!

For most of the afternoon, Alli, Nuran, and I took turns in the kitchen, preparing our own Thanksgiving meal! We tracked down some Turkey breasts, which was more difficult than you might think. I guess you have to special order turkeys if you want a whole one. The night before we made a pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkin, and that was fun. We even decorated the table in perfect Thanksgiving fashion! Nuran had some decorations that her sister brought over from the states years ago, and she even had a perfect table cloth! Alli and I bought candles from a street vendor one day after school. This celebration made me appreciate living with Nuran even more than I already do - she took such care to make this a special evening, and I think she had a lot of fun too! She folded the napkins into a pocket, and put fall leaves into each, and even pulled out her best china. So awesome! Ebru came over for dinner, and we had a very pleasant evening, eating way too much food. Everything turned out so well! It was each of our first times to cook our own Thanksgiving meal, and I was very impressed! And the pumpkin pie was amazing!

I am so thankful to be here in Turkey, living out a dream of mine. I am deeply grateful to all of you who helped make it possible with your prayers and donations - Thank you. I am thankful for the support and encouragement we have received here in Antalya, for the friends we have made, and for the way God's plans play out. We had a very special Thanksgiving here, and I hope you all did too! I know I will never forget it - yesterday I had to pinch myself, to remind myself that I was walking along the Mediterranean on Thanksgiving, and that there is so much to be thankful for!

5:50 AM: Welcome to Ephesus!

Alli leaves in about a month to go home, so we are trying to squeeze in as many touristy things as possible, with a visit to Ephesus at the top of the list. I visited Ephesus years ago on the cruise, and loved it then, so I was super excited to go back again. It was both amazing and kind of strange, you know? When I was here 7 years ago, I kept thinking, "Well, I'll only be in Turkey once!". How weird and wonderful that here I am, again! Anyway, we don't have a lot of weekends left, between other places we want to visit and our Sunday school commitments, so it was this weekend or never. And because I had to teach Sunday school, we decided to make it as short a trip as possible. So on Friday evening we boarded a bus at 11:30 PM, slated to arrive in Selcuk, the town Ephesus is in, at 6:30 AM.

Granted, arriving anywhere at 6:30 doesn't sound great, but we did the same night bus set-up when we went to Cappadocia, and it was fine. I don't think we'll do it again. I was awakened by the (bus steward, bus attendant?) that we had arrived. A minute later Alli and I were on the street, blinking sleep out of our eyes, and trying to figure out where we were. It was pitch black, and cold out, no people in sight. We had been helpfully dropped off at the Tourist information center, which of course would not open for another 3 hours. I had visions of us falling asleep on the benches out front, waking up to crowds of tourists laughing... Instead we decided to find the bus station, where there was sure to be light, a bathroom, and people. We found it, but it contained none of the above. Like everything else, it was still closed. Luckily, the bus station was near the market place, which was bustling with humanity, setting up for the day's market. And a nice looking man approached us and asked in English what we were looking for. He told us about his pansion and invited us to make ourselves at home there for a few hours. With no other available options, we decided to trust our guts and go with him. He was a blessing! We settled in to the lounge at the pansion (Nur Pansion - if you're ever in Selcuk, stay there!), and read for a few hours, then had breakfast. All the staff spoke English, as did the two other guests. Good conversation over breakfast - one of the men is an movie actor, and has actually been in some movies that I have seen, like Michael Clayton, and another that is coming out next year with Angelina Jolie. We ended up splitting the shuttle fee and shared a car up to Mary's house, and back down to Ephesus, or Efes. When I was there before, I fell in love with the trees around Mary's house, because they reminded me of home. Sadly, there was a huge fire 3 years ago that totally wiped out all of the vegetation on the hillside, so it looked completely different. It is a strange feeling to miss something in another country, in a place I only imagined to visit once in a lifetime.

The weather was amazing! The clouds were dark and very windy, very blustery, and rain threatened many times. We lucked out though, because it didn't actually rain while we were walking around Efes. It finally poured when we were having dinner, and while we were walking around St. John's Basilica. At one point we had to run into a mosque to take cover from the heavy rain! (Don't worry, it was open to tourists.) As we visited all these places, it was amazing to think that John the Disciple, and Mary the mother of Jesus actually lived parts of their lives here.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around Selcuk. We visited the Temple of Artemis, or what once was the Temple of Artemis. Now it is only a single column, standing in a field of ancient marble rubble. We went to the Efes Museum, which I remembered from when I was there before. Because we were only staying for a single day, we didn't get a hotel room, so we had to plan carefully to maximize our time for sitting down indoors. Our bus didn't leave until 10:30 PM, so we had to fill the evening until then, and there's very little daylight now. We had planned to go to the library in town, and we found it, but it was closed. Such a bummer, because there is only so much tea you can drink, buying time in coffee shops. But it was beautiful, and that made it great! After dark, but way too early for dinner, we found ourselves without a place to go, so we found some benches under some trees near streetlights, and waited. We laughed a whole lot! Finally we decided it was time to get some dinner, and we spent about 10 minutes trying to decide between two restaurants, only to get inside and find out it was actually one large restaurant. Then while eating, the power went out. That is why you should always have candles on the dinner table! It added ambiance though, and took away the soccer game playing on the TV in the background. After dinner we found some dessert in a pastanesi, and ended up spending the rest of the evening talking with a Kurdish carpet seller in his shop.

The bus came promptly at 10:30, and we gladly got on and fell asleep. We arrived back in Antalya in time for a few hours of horizontal sleep and a shower before church on Sunday. We were a little zonked for our Turkish lesson that afternoon, but the trip was well worth it!

Duden Falls and Shaving Cream Adventures

Antalya is the most beautiful place, largely because of its water features. The first and most obvious: the Mediterranean. Cok Guzel! Very Beautiful! We pass along the coast each morning that we walk to the kresh, and swim in it fairly frequently. This last time, we noticed that the water felt different, a little thicker. When I finally put my goggles on and looked down, I realized it was because there were hundreds of little jellyfish everywhere! I couldn't swim without running into several of them, which was both neat and kind of strange. Not my favorite.

The next amazing water feature are the fountains. There are gorgeous fountains all over Antalya! It feels like on every corner there is a little park with a couple of benches and some sort of fountain. Verna says they were all installed over the past couple years as part of Antalya's effort to be more beautiful. Last but not least, a ways outside of Antalya proper is a park named after Duden Falls. Alli and I had heard a lot about it, but we only just made it out there last weekend. It was GORGEOUS! The falls pour down into a big basin, and into a river that runs all the way into town and out to the sea. We got there right before sunset, so the light was beautiful. Lots of fall colors in the trees, which always makes my soul happy. The most amazing part is that there are caves carved out of the rock that go behind the water fall! This is what the back of a water fall looks like!

I realized that I write a lot about the weekend trips that we take, and places that we see, and it may sound like that's all we are doing here. Obviously its not - we spend full days with kids in various places, but most of that is very routine and not as exciting or notable as our more touristy adventures. But - this week we started something new at the center, which will hopefully be really good. Each week Alli and I will have an hour in each of the two classrooms that we work in to do something of our choosing. This last week we started with shaving cream on the desks, something I learned and enjoyed doing in Spanish class in middle school. Turns out playing with shaving cream is fun for any age! The kids loved it! We started with the 14 year old group, and at first they were a little doubtful, but quickly began to enjoy it. The idea behind the shaving cream is that the students get to practice writing and drawing in another medium, and use their bodies to learn in a different way. The classrooms here that we have seen spend the vast majority of the day working on some sort of handwriting task. It is not the way that I would set up a school, and especially not the way I would set up a classroom for students with shorter-than-average attentions spans, but it is the educational system here. So far it has been a struggle for me to find ways to introduce ideas and activities and pass on what I learned in teacher training in the states, without completely overthrowing their whole system. In the end, it will be the Turkish teachers who continue teaching these students, and if what I suggest isn't something they want to continue with, then my efforts will be completely futile. So - I hope that these hours each week can be a time where I can do activities that I think will be helpful and fun for the students, while also giving the teachers some examples of what they can do. Although its not so educational (unless you count practicing following group directions, which is totally valid!), this week we will make turkeys out of cookies and candy corn in honor of Thanksgiving!

Hurray!

One of the students that I work with in one-on-one therapies at the center is particularly challenging for me. I don't know her particular diagnosis, but from what the teacher says, this 18 year old student has the mind of a one-year old. It took me a while to realize that the student was actually there for therapy with the teacher, because the teacher completely ignored her. Her thought is that the student has the mind of a one-year old, and therefore cannot learn, so it's not worth trying. This breaks my heart, because I believe that every student can learn. Up till now though, I haven't been faced with a situation that tests my belief. I know that this student has a lot to learn, but I've had a hard time knowing where to start. Normally during her therapy time (2 hours), she sits in a chair and does her version of twiddling thumbs. For the last couple sessions, I have tried to capture her attention, and evoke a response from her, but I have so far not seen results. Today though, after 20 minutes of playing "catch" with me, she reached for the ball!!!!! Three times!!! And the best part is, the teacher saw her interacting, and I hope, hope, hope, that she will take an interest and work with the student. That totally made my day, and deserves a big hurray for the student!

While we're on the subject of hurray... I live in the area of Antalya called Fener, which means lighthouse or lantern. It is named for the lighthouse that graces one of the rocky outcroppings of the cliffs. This is a view of the lighthouse, taken from Verna's porch. That deserves a hurray too!