the week

Just a summary of this past week:
- lots of Turkish learning and practicing
- lots of university listening and reading
- lots of talking to friends
- lots of traveling back and forth across sections of the city by bus and metro
- telling a Suriname "Anansi" story in Turkish class today

Plans:
- take Turkish exams Tuesday and Wednesday (they will be very hard... I think)
- not expecting to continue Turkish next month
- expecting to spend time on various smaller ideas for the next month
- continuing university classes

Recent news

Well, it's been a while since I've updated the general populace on life, but since I keep up with much of it through Facebooking, IMing, emailing, etc. I don't feel too bad.

Last weekend we got a bunch of snow, at least for this city. It is mostly melted off now and we had beautiful spring weather today. However, that weather resulted in the snowball fight seen in the pictures as well as a snow day on Monday. But language school began again on Tuesday and is continuing along as we learn slowly.

On Wednesday, I began my university studies here in Istanbul. I am informally auditing two classes this semester. Philosophy of Science and Introduction to Modern Philosophy both promise to keep me learning and thinking, and I am enjoying the return to the classroom.

That's about all the news. Life is full of mundanities, but it is by no means boring or unenjoyable. Till later...

PS Yes, I know that neither "mundanities" nor "unenjoyable" nor "Facebooking" nor "IMing" are words...

Harry Gwadabaluchi

Harry Gwadabaluchi (pronounced phonetically) was a bust; or more accurately, he was part of a bust.

Harry Gwadabaluchi was from a Caribbean nation; (those who would know cannot remember if it was Mexico, Haiti, or the Dominican Republic.)

Harry Gwadabaluchi was the legacy of a pastor in NC who made a difference to four MKs.

The story of Harry: Quite a few years ago, four MKs and their parents visited a congregation in NC. As often happened, the family visited in a member's home for a meal and some conversation; the pastor was there too. The adults ate in the kitchen, and the children in the living room. But the most unusual thing happened when the pastor came and joined the children. And this is how they learned of Harry Gwadabaluchi. On a trip south, the pastor was with some of the kids from his congregation and they saw a large statue. When asked who it was, the pastor identified it as Harry Gwadabaluchi. And thus, the legend started:

Harry was ... well, he started as a statue! But not an ordinary one, for indeed he was merely a head! Pastor Vos turned that statue into a time of fellowship and fun, first for the kids with him and later for the 4 MKs in my story. See, because he was simply a head, Harry often got made fun of and was the subject of many happy puns: he could only use half a bottle of Head and Shoulders. His favorite foods were cabbage and lettuce. And many other heady puns which we spent a long time thinking of.

So, why have I spent such a long time to tell you about a bit of statue and fiction. Pastor Vos went home to be with his Lord earlier this month. I don't think I ever talked to him after the day he told us four kids about Harry, but I will remember him as a man who truly cared. He is one of a very few pastors I ever remember to have taken personal time for the little MKs when he could just as easily been with the more important people. That is my testimony of how his life touched mine for a brief hour and left a mark of genuine love.

Extraction

So, for those of you who didn't know, I had a wisdom tooth pulled today. And for all of you who read this blog, I survived. It took a while, it had a couple nastily curved roots, and I had to have two shots. (I hate shots! But they weren't as bad as expected.) In any case, I may go back to get another one pulled in a few weeks as the price here is good and the care is not bad, especially when compared to my other dental work which was mostly done in Suriname.
Not much news other than that, continuing to learn Turkish and spend time sharing and learning with friends.

Confidently Lost

As a lamb that's lost, I wander
As topics deep I ponder,
How not this life to squander
With joy to journey yonder.

As a lamb that's led, I'm resting,
With questioning and testing
My Father's way requesting
For living life, investing.

- me, last night

-- bad poetry, good rhyming and expressing

Istanbul: That great city

A comment on the last post made me decide to post some facts here instead of as a follow-up comment there.
Facts, Figures, and Fantasies* about Istanbul:
- The city of Istanbul is officially estimated at about 12.5 million people.
- With those numbers, the city would be approximately the 5th largest US state!
- That also makes the city larger than the two largest cities in the US combined (remember that the definition of city is ambiguous... metropolitan area and so forth).
- Unofficial statistics put the city's population between 15-25 million, which would mean that the only US state with a larger population is California!

There's more that could be added, but those figures give a reasonably good idea, especially if the linked articles are checked for more details.

*Fantasies means "unofficial facts or figures" and it starts with an f.

Edirne, Bulgaria, and Turkish tests

So, it's time for a news update, probably well past time. And this time I have pictures, since my routine varied slightly. :)
This past weekend I headed to the city of Edirne. (I now have a difficult time calling a place with 120,000 people a "city"... that's significantly less than 1/100 the size of Istanbul.) Anyways, I went up there and had a look around the city a bit. It's a nice little city that seems quite easy to get around and definitely quite friendly. I visited the Selimiye Mosque which was the crowning accomplishment of Mimar Sinan, the greatest of the classical Ottoman architects. It's well worth the visit if you are ever in Edirne randomly. :) I took lots of pictures but am posting these two because they are a bit different than the ones I've normally put up. The one below is the dome of the mosque. But honestly if you didn't know that ahead of time I don't think you could be sure from the picture. It looks very similar to the glazed pottery bowls made here. Perspective is a fascinating thing.*

After visiting the mosque, I took a bus to the Turkish border and actually walked into Bulgaria. The border crossing people don't seem particularly used to people walking through, but they didn't object. I bought lunch in Bulgaria (which added to my collection of Bulgarian coins) and then headed back across the border. I got picked up by a nice man from Edirne who saved me about a mile worth of walking and the expense of paying for a ride back to Edirne. Apparently he felt sorry for the random American who seemed to be hitchhiking into his country. :) I made it back to Istanbul that night after a profitable and interesting day.

Today and Friday were my Turkish level 3 exams. I passed them with my best scores to date. So, that is a blessing. Tomorrow I am planning to try to arrange the last major details for studying at the university. Then on Wednesday, Turkish classes start back up. (University shouldn't start for about 2 more weeks.)

*The dome is over 100 feet in diameter, wider than the dome of the Hagia Sofia. Also of interest, the mosque has the four tallest minarets in the Muslim world.