Tea-Time

One of women’s favorite things to do each day, after cleaning & cooking every morning, is to sit around, drink tea, and eat nuts or little cakes. In the summer they sit out on the balconies, which are beautiful! It obviously helps my Turkish to be able to sit, listen, & talk with these women, my friends!

Fort-Building

We love baby-sitting our friend’s kids – they’re so cute! We’re sure you’ll agree! Dan built a fort with them… as you can tell – they had fun with this!

Lynn's Pick: Scrapbooking

We’ve been told that it’s good to have a hobby that you enjoy to do to help you relax, since sometimes living cross-culturally can be more stressful than living in your own culture. Dan has lots of hobbies – a variety of sports & music being the main ones – but I (Lynn) don’t really have many. But before we moved I scrapbooked our wedding & honeymoon & decided that would be a fun hobby to do here. I brought some materials & great friends have sent me other ones. For my friend’s birthday I made her a homemade birthday card…
She loved it. I didn’t have a specific present because I’m having it brought from the States. She’s seen my handy dandy compact reusable shopping bag & asked where I got it. I said America, I don’t think you can get them here – yet. So that’s what I got her for her birthday.

On the inside of the card it says… “Now, there isn’t a present because…”
Then you open the present and it says “It’s coming from America.”

Handy-Man Dan

We all know that Dan is handy… well, it’s very true! He’s done so many amazing things to fix up our house/apartment. Here he’s is fixing a very squeaky door that didn’t latch very well. But he’s also… installed a new toilet mechanism & seat, installed light fixtures, fixed our thresholds, put up pictures (into concrete walls!), fixed our shower head, and a lot more that I can’t remember or may not even know about! Thanks Dan… I love you!

Care Package

We got another great care package! Thanks to our friends & family who graciously sent over all this great stuff! We can’t wait to eat the food for the upcoming holidays, watch the movies, use the scrapbooking stuff, and much, much more!

Dairy Directions

Here’s a local cell phone ad proclaiming: “We’ve never milked a cow”

Dan has been getting some opportunities to learn about dairying here and visit some dairy areas. In general there has been a significant urban migration so that more people are further from agriculture. At the same time, certain technologies, ideologies, and ways of organizing and doing agriculture are slowly shifting. Just north of our city there is a big project farm with plans to have ~2,000 cows. Right now there aren’t any, but the construction is progressing.



The fields down the hill from the barns.


The pit for the milking parlor.

On the other side of the lake there is a larger dairy that has been around about 5 years. They are milking ~200+ cows mostly black and white, but a few Simmental and other bloodlines are in the mix, thus the red and white calf.

The farm has a great view of the surrounding mountains like Suphan.

I’ve also traveled up to Agri (Mt Ararat area) and to Kars and visited some smaller farms, a feed processing plant, and a dairy processing plant.

All in all, I've been learning a lot so far about the history, current resources, and general organization of the dairy industry and am meeting good, helpful people.

"The Sugar Holiday"

We just celebrated, what loosely translated would be “the sugar holiday”. For three days people visit family & friends, and family & friends visit them! What do they do when they visit – get a piece of candy, eat dessert & drink tea, coke, or juice. Usually people visit for 20-30 minutes before heading to their next house.

We had a great time celebrating our first Sugar Holiday with neighbors & friends. We had 13 adults visit our house, which we hear is a lot for foreigners on your first Sugar Holiday. On the first day we visited Lynn’s language helper & her family. They’ve been wanting to meet Dan for awhile, and this was their chance! We had a great time, stayed for dinner, & then Lynn got to help make “fried cheese sticks”.

A Visit to the Cemetery

This week as I, Lynn, spent sometime with my language helper & her family, I visited the cemetery with them. Even though my language helper & sister don’t normally cover their heads, when entering the cemetery they do, and I did too. The cemetery is considered a very holy place.

We first visited their father’s grave, who died only this past March. Each grave is marked by a fence around where the body is laid. As we walked around, it was important to not step where someone had been laid. After visiting their father’s grave, we also visited the graves of both their grandfathers, as well as other relatives, all buried in the same graveyard. At each grave, a prayer was spoken.

I didn’t take any pictures while there but I found these on the internet & they give you an idea of what the various gravesites looked like. Often, flowers & trees are planted where each person is buried.

My language helper & her family visit the cemetery once a week. After leaving the cemetery their mother handed out vanilla wafers to those we passed on the street. This stems from giving out bread or food to the poor or people in general on behalf of those who have died.
It’s been great to not only learn language from my language helper, but also learn more about the culture of this great people!

Thoughts on a Kurdish Wedding

Well, even though we live in Turkey, you may know that where we live a lot of people are ethnically Kurdish. We won't go into more details here, but I'm sure you can find out more about who they are on-line!

There's probably nowhere else they show more of their culture than at a wedding. We had the honor of attending a friend's wedding this weekend. Here are some observations...

- Tea is important... they had a little tea hut set-up outside just for the occasion.
- Except maybe at a track meet I've never heard so many blanks shot from a gun.
- Shooting fireworks off the roof doesn't seem safe.
- The party goes on all night... the wedding started on Saturday night with dancing, but when we left at 11:30pm the bride hadn't even gotten there yet. She was with her family doing henna.
- Although we're not close friends with the groom (and haven't even met the bride), we were honored guests... we had a following of small kids all night!

Some guys doing their traditional dances (kinda like line dancing)

When all the ladies come out to surround the groom with candles & fireworks are shot off the roof.

Kites

A few weeks ago while visiting some friends, Dan & Stu, tried to fly their little boy’s kite. Eventually they got it up, but it did take a little work!