Hospitality

One thing we knew about Turkey before we came: the Turks are unbelievably hospitable. They equal or maybe even surpass the Kiwis in that area. Nothing we've experienced since the beginning of July has changed our opinion.
Monday night we were invited to our landlords' apartment for dinner. What a feast! We continue to thank God and our good luck that we happened to end up with the Akgüls for landlords. Semiha is an incredibly good cook, and Celal is equally good at barbecuing. Every time we get together I learn something more about cooking from Semiha, and on Monday we learned how to barbecue from Celal. Combine that with their two good-looking and interesting sons, and we found ourselves enjoying the evening immensely.

Semiha has also been dedicating her life to getting us connected to Türk Telekom's ADSL service. Yesterday she succeeded. I think she'd spend a lot of time reminding the company that was to connect us that they'd better get the job done. Yesterday they told her they'd do it at 4 p.m., so she arrived at 4 to make sure I didn't have any problems. Of course the technician didn't come until 6, so she gave me all that time from her busy life. I enjoyed drinking tea with her and getting to know her better, but I didn't want her to sacrifice so much for us. And when I thanked her she said as usual "Bir şe değil" - "It's nothing."

And then there's the way they do business here. I haven't experienced this much, but Tuesday I decided to visit a wool store I'd seen from the bus. I dropped in and selected a crochet hook and some knitting needles and picked up some balls of wool from their discount bin (50 cents for 100 gram balls!). Of course the two young guys looking after the store guessed I was a foreigner (maybe it was showing them the piece of paper I'd written the word for crochet hook on and asking them how to pronounce it) and they asked where I came from. One thing led to another and we got chatting. They pulled out a chair and told me to sit down - and then a man walked in with a nifty little tea carrier and I suddenly had a glass of tea in front of me. Soon the father of one of them arrived - he speaks English well - and our conversation got easier. We talked about the cost of living and gas prices and climate (everyone here thinks Canada is covered with ice and snow 8 months of the year) and had a great visit - as though they had nothing better to do with their time. Of course it was not only great hospitality - it was also a very good way of ensuring that I'll come back, which I will.

Knitting yarn is incredibly cheap here - probably the cheapest thing I've found so far. Even the full-price stuff is only a couple of liras. And it's big name brand, the stuff you see in European knitting magazines and would die to get hold of: Pinguin (sp?) etc. It's made in Turkey, it turns out - their textile and fibre industry is really big. I should have brought my knitting needles.

Crochet hooks are odd here. I'm used to having a flat area on the shaft that makes it easier to grip and get leverage. Not here. I've had to wrap a band-aid around the shaft of the one I use to make it possible to use. I asked Semiha about it and she showed me her grip: completely different from mine. She knits differently, too, which I expected - the European style has less waving of arms around and is faster once you get the hang of it, but I'd never seen the European crochet hook grip before.

So as you can tell, life is pretty settled now. It's nice having wireless high-speed Internet in the apartment. We can even sit out on the terrace and communicate with you now, or could if the sun weren't so bright that we can't see the screen. Life's tough!