I started language lessons with Emel, here she is leaving our meeting room to head back outside. By her clothing you can tell how cold it has been here!
Turkish is hard because I have nothing to relate it to, with french and spanish there are english similarities. Not so in turkish so it is all memorization. Belgin who is the cook and I work together and teach each other words too so I am at least learning a few little things.
On Friday the first day of the conference a woman walked in who Renata knew very well. She lives 5 hours east of here. She was carrying a tote bag ( and I am not lying!) that said "Red Rooster Grocery, Sequim, WA" on it! Renata who could not believe her eyes called me over to meet this lady and find out about Sequim. It was really strange but anyway her name is Jeri Bidinger and she and her husband have a house in Sunland and they live there 4 months of the year! She's attended church at DCC many times and wow did we ever get a big hoot out of all that. I have been telling Renata that I have met people all over the world who know about or know someone who is from Sequim, and now she believes me.
Here's a picture of Jeri and me taken today right after church
On Friday Belgin made Borek (pronounced ber-ek) for lunch. This is traditional Turkish food, a staple around here. She let me help her. She made spinach borek, cheese borek and meat borek. First Renata and I went to buy the yufka, which is a very thin pastry that is used to wrap the filling up in. We went to a tiny little shop where it is made fresh daily:
We bought four kilos of it and went to the kitchen where Belgin and I start to work making the borek:
And here they are coming out of the oven, look how proud Belgin is!
Renata's aunt Bryony from Germany arrived early in the week and she is staying here with us. She plays the piano and Renata the flute. They spent a lot of time practicing here at the house because they and a couple of other ladies provided music for the conference. What a sweet atmosphere it made to have them playing Christian music in the evenings. I took some videos of them but my still pictures didn't turn out so good. Here's one anyway just for the sake of it.
Here is Jim and me entering the city gate. The tower just behind my head is part of the city gate that Paul would have walked through. Diny and Carol from The Netherlands and England respectively, are just to Jim's left.
This was once a very wealthy and important city as you can tell by the picture above and the one below.
In this picture above you can see a channel running right down the middle of this main street of town. It carried water from the acquifer above all the way down the street for people to use and it flowed finally into the bath houses. The city of Antalya has made a similar feature on one of the main streets in town. I'll try to get a picture of that later.
Here's a picture of me sitting in one of the bath houses. They had changing rooms one for men and one for the women plus one room for each temperature of water: cold, lukewarm, hot and hottest. Each room had inlaid marble floors and walls, marble statues plus servants to make sure every guests wish was fulfilled. Many of these marble artifacts are in the Antalya Museum which I might be going to later this week if Renata gives me a day off!
I have to include this one last story. We ran into a shepherdess leading her flock out of the ruins. She was carrying a baby goat that still had the umbilical cord attached! It was trembling in her arms but it gave us all such a great addition to this wonderful afternoon in the ruins of Perge. Here is a picture of her with Hanan, a lady I am trying to get to know better, she is from Iraq, married to a Turk and she became a Christian in December just 3 months ago!
Lord bless you all until next time! I love hearing from home so email me or post a comment on the blog!
No comments:
Post a Comment