Phillip and Rebecca Mefford

Stres Yapmay ın Don’t Stress The hinges on our toilet seat have rusted. A few stray cats are trying to make the balcony that houses our washing machine their new home. Despite seemingly earthquake-ready building codes a floor-to-ceiling crack on our bedroom wall makes us wonder. The metrob ü s is always crowded, no matter what time of the day. Taxi drivers rail on us about American politics. We still don’t understand anything our landlord’s wife tries to say to us. Before we came, we read the books and talked to the experts, but even with the best preparation, there is no way to avoid culture stress. You may be able to anticipate the major differences, but it’s hard to expect what little things will grate on you. A crack in the wall becomes an assault on our personal safety. A crowded bus intrudes on our hefty American space bubbles. A sweet, unassuming grandma offends our right to understand and be understood. What our preparation has taught us is that we are norma

Köşk Summer Palace In Istanbul, a city which hosted nearly 500 years of Ottoman rulers known as Sultans, one does not have to go far to discover the traces of the once imperiously lavish Ottoman Empire. Many of the city’s parks and tea gardens have been developed on land that was once set aside as a place of retreat for the Sultans. Today the small yet richly decorated wooden pavilions (known as a köşk), marble fountains, extensive gardens, and inspiring landscapes that once provided a leisurely escape for rulers now offer the same to us. The most famous köşk can naturally be found on the grounds of Topkapı Palace, but there are many scattered throughout the city. In fact, we know of at least two within walking distance from our apartment. One of these is in a park known as Küçük Çamlıca, or small pine hill. Taking advantage of a break in the weather, we took a walk up there this weekend. The best view—the Golden Horn to one side and the Prince’s Islands to the other—can be seen

Dinlendirmek to allow Rest A few intense weeks of studying through most of February prepared us for taking the Graduate Records Examination (GRE), a requirement for the master’s level classes we are taking to become certified to teach English as a foreign language. With a sigh of relief, we’ve passed the test and now have placed ourselves back in the thick of language study. Yes, by this point we can “get around” in Turkish, but it is a long road to the ethereal city of Fluency. Some days all this studying and bumbling over our words gets to us. The giant, looming question in the midst of it all is, “How do we keep sane?” So we ponder: 1. With seemingly never ending work to do to reach our goal, when is enough “enough”? When is it time to take a break? 2. How can we distinguish between taxing and relaxing activities? For example, when Rebecca watches the Thursday night t.v. series, Aşkı-Memnu, with our neighbors does that constitute work or play? 3. How can we keep in balance the

İnşallah God willing Over the last year our Turkish friends have taught us a very significant word: İnşallah, “if God wills it.” Coming from Arabic, inşallah is often used by the religiously devout as a way of acknowledging that no one other than God can see the next step ahead. And yet, inşallah has even filtered down to the more secular Turks who will use it in the lighter sense of “hopefully.” With two months of 2010 already gone, we look to the rest of the year as a blank slate before us—a blank slate that our minds are eagerly filling with plans and dreams. And yet this little word, so prolifically used in this country, serves as a constant reminder that, as James puts it, “you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’” With that said, this month we will study hard in the new level of language classes that