Phillip and Rebecca Mefford

Eylül September  This September we have a lot to be thankful for (and Thanksgiving isn't until November!): Thank you Grandpa and Grandma Johnson for taking care of our Lincoln while we were at a conference! Thank you Gideon and Mel for letting us stay in your apartment during our New York trip! Thank you and happy birthday to my beautiful 95 year old Grandma who has modeled unconditional love and faithfulness to us all these years.

Ff Futbol, Fars çı   If you read documents dating back to the foundation of the Republic of Turkey you (assuming you know Turkish) you will find a disparity between vocabulary of that day and of today. This is because language naturally evolves over time, dropping idioms and phraseology here, borrowing words from another language over there. During the Ottoman period there was a great influence of Fars çı (Persian), Arapç a (Arabic), and even in the late 1800’s Fransizca (French). One of Atat ü rk’s cultural reforms when Turkey became a Republic was to cultivate a more “Turkish” Turkish, an effort to unify the nation and underscore the inherent pride in being a Turkish citizen. Thus, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was formed. This committee sought to replace loanwords with their more “truer” Turkish counterparts, sometimes inventing new words and sometimes stretching far back to their roots to find an originally Turkish word. Even today Persian, Arabic, and French

Ee Ekmek, Eklemek Food and language are two of the most important elements of culture. Ekmek , or bread, is a staple of Turkish cuisine making its place at every meal. Mostly baguette style bread is offered; but simit or sesame seed coated, bagel-esque bread rings make great daytime snacks. Bread not only lends insight into the food culture of Turkey, but also into religious values. A sacred entity, representing the nourishment that God provides, bread is rarely thrown away, but rather given to birds or cats if not entirely eaten at the table. No less overstated than bread, a big element of Turkish culture is the eklemek, adding of suffixes to root verbs in the Turkish language. While bread fuels the body, suffixes fuel the structure and syntax of how Turkish is spoken. Take eklemek itself: ek (independently, this is a noun which means “suffix; addition”) + -le (a suffix which turns a noun into a verb) + -mek (the infinitive suffix) = eklemek. There is a sort of mathem

Dd D ö rt Mevsim, Deprem   Contrary to popular belief, Turkey is not in the middle of the desert. In fact, many Turks, especially in Western Anatolia, pride themselves on the dört mevsim, four seasons, climate. The weather where we have been living, in Istanbul, is actually not so different from Rebecca’s hometown in Seattle—mild and rainy winters, flowery springs, warm but breezy summers, and inspiring falls. Another similarity to Washington State is its geological propensity for earthquakes. In recent history, the 1999 Yalova deprem (earthquake) registered at 7.4, toppling tens of thousands of apartment and business buildings, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives. Just last year on the Eastern border of Turkey, in the city of Van, there was a 7.1 earthquake, causing sizeable destruction. Far away from Istanbul, Van experiences harsher cold winters, and many earthquake survivors were left alive but shelterless in the cold. It was amazing to see the relief respons