Phillip and Rebecca Mefford

A labirent, or maze, worksheet about children from all over the world coming to Turkey. So apt for our preschooler. Uprooting one’s family to live in a foreign land must be done with much forethought. There is a great investment of the heart that goes into it, otherwise it is easy to begin resenting the host culture that you, yourself, decided to plunge into. There is a certain wonder that comes with friendly neighbors and interesting foods and even the challenge of decoding a new language—a wonder that can get lost. Particularly lost, when you see the annual Christmas photo, and you are not in it because you live so far away. When relatives come together to celebrate at weddings, mourn at funerals, and you couldn’t make it because you live three plane-rides away. This is the price we pay and we make our families back home pay it too. We are so thankful for that perfect blend of time off work, visas that allow us re-entry, and the generosity of those who help us take those t

we start teaching games early One of our priorities when packing up our American lives and hauling a few suitcases worth of stuff to Turkey was board games. Both Phillip and Rebecca come from a heritage of family time around the table with the classics like Monopoly and the epic like Settlers of Catan. In our observation board games are not very common in Turkish family time, although youth and university students are starting to catch on to the idea. Some cafes have Tabu and Scrabble tucked in the corner. Phillip also uses games like Catch Phrase and Scattergories in his English classes, which has proved to be popular. There are a few games that are common in Turkish social gatherings. One is Okey, a game we are still trying to decipher the rules to, which uses Rumi Cube tiles. The other is tavla, or backgammon. We’ve played our fair share of backgammon, but our friends here school us every time.