One Year Anniversary Post

Right ok so we've been here a year today and boy what a year it's been! Crazy, chaotic, different sums it up quite nicely!

So one year ago today we left the UK not knowing what we were coming to, ok Paul had some idea but the rest of us didn't. Paul and the kids were excited, I was hmmmmmmm let's just say anxious. We came out of Ataturk Airport and met our taxi driver who drove us to the hotel. I looked at the surroundings, first impressions were not good, the buildings looked like somebody had been playing Jenga, concrete slab buildings that were half falling down with bits poking out, air conditioning units placed ever so not securely on the side. I said to Paul "what have you brought us to, I cannot live here it's like some run down council estate in the UK. His reply was "well it does get better".

Yes ok it did get better but only slightly! First impressions of the Turks were also not good, they seemed agressive, rude, always pushing and shoving. They were driving like maniacs jumping on their horns every two seconds - what was this crazy place we had landed in....

Another thing I did not realise was how hard it was to get things done when you can't communicate, our Turkish at that point wasn't even beginners level, we did a one week intensive course in the UK but really it was useless we didn't know any Turkish and these people didn't speak English, the language barrier was a huge challenge.

The kids adjusted well, life in a hotel for them was like a holiday. Food when they wanted, TV, swimming pool downstairs and friendly waiters. They also adjusted to school life well, they came home on the Monday already having made loads of friends so life for them was grand!

Those first few weeks were challenging to say the least, we finally got out of the hotel and into our own apartment, took another 2 weeks for our furniture and items to arrive ARGH. Life was getting better or at least I thought....

In fact life was about to get a hell of a lot worse, everything was frustrating, just going out to the shop became a huge challenge, Turks were frustrating. Things came to a head in November when I decided enough was enough and I HAD to go home - only something kept me here....

Experimenting with the public transport system opened my eyes to how the "real" Turks are. If you at least try to speak Turkish they love it, one of the phrases I used a lot here when travelling on buses is "pencereyi acar misiniz? (open the window) only when I used it the first couple of times I actually said "pencereyi acik misiniz, which translates as hungry the window please, got a few strange looks on those occasions but they did get the gist of what I was trying to say! If you ask them to open a window on a bus they do oblige but you can tell they aren't too keen, the way they start buttoning their coat back up or putting their scarves back on is usually the give away that they just don't like fresh air even when it's not cold whereas the Brits quite like being cooler well let's face it with the weather we are used to it is really no surprise!

I remember getting into taxis and saying where I wanted to go and they just didn't understand, it took me a couple of weeks to realise that if I actually wrote it down it would make life easier! I remember trying to take the kids to Emirgan Park last October and was pronouncing it as we would in English which is nothing like it actually sounds I decided to write it so they would know where I wanted to go. Funny that after a while and certainly after doing Turkish lessons you automatically start pronouncing things properly and then hear others trying to say it and thinking yeah that was me last year!

Right so what has changed in a year - well the weather for one thing, Turkish lessons are another, having come through all the frustrations I would totally recommend to anyone moving to a foreign country to learn the language, it opened a lot of doors for us and made life so much more bearable.

When I look back over the past year I can't believe how far I have come, this time last year I felt out of place and quite disorientated, I couldn't function normally I had to think about every little thing. Sometimes getting things done was successful and other times the frustration would make you want to scream.

Something else has changed now - I finally have a car YAY! I can finally just go where I want when I want I feel like a weight has been lifted. I can go up to school without having to wait around for taxis or buses - life is just getting better and better!

It was interesting though driving on the other side of the road and having everything in the car on the "wrong" side, for the first few days I kept faffing around on the wrong side for the gearstick and trying to take my seatbelt off on the wrong side. On one occasion I actually got in the passenger side and sat and thought hang on there's no steering wheel here - ah it's on the other side hmmmmmm.