Goodbyes

I'm sitting in a hotel in Istanbul waiting for Nate to wake up from his nap, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to update the blog. For those who don't know, we've made the decision to move back to the States. When we made the decision we trusted the Lord to provide Stephen with a job in the fall, and He has. He's been offered a teaching job in Burleson, TX, so it looks like that's where we'll be this fall. We're thankful for his job, but we know that this whirlwind of life will continue for a few more months.

We've spent the past three weeks packing our things and closing down our lives in Turkey. There's a lot I'd like to say about the last two and a half years, but I think that's way more than one blog entry. For now I'll just say that three weeks of preparing for difficult goodbyes and then actually saying them was almost more than we could bear. Besides saying the goodbyes, packing up, and selling everything we own (for the second time) I also came up with a list of "lasts," both good and bad, to help us cope with leaving behind dear friends. Here they are.

The "I'm so sad" lasts:
• Last time to hear Nate called Umut.
• Last time to worship in Turkish.
• Last time to eat perde pilav, tavuk şiş, iskender, cevizli ev baklavası from Mado, and my neighbors’ various treats
• Last time to be forced to eat my plate full of sweets because it would be rude not to.
• Last time to stay awake listening to the music of weddings nearby, and the concluding fireworks.
• Last time to order fruits and vegetables from the little market down the street and have it delivered to my door.
• Last time to watch the elderly lady upstairs lower her basket down past our window to the neighbors below to be filled with food.
• Last time to drink tea and snack on sunflower seeds with friends and neighbors.
• Last time to sit on the balcony and marvel at the 2800 year-old castle down the road.
• Last time to use a squatty potty. (The clean ones aren’t bad and are preferable to western toilets when no one knows how to clean them.)

The "I'm really not sad at all" lasts:
• Last time to call and order water.
• Last time to wait all afternoon for the water to arrive.
• Last time for Nate to be awakened from his nap by strange noises coming from upstairs.
• Last time for me to be awakened in the night by strange noises coming from upstairs.
• Last time to be awakened by the call to prayer.
• Last time to be awakened by the sun beaming through my window at 4 am.
• Last time to clean coal dust (even out of the inside of my wardrobes and cabinets!)
• Last time to be told that Nate isn’t dressed warm enough and that he’s going to get sick because of it.
• Last time to be told Nate got sick because he got cold.
• Last time to have to bargain instead of paying a set price.
• Last time for the electricity to go out in the middle of cooking dinner, sending an email, talking on the phone, in the elevator …
• Last time to hold Nate in my lap in the car and endure the bumps, swerves, and fast stops and starts while he squirms and reaches for everything around him.
• Last time to deal with the insanity that is our city’s airport. A description would not do it justice.
• Last time to drink milk out of a box that’s been sitting on a shelf for weeks.
• Last time to use a nasty squatty potty.

The lists might grow as I ponder some more ...