Language

To help us in learning the language, we use these things call lexicarrys.  Basically this is a book with lots of comic strips in it, but rather than have their words in the bubbles, it is blank so our language helper can fill in what local people would say in that situation.  In theory, this sounds like a great idea.  Unfortunately, I do not believe that our language helper has ever seen a comic strip so he really does not understand the concept.  This morning our lexicarry strip was of a person who said something that the other person could not understand.  To fill in the bubble, one would need to say..."I do not understand.  Please repeat."  or something of that nature.  This was a disaster!  We spent over thirty minutes trying to explain to our non-english speaking helper what we wanted.  Rather than telling us how to say "Please repeat that," he would simply just keep repeating himself!  He understood that we wanted the words repeated, but he just could not grasp that we wanted to know how to say "please repeat."  To add to this mess, script is read from right to left here unlike in the States where we read left to right.  These comic strips are drawn out left to right but our helper kept trying to look at them right to left.

A tiring day with a few tears of frustration shed, but in the end, I think we have the word for "repeat."

First Impressions

After three days of attempting to get this online, I finally present to you our first video.  Still haven't quite figured out how to get it on my video page, and I am not sure that there is any volume.  None the less, I hope you enjoy and get to see a few of our first impressions.

Time

Today we found out the time changed.  Except it changed on Thursday night/Friday morning and it is now Saturday evening.  We didn't find out that the time changed until after we arrived an hour and a half early to dinner at some friends' house.  Guess we'll have to stay up an hour later tonight to get back on schedule :)

More Like Home

Since my last post, I have been pleasantly surprised by a few great finds.  I have found two table runners, one for the newly purchased coffee table and one for the dinning room table.  Still need other things to liven up the tables, but they are looking better already!

Coffee Table - Runner with Lantern and Basket

Dinning Room Table Runner

I was incredibly encouraged and blessed this afternoon!  I posted last about how I forgot my measuring cups and did not think I would be able to find any here since they use the metric system.  Well, to my surprise, without even looking I found two different places that had measuring cups, actual cup measurements!  These are not like the cups I forgot back home, but they will work just fine.  :)  I am so excited.  I bought both of the ones I found.  One measures up to 1 1/2 cups and the other measures to 4 cups.  I think I'm going to try to make cookies tomorrow!  Nothing like a good cookie to go with your language learning.

Creativity

I have not been feeling very creative lately, well, since we arrived.  Before we left I was feeling very creative and loving it!  It was great experimenting with Gluten Free cooking, sewing or thinking of things I would like to sew.  Thinking of a million ways to make a home more comfortable and cozy.  Now that we've gotten here, I would love to still do those things, but I'm all dry.  I haven't found any fabric here, so I don't have anything to sew.  I brought a little bit with me and I need to make something for my table, but I just haven't got the creativity to do it.  I miss the cooking, but I really haven't figured out how the oven works yet, plus, I forgot my measuring cups (which is quite important in a place where they don't use our measuring system).  Things just taste different here and it's much harder without all the conveniences or even utensils to cook with here.  I'm starting to feel a little down because I don't have anything I can make. Maybe soon we'll go to another city and get some fabric.  These curtains are certainly not helping my creativity come out :)

Coffee

It has become a routine for us in the last week to head downtown in the evenings and get some coffee.  Well, I get a latte and Andrew gets tea.  Last night the coffee shop we stopped at could not make my latte so I ended up getting the very strong small cup of Turkish coffee.  It was good, but I just enjoy drinking for a longer amount of time.

Andrew enjoying his mint tea

Love a good latte

Our New Home Overseas (Some Before Pictures)

Our Doors...

Yes that's right, we have two doors.  The one on the right goes into our living room and the one on the left goes into the dinning room.  There is a sliding door between the living room and dinning room.  I believe these two doors are so if you have company in the living room, you can close off the sliding door and still come and go as you like in the rest of the house.

Living Room

This picture is taken through the half of the sliding door that is open.  The door to the outside is on the immediate right.  There is a TV in the corner on the left.

Dinning Room

Originally this room was more like a den.  The sofa's from the living room where in this room and those green cushions stacked in front of the window where around the room on the floor (reclined seating).  Our landlord put in a table for us in this room.

Guest Bedroom

Guest Bathroom

Sorry this one is on it's side...I could not figure out how to flip a pictures in blogger.  So, if you come visit us, you might have the opportunity to enjoy this shower squatty combo bathroom :)

Master Bedroom

This bed is actually pretty sweet.  It's bigger than a Queen but not quite as big as a King, and it is a spring mattress.  Apparently these are hard to come by here, they are mostly foam mattress (and I don't mean the Tempurpedic ones).

Master Bathroom

Sorry another picture on it's side.  Standard bathroom, we enjoy it, but unfortunately you cannot flush TP here so we're still getting used to that :)

Kitchen/Laundry

This is our Kitchen/Laundry combo.  We have had to buy quite a bit of stuff for the kitchen. As you can see there is little to no storage, so we've bought some plastic shelves along with dishes and silverware, etc. I do really enjoy that I can wash my clothes in the same room I cook in :)  No dryer though, we have a drying rack I hang the clothes on then move it outside on our balcony.  It's so dry here though, our clothes are usually dry in about thirty minutes if they're outside.  Amazing!

Well, I hope you've enjoyed to before photo tour of our new "flat."  We're still getting things settled in and set up like we want them, but things are coming along.  It's not what we're used to in the states, but we're not in the states anymore so I guess that's to be expected :)  Once we get things all settled, I'll try to take some after photos.  But who knows when we'll be all settled.  Thanks for keeping up with us!  Keep posted for more to come (like the wedding that went on last night right outside our window till 3 am).