One Year

This past Wednesday marked my first year of life in Turkey. I can't say that I now know exactly how to live and behave in any and every circumstance. Here I continue to be in some respects a foreigner. Lord willing, it will become less and less apparent with each passing day.
A year ago Wednesday I stepped off the plane and found that the airport had changed! I wasn't entirely sure I was actually in Ankara. I also found that I could understand a bit of the language that flew at me from various directions. Other things around town had changed. When I left five years before (now six years have passed!) the city boasted a couple malls. Now there seem to be malls popping up everywhere. Ankara indeed boasts one of Turkey's largest malls. People had also changed, or had I changed? Maybe it was that I really hadn't in a three month internship been able to dig deeply into culture and people as I had wanted.
Wednesday I went to class, only to find that my class really was canceled. No teacher...apparently. Returned home, went to the market, returned home again. Friends coming for dinner, celebratory lunch with friends. Needed to make borek for a friend who would be at dinner. Needed to make dinner. Needed to study. Work out? That should go somewhere into the schedule. Oh, and the phone doesn't work, but why not? The internet works. So basically, Wednesday was a normal day. Lunch was fabulous (salad!!), dinner was fabulous (especially one friend's animal noise impressions - I still laugh out loud when I think of it), no one drew blood in our crazy game of spoons, and my neighbor loves my borek. Oh, and the phone magically started working yesterday when I went down to the Turktelecom office to complain. Who knows what really happened. So life does go on one year later. The difference now is that I am more and more at home here, more and more seeking to rest in the Lord, and I can, by the grace of the Lord, understand more that a few words that fly at me. I can even make borek and cake that my neighbors and friends like.