Traveling Tales

We have arrived in Ankara, and our first day has been fantastic! I thought I'd do a little write-up of how our travels went, since so many of you were thinking about and praying for us as we went.

We spent several days before we left doing some intense thinking regarding our packing, because we wanted to limit our baggage to 6 pieces. The Lufthansa website said that each passenger got one free bag and the second for each of us would be $70. We really didn't want to pay more than that, and each bag could only be up to 50 pounds. When we packed up our Missouri house, there was WAY too much stuff that we had initially set aside as potentially traveling with us, so that meant we had to make some hard decisions about what could go and what could stay. After lots of packing, weighing, unpacking, reweighing, etc., we finally had 6 completed bags that were all exceptionally close to 50 pounds. We had no idea how heavy the airport scale would actually make them, so we just did our best and prayed either they'd all be under 50 or the person at the check-in counter would give us grace. Here we are at the counter with all 6 of our bags:
We arrived at the LEX airport on the morning of the 2nd, and we went to check in. We got our boarding passes and then began getting our luggage weighed and tagged. I put the two heaviest (according to our scale) first, so that if I had to take something out, I'd have time to do that while the rest were being handled. The first one weighed in at 49.5 pounds. SCORE! Then the second, 49.5. YES!! Then the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth... ALL weighed 49.5 pounds! We couldn't believe it! We'd achieved maximum capacity without going over! That was nothing short of a miracle.

Then, to astound us even further, the check-in attendant (whose jaw was on the FLOOR after weighing those bags!) tagged all our bags and sent them off on the conveyor, and he never said anything about paying for the extra bags. So we asked him what we owed, and he said the computer would've asked for payment before it printed the tags, so since it didn't, he wouldn't charge us anything. WHAT?! We had perfectly packed bags and they ALL get to fly free?! We were giddy with joy - what a perfect way to start our trip!! We felt completely covered in grace.

So we hugged our families goodbye and boldly set off to face the unknown! My mom took a picture of our plane taking off:
Our first flight from Lexington to Charlotte was short and uneventful. We got to Charlotte and had a 3.5-hour layover before our long flight across the ocean. We were very pleased to discover that the international terminal was connected to the one we landed at, so we didn't have to go through security again in order to reach our gate. We hadn't gotten boarding passes for the second two flights when we checked in for the first, and so the first thing we did upon arrival was head to our gate in order to get our boarding passes. We were some of the first to check in, and we mentioned to the attendant that we were traveling with a child and were hoping to find some way to make him comfortable enough to sleep on the plane. She couldn't put us in first class, but she did give us a row of 4 seats to ourselves, so we had an extra seat where Elias could stretch out and lay down. What a blessing that turned out to be!

The flight was long, but Elias did as well as could be expected. He fussed when we put his pajamas on and told him to go to sleep, and then it took him quite a while to fall asleep, but he did end up getting a little over 4 hours, which was about half of the flight. So that was great! Justin and I didn't get any sleep at all, but we rested quite a bit and were able to function well enough to get us the rest of the way.

We landed in Munich at about 8:15am local time, and we had a 3-hour layover there. The airport wasn't very user-friendly, but they did have a little place called "Kiddieland" that had little rides you can pay to ride like the ones you see at a grocery store. Elias was thrilled to just play on them without paying, and that was the majority of our layover there.

The last flight from Munich to Ankara was about 3 hours, and we were all extremely tired by then, but it passed without incident. Before we left Kentucky, Justin had gotten Elias a new train toy that was going to be his special new toy for the airplane, and that was a major stroke of brilliance. Elias played with that thing for seriously half of our total travel time. We just put down the tray table in front of him, and he played with his trains! So this is what he did for most of the final flight too, and then we landed in Ankara!

We quickly made it through the visa checkpoint where we purchased our tourist visas, then through passport control. We bought carts and waited to see if our baggage made it. Our three suitcases came on the conveyor, but alas, the three trunks didn't. So Justin went to find where to report lost luggage, and as he was waiting in line there, I saw a door to the side marked "Oversize Bags." (In English!) Just as I glanced at it, I saw some workers wheeling in our three trunks on a cart! Yahoo!!!! They hadn't been lost, just set aside as too large to go on the conveyor! So we got all our luggage, and our friend Nathan who lives in Ankara with his family was waiting for us outside with a rented van to carry us home. The trip from the airport to our home is about an hour, but Elias and I were enjoying our first views of Turkey!

We had a small complication because we hadn't expected to arrive so soon - we didn't really think all our flights would be on time or that everything at the airport would go so smoothly! (Oh we of little faith!) This only meant that our landlord wasn't at the apartment to let us in. So Justin managed to ring a neighbor and get them to buzz us into the front door (just the first of MANY times I am so thankful for his functional Turkish!!), then he hauled all the luggage up the 3 flights of steps to our front door, and he sat with them to wait for our landlord. Meanwhile, Nathan took Elias and I home in a taxi to his house, where we had a joyful reunion with his family, who are dear friends of ours. When his wife, Rachel, learned we were coming, she even whipped up a quick dinner for us! What a blessing!

So the landlord did come and give Justin the keys, and after dinner, Nathan brought Elias and me back in a taxi to our new home! Elias was so tired that he fell asleep in the taxi on the way home, so we just brought him straight in to bed, and he slept the night away! Justin said he and Elias were both up in the middle of the night because of the time difference, but they went back to sleep, and I slept right through it all! Our first day has gone VERY well, and we love our new place! This post is already long enough, so I'll post more on that another time. But we are so extremely thankful for how smoothly our travels went - we appreciate everyone's prayers!

Leaving on a jet plane (three, actually)

As I write this, I'm reading Tweets from people in Ankara about the weather, it's currently -4 Fahrenheit there. Snow is expected with a high of about 32 degrees when we're expected to arrive on Friday.  This is the contrast from the sunny, 62 degree day we've had in Kentucky. Europe has had a suddenly severe winter to contrast with the U.S.'s balmy weather. Needless to say, we'll be bundled up running from the airplane to the shuttle bus on the tarmac.

We've packed our life into six suitcases and we're ready to go.It has been a long couple weeks of driving a U-Haul through the Ozarks and half of Kentucky, visiting relatives in Kentucky and Tennessee, and downsizing our life to six bags.

If you had to shrink your life down to six bags weighing less than 50 pounds each, what would be in them?  If you're like us, most of your stuff will belong to your kids.

We look forward to our first update from Ankara. We hope to be sharing exciting news of some potential business opportunities in the next couple of weeks.

Wrapping It Up

We are now just a couple days away from our departure! We've said all our goodbyes in Missouri, and completely moved all our worldly goods to Kentucky, where they'll stay in my parents' basement! We've visited Justin's side of the family for a quick visit, and now we're putting the finishing touches on packing our bags for travel! Since anything we could want is available in Turkey, not to mention that we hear customs for international shipping is a major hassle, we're only taking what we can take with us on the airplane. That is resulting in some major decisions regarding what to take and what to leave behind! Things are looking good, though, and we are excited as the day draws nearer. We fly out from Lexington, Kentucky about noon on Thursday, and we should arrive in Ankara at 3:15pm on Friday local time (which is 8:15am EST). We'll keep you posted as much as we can! Thanks for support and prayers!

Packing, selling, and hauling

Blogging sparse here because we're still busy ridding our house of our belongings and packing up what will be stored with our families. Our church was kind enough to give us access to their guest house as we sell things like our refrigerator.  We have five more days in Missouri before spending a week with family in Eastern Standard Time. We have plane tickets to depart for Turkey on February 2.  Please keep us in your thoughts as we sell stuff, tie up tedious loose ends, and transition.

Moving to Ankara

Sorry for the blogging hiatus. I (Justin) took a quick trip to Ankara last week, being graciously hosted by friends of ours while I looked for an apartment.  I have found a good setup in Çankaya, on the south side of town. It's a fully-furnished place which means it's ready the moment we get off the plane.  The arrangement will be pretty informal with an indefinite time commitment, which is nice. So, we're still on track to leave for Ankara at the end of January.  I'm really thankful that we've found something perfect for our immediate needs.

Not much development on the job front, but we're waiting on a few potential opportunities to develop.  Now the next couple weeks we'll sell the rest of our stuff, pack up, and move out!

Turkish language learning tools

As we journey through Turkey we will chronicle what we're doing for language learning.  I chronicled a few of my techniques here and here when we were in Moldova and I was working on my Russian. Since June, I've been working daily through some Turkish materials that I find really helpful. We're in a small U.S. town without frequent access to native speakers, so I have to be creative. I've recently stumbled across Aaron Myers' The Everyday Language Learner blog that has reminded me that it's important to share what we're learning to encourage others.

Here's my current lineup of tools:
1. The Foreign Service Institute Turkish Basic Course.  These old materials were used by U.S. State Department personnel and are a goldmine. Two comprehensive textbooks (PDFs), dozens of hours of accompanying audio examples (MP3), and a Turkish graded reader (PDF) for additional literary challenge.

I read the FSI textbook on my iPad and iPod via the GoodReader app. This allows me to write notes, highlight, bookmark, etc. right onto the PDF file. I listen to the mp3 on my device as I go, so my tablet has become a critical language tool.

2. Busuu.com.  Busuu is a free language learning site that features the ability to have your writing exercises graded by native speakers (I, in turn, grade others' English work) and to have interactive chat as well.  The exercises are primarily good for building vocabulary. It is not a good teacher of grammar, it assumes you have something to help you understand.  Premium access gives you the ability to download audio files, have speaking practice, and more, but it's too expensive for me to find worth it.
I find it invaluable to have my writing corrected and improved by native speakers.  Busuu also has a couple related apps in the iTunes store.

3. Anki flashcards.  Anki is a free, open-source flashcard program. I like Anki because it allows me to see a word in English and type the answer in Turkish. You can customize with graphics, audio, etc. and it syncs across various platforms including HTML5 (as a web app).  It has a nice algorithm for determining the frequency of how often you need to see a word.  

4. Turkish television and radio. WWiTV provides a list of plenty of Turkish channels that stream online. These can also be found using the moTV Free app for iOS. eCNBC plays movies and NBC sitcoms in English with Turkish subtitles. The nice thing is that I can pause every frame if I want to in order to record new phrases or think about the translation. I've always found soap operas to be great language tools since they use simple language, pause often for dramatic effect, and repeat ideas over and over.  There are plenty on these channels.

Children's cartoons are also helpful and fun since I am familiar with some of the PBS counterparts that have been translated to Turkish, like Caillou.  You can find many of these on YouTube, and I use keepvid.com to download them onto my computer and transfer them to my iOS devices.

Radyo is an app that contains hundreds of Turkish radio stations that stream live over the web.  It also features a chat room while you listen, which is a great way to see how Turks interact in an SMS-style environment. My favorite radio stations are SlowTurk and Radyo SlowTime because, you guessed it, the music is slow and the words are fairly clear. Radyo allows you to record music and there are some I will listen to again and again to get the meaning.  Popular videos are often uploaded to YouTube so I can keepvid them as well.

5.  Other iOS Apps.  Google Translate is handy via web browser or as an app along the way.  But for the iPad I find the Sözlük Dictionary to be great as well as Zargan, both of which give examples of the word used in common phrases. The downside is you have to have an internet connection to access these.  3,000 Turkish verbs is good as a reference, and there are others, like Turkish Test, for more offline practice.  Plenty of Turkish newspapers have apps, as do the English-language ones like Today's Zaman. I'm not reading Turkish newspapers much yet except for the occasional headline and to see what is of interest.

6. Kutsal Kitap. There are various websites and apps that allow us to access this book and compare text easily across languages. Joni worked to create our own handy version for iBooks, so it is also good offline practice.  While this is "high Turkish" it's great to take something we read in English and learn its equivalent in Turkish. It's definitely a vocab-builder.

I greatly look forward to using language helpers in Turkey and getting back to using other resources like the Lexicarry. Oh, and the whole immersion thing. But for now, this is what I have to work with. There are other websites and resources out there but the above are the ones I find most efficient for my purposes.  You can see that my mobile devices are now a crucial part of my language toolkit.

Making Progress

The past couple days we've made some huge progress toward our move! Some big deals this week:

• Justin finished his job at the university and turned in his key.
• Justin sold his car.
• We turned in our notice to our landlord that we'll be moving out at the end of January.

So this move is really happening! And happening fast.

The next month, besides Christmas/New Year travels and Justin's trip to Ankara for house-hunting, we'll be focusing on sorting and packing. It's a little overwhelming to go through all of our possessions and decide what to take with us, what to put in storage, and what to sell! But little by little, we'll get it done.