Perfect Little Visitors

The water park was a big hit.

One of the reasons we enjoy our time in Turkey is we never quite know what is going to happen next. Our experiences over the years have been funny, puzzling, crazy, infuriating but sometimes just special.We had a special one this week. My Turkish friend from a town a couple of hours away called me. We have been good friends for a few years and I really like her. She is a teacher and I have visited a couple of her schools. Teachers here seem to move to a new one much more often than we do in UK. When a group of us did the Pebble Project to commemorate a friend who had died it was one of her schools in the mountains that received some books in Pebble's memory. My friend hasn't had an easy life but a few years ago she took a step that some thought could be unwise for her. She adopted a girl who had spent much of her life in an orphanage. She says it has made her life complete and it is a joy to see them so happy together. There is another lovely girl in this story who is a little older. She comes from a family of ten and so of course providing university education is impossible for her parents. She is a clever girl and so my friend is sponsoring her through university and she spends a lot of her holidays in their home. Now I have only ever spent an hour or so with these girls, usually on my way to the airport so when my friend said please could she send them to me for a couple of days while she prepared to move house - I was rather scared. She felt it would be nice for them to be near the sea and the cooler breezy atmosphere. It is really hot where they live - it is 38C here! I was worried because they speak almost no English and I worried about them being unhappy. Well I shouldn't have worried, we had a wonderful two days together and now I wish I had said they could stay longer, maybe next year. They were the perfect guests, so tidy and polite and happy to join in with us. It made me speak Turkish, which I can a bit when I have to. Even Matt had a go. One evening they were studying a phrase book and they stood before us with big grins and said 'We like it here very much' Awww, I almost cried. We went to the water park which was a big hit, we had pide out, cooked together at home, taught them to play naughts and crosses, went to some beaches and generally had a good time. The house seems a bit empty now they have gone and my kitchen is  nowhere near as clean and tidy.



Learning to play naughts and crosses in English