Communication

Let's just preface this with the fact that I majored in Communications...

When I was playing volleyball at Arizona State, I had the privilege of running a clinic with a high school team of deaf girls. I was blown away with their ability to work together and communicate without speaking. This inspired me to learn sign language so I enrolled in my first ASL class. It was challenging but I absolutely loved it. I was briefly introduced to a small, loving, tight-knit community of some of the most eccentric people I have ever met. I love the way they communicate and completely wear their emotions on their sleeves. They do this out of necessity. Different signs carry different meanings based solely on one's posture and facial expressions.

I really liked this part of their language because anyone who knows me knows that I have several facial expressions and I'm pretty terrible at hiding the way I feel (this is both good and absolutely terrible depending on the situation).

Well now that I'm in a foreign country and I lack the ability to communicate in a similar language, I've had to resort to acting things out and relying on my facial expressions. It just made me realize that before I got to Turkey, I had grown accustom to some bad communication habits. I have answered people without even looking up from my tv screen, or phone, or laptop. It was rare that I would look someone (other than Jordan and Kawika) in the eyes when they were talking.

But with my current language barrier I have found that I've slowed down quite a bit. I really take the time to look others straight in the eyes and smile. And boy, this had made such a difference. I may not be able to understand them and they certainly can't understand me but I feel like I can truly see a small piece of their soul. Suddenly I am no longer a grammar nazi mentally correcting them in my head. I don't get stuck on incorrect pronouns, conjugations, and pronunciations. Instead I'm more concerned about the message rather than the delivery. And as scary as intimacy is for me, I'm more concerned about connecting with them on a human level than I have been in a really long time.

So that's it. Today I learned (again) how to effectively communicate. I'm sure I learned this at some point in my academic career but today I understand it. It only took me having to go halfway around the world to really knock the nail in... I LEARNED THAT THE HARD WAY :)

Big Day Today!

For those readers who have followed along from the beginning, remember how I said Kawika's room is bright and hot. Well I have a theory about this. Don't laugh. But I think its actually intentional. I don't know if this is a thing but do they make "drying" rooms? Seriously. Don't laugh at me and my ignorance. I'm being serious! We discovered that Kawika's room is PERFECT for drying our clothes. (Yes, this totally sucks that we have to hang dry our laundry. And yes, I sure do miss that feeling of soft, warm laundry straight out of the dryer. BUT I'm in Turkey. So back to my theory...) In two of the closets I found little racks (or maybe they're supposed to be shelves) that are perfect for the job. Our clothes are drying much faster now!! (But its still a process)

But that's not why today is a big day. (Although for a stay at home mom, speeding up chores is quite momentous). Today was a big day for us because we FINALLY got cable and Internet. I don't care as much about the cable because I don't really watch all that much tv (especially when the channels are in Turkish) but I am so pumped on the Internet. I finally got to Facetime home, create my actual blog, and google some translations!! Yes! It's learning time and with the Internet on my side, I could take over the world. Or Turkey. Or just say hi to the security guard downstairs. Or understand the labels on the bottles under my sink. You know, whatever. The options are endless and I'm completely thrilled.

Day 3

Well apparently I still haven't listened to my own advice from the learnings yesterday because today I tried to run the dishwasher. There are lots of bottles under the sink and I'm not sure what they are so I went for the trial and error method (as I usually do). In case you are wondering, the internet still does not work so I still can't google any translations…yet. (Thank goodness for modern technology. I have a special, new appreciation for it). I'm still not sure yet what I poured into the dishwasher or if I poured it in the right place so if anything interesting happens on that front, I'll be sure to update this blog! But I can say that whatever I poured in there smells like lemons so that could be promising, right? 

As far as not having a dryer goes, I've been pretty creative with places to drape our clothes while they dry. For example, our kitchen cupboards are pretty empty so its a large flat surface that isn't being used and therefore perfect for our laundry. Hopefully this turns out well…

I learned that the air conditioning not only creepily leaks water in the middle of the night but it also does nothing for Kawika’s room so it’s really hot in there. The windows in his room are lacking curtains so its also very bright. This is not conducive for sleeping or napping. So our living room is temporarily being used as Kawika’s bedroom. It works but I don't want that to be permanent. I haven't figured out why but last night K woke up every hour on the hour like clock work. He wasn’t hungry and it was pretty easy to comfort him and put him right back down but it did not make for a restful night of sleep for anyone. Today is Jordan’s first practice with his new team so hopefully he does well on less than ideal sleep. I guess that’s to be expected with a newborn though.

So to sum it up today, still no internet. And although we have a car (an automatic black VW Jetta), we don't have access to our building’s garage yet so we have to park far away. The SIM cards we got for our phones don't work properly so we need to get that fixed. Neither our shower nor our bathroom sink drain properly and that’s getting old pretty fast. I really wish I had a working phone and internet so I could google translations because grocery shopping was an “adventure” in itself and much more challenging than I had imagined. But hey, at least today I’ll have something more than just bread to eat for lunch!

Day 2. Hot and fresh out of the dryer. Not.

Jordan had to meet Ege downstairs early in the morning to go to the hospital for a physical and various tests so this was my first (but certainly not my last) time being left in our apartment alone. By this point, we had already eaten through the few groceries that Ege had stocked us with so I was pretty hungry. Instead of venturing out on my own, I stayed in the apartment and waited for Jordan to get home. I did this because let’s be honest, I am scared to go out alone but I was also tired and I really didn't feel like going out into the heat. Oh by the way, it is much cooler here than in Az but the only difference is that they hardly use air conditioning here. At least that’s been my experience with every building I’ve been in since we got here. Nobody runs the air conditioning and it’s hot. Especially for a newborn babe who prefers to be swaddled. 

So because of those reasons, I decided to stay inside and unpack everything. Well, some friends had given us some advice to bring some spices with us because we probably wouldn't be able to find them here. I’m glad we followed that advice because I can't find anything in the grocery store here BUT we failed to pack properly so one suitcase has some seriously strong smells coming out of it and everything in it is heavily seasoned with montreal steak spice. YUM. 

After unpacking I thought it would be nice to do some laundry. Everything is labeled in Turkish and since I don’t have internet in my apartment, I can't even look up the translations. But doing laundry is pretty self explanatory so I thought I had it covered. The only problem was that after it finished washing, I couldn't figure out how to make the dryer setting work. I pushed every single button and allowed each one to run through it’s entire cycle before trying the next setting. That was stupid. I must have washed this one load about 10 times and it took me ALL day. I finally gave up and decided that when Jordan got home we could walk to the cafe to get internet and google the translation for dryer.

Flash forward to Jordan finally home. We went to the cafe and couldn’t get internet access so still no progress on the dryer (as well as no contact with anyone at home). As we were leaving though, we ran into Ege as well as the team's owner’s son. The son happens to speak perfect English and he was able to provide me with the word I had been searching for (which by the way I have already forgotten). Well Ege overheard us talking and although he didn't understand dryer in English, he understood it in Turkish and he informed me that this tiny strange little washing machine does not dry. I’m not sure why I thought it was a combined washer and dryer. Maybe I've made this up on my own but I swear I've seen one before. I'm quite disappointed that its only a washer for the obvious reasons but also because I was excited to see how one machine could both wash AND dry our laundry. Oh well. Maybe another time. So long story short, before you wash your sheets 10 times (9 out of 10 without detergent), maybe just wait and ask someone how to use a Turkish (or other foreign) appliance. 

Our first night in our new home

Ok so anyone who knows Jordan knows that he comes with a lot of electrical cords. Its completely insane how many cords this man owns. In fact, there is a box in our storage unit back in Az completely devoted to his cords. I couldn't tell you what half of them go to but Jordan certainly knows (thank goodness!) 

Anyways, having said that, the first thing Jordan did when we got here was try to plug in his extension cord with the adaptors we bought on Amazon. Well, this blew out the power in our entire house. And instead of going downstairs to find someone to help us get the power back on, we thought we could just open up all the windows and sleep through it. Well we were wrong. It was stupid hot. The sheets in our room were brand new and had never been washed and therefore itchy so we tried to sleep on the couch. Kawika’s room was the hottest of all so we brought him in the living room with us. Well he was so hot and uncomfortable that he couldn’t sleep without his swing swinging. And since we didn't have batteries, I stayed up ALL night long pushing his swing back and forth so that he would sleep. I don't think I've ever been so tired and felt so gross in my entire life. I just wanted to shower and sleep but neither one of those happened anytime soon. 

Sometime in the mid morning Jordan finally went downstairs to get some help. He found someone who could barely understand what we wanted but with one simple switch, he got the power back on in our house. Why oh why do we always do things the hard way? If your power is out and your apartment building has a concierge, go get help. Don't put yourself through the misery. WE LEARNED THAT THE HARD WAY.

Anyone see the trend…?

The Journey to our new home

Let me just start this off by saying that Kawika is a total champ. I mean I got lucky when it comes to babies!! (I think God knew that he was about to put us through some serious challenges but because he so intimately understands my shortcomings, he blessed me with a peaceful, happy baby.) Anyways, the first leg of our journey was a 10 hour flight and this kid hardly made a peep. The flight attendants loved his smiles and couldn't believe how relaxed and happy he was. On the complete opposite scale of peace, was the little girl sitting next to me. She is probably 2 years old and has the most amazing lung capacity I have ever witnessed. She screamed for 8 of the 10 hours of our flight. I mean she screamed. It was awful. Her poor mother couldn't do a thing to shut her up. I really felt for her.

The next leg of our journey was a 5 hour flight and although we didn't get the bulkhead seats we did get rows to ourselves so that was a pretty painless flight as well. As a side note, I carried on like 20 outfits for K ( just in case he had some blowouts) and literally he wore one outfit throughout the entire thing. But believe me, if I hadn't packed them and lugged them around, he would have been shooting out poop like crazy. Just sayin. 

So when we landed, we had to clear customs but of course they wouldn't let us in without first purchasing some visas. That was a complete pain because we cleverly had exchanged our US dollars for Turkish Lira only to find out that at the TURKISH visa counter, they only accept US $ or Euro. So that was cool.

When we finally got to baggage claim (in Europe its called “baggage reclaim”) we looked all over for someone who might be looking for us. The team that Jordan plays for has an English speaking manager named “Ege” who was supposed to pick us up. We couldn't find anyone so we preceded to REclaim our bags. When we went to rent a little cart we found out that we needed coins. After begging people for change for a 5, getting turned down at every single cashier in the airport, having just about everyone tell us they don’t speak English, I tried for the vending machine. As I waited in line for my turn, some kind old man realized what I was trying to do and pointed me to a giant sign labeled “coins” where a lovely man gave me the change I had been searching for. Apparently more people in the world had the same problem as we did and the airport had indeed noticed the trend and provided a highly convenient means for resolving the problem. WE LEARNED THAT THE HARD WAY.

Well we decided to push on despite being completely confused, exhausted, and lost. As we exited to what we thought was the street, we noticed a crowd of people waiting for their loved ones in the reception area. I have never been in an airport where the baggage claim was blocked off to the public so that’s why I was confused and thought that Ege forgot about us. Anywho, that’s when I noticed two kind faces (one being Ege) who recognized us and came running over to greet us. By the way, they had a camera in their hands and were filming us the entire time and let me just say that after being in the air for 15 hours and traveling literally across the world, nobody looks good. So if anyone sees the footage, don't judge.

I don't remember much about the drive to our home other than that I couldn't stop thinking about which day it was and if it was Sunday, where was our church located and how early did we need to wake up to be on time. Eventually though we got to our new home. It’s located in a HUGE building with a pretty grand foyer and fully equipped with security, cameras, and lots of locks. It’s supposed to make me (a scared little American girl) feel safe but it really just makes me wonder why we need this level of security…? 

Our place is cute. 

As you can see in the photos, its a fully (IKEA) furnished 2 bed/ 1 bath apartment. And as we had guessed, the team didn't have our car, SIM cards, or internet ready for us. But in all fairness, we had been warned about this so our expectations weren't set too high. We were just grateful that Ege was thoughtful enough to purchase us some groceries and we had some water to drink! He is a very sweet man. 

intro

Hey family, friends, (and potential strangers who are just bored and lurking on the internet)…. For those of you falling in the latter group here is a brief intro for your benefit. 

This is me. Malia.

This handsome guy is my husband Jordan.

And this cutie is our son Kawika.

Now you may be asking yourself about the title of my blog. Well for those of you who know me, its quite fitting. But in case you're still confused allow me to explain...I tend to learn things the hard way. By that I mean I typically find the most difficult way to accomplish a task and then that is how I get it done. Now don't get me wrong. I do NOT do this intentionally by any means. It just happens that way and I simply choose to find the humor when I look back at my experiences and realize that I did it the hard way. 

For example, as a newlywed I thought it was smart of me to wait to change my name until we had a bit more money in the bank because I thought it would be an expensive thing to do. Well I was wrong. Turns out it’s insanely easy and completely free...as long as you change it in the first 6 months of your marriage. (I wish someone had given me that bit of wisdom when I got married!) Well I think I waited something like 18 months so I had to go through an appeal process with a JUDGE and then I had to pay about a total of $1000 to get it done. If only I had known. This whole name change business gave me more headaches down the road but that’s another story. Let me just say to the ladies, change your name as soon as you get married and then save your ID until literally EVERYTHING you've ever had is under your new name. Even then, maybe still keep it. Just in case. I know some of you may be tempted to chuck it out because like me, you don't want to be a hoarder but seriously, it’s a small piece of plastic. Keep it.

Now onto the real blog itself. My husband and I have just moved halfway around the world to TURKEY!! I know I (or rather we) will be learning a lot and I'm sure most of it will be the hard way (hence the very reason why we are probably in Turkey). So I thought it might be fun to document it as we go along. And for our family that is oh so far away, it might make it feel like we're a little bit closer if they can read this blog and learn along with us...