We were having such lovely bahar havası (spring weather) and then Tuesday winter returned.  Today it can’t decide but as there was no rain, just wind and sun, I joined Sharman and Sophie for a morning walk through the hills.  Tomorrow, Thursday is Deks walk day so hopefully the weather will cooperate.  Now the wind is up making the boat rock and roll, but so bad as last time.  It is chilly enough (about 55 F) to have our wonderful, quiet, diesel stove heating the boat.  We keep a kettle on it for tea water.  Just now Randal put a small tin with boiling water (from the kettle) on the stove and added a few drops of the Lavender oil we’d bought at a Monday market.  Makes the boat smell nice especially after last night’s stir-fry meal of onions, peppers, mushroom, garlic and ground meat. Randal cooked! It tasted really good, but a closed up boat tends to trap smells.  The worst are the cooking smells left over from my salmon patties!  Yuck.  I had made them one night and then we left the boat closed up all the next day when we did the visa run to Nicosia.  The boat smelled as if some small thing had died.  Well maybe not that bad, but certainly not good.  We do have an oven exhaust fan, but that doesn’t quite do the trick.  You need to open portholes and doors.  Soon the boat will be open all the time as the weather gets warmer and that will be lovely. 

  Had another Sipahi coffee adventure.  Here’s the story.

Ru

Why Learn Turkish?

Working on my Turkish; a little wine never hurts!

Yesterday was Turkish Lessons at Deks. The weather was foul so Denise collected Pete and me from the marina. Denise doesn’t charge for the lessons nor for the transport. How often do you find that? And the lessons are fun! I know I’ve said that before, but it bears repeating. Inspired by the morning lesson and needing an afternoon of quiet, I sat down to work on the Turkish. That morning we had worked on verb past tense and prepositions and it had really, finally, hooray! sunk in so I wanted to keep working at it. There was another reason I wanted to work at it. During our walk on Sunday through Sipahi, Sharman and I had been invited for coffee by Nadia Yilidiz. (I’ve done my best with the spelling from what we heard her say.) I had left my cheat sheets on the boat (for the last time, I swear!) and between the two of us, Sharman and I don’t have enough Turkish to have a real conversation. We could understand some of the things she told us. She has 4 children, 3 girls and 1 boy. One child is in Istanbul, and one or two are still in school. And we could say that we don’t have children, (though both of us have connections to stepchildren we didn’t have the words for that.) My cheat sheets do, but they were on the boat. I do know the word for flowers and beautiful, so that came in handy as it was her flowers that had brought us all together. And we could tell her that we lived on boats at the marina. And that I was American and Sharman British. So we could converse some……

Here are the photos from our visit.

Lovely spring flowers, but what is the pink one in the middle?

Each time I had walked by Nadia’s house, in Sipahi I had admired her flowers. Sunday, while returning from our walk, Sharman and I had stopped to admire them and try to identify them with the small Cyprus wildflower guide Julia has loaned to me. Nadia saw us and came to try to help. She knows what they are, but could only tell us in Turkish. Then, as the people in Sipahi do, she invited us in for coffee. We drank coffee, had a lovely visit and then it was time for photos. Nadia was reluctant, but agreed.

Me and Nadia

Nadia and Sharman

I really like this photo of both Nadia and Sharman (except for the stove pipe sticking out from Sharman’s head.) Luckily, Sharman has a photo program that can make that go away. Then we will bring a copy to Nadia. I don’t know if you can tell from the photo, but Nadia has the most beautiful soft skin. Actually since I’m standing on Nadia’s right and Sharman on her left, maybe Sharman can put all of us in the photo! They are certainly color coordinated.

Nadia and her granddaughter.

What a lovely, smart 11 year old. Her English put our combined Turkish to shame! Sadly I didn’t get her name. She came after we’d had coffee and were going on our way.

Flowers everywhere, outside and in.

The Turkish coffee is thick and sometimes strong, but I have grown to like it. I have mine with a bit of sugar.

More of Nadia’s garden.

We were standing across the road where there are more flowers when Nadia came to talk with us.

Sophie getting a treat too.

Sophie had waited patiently for us and was now having some bread that Nadia had given to her. You can see that Nadia is barefoot. Sharman and I removed our shoes before entering but Nadia had told us that it wasn’t necessary. But since they don’t wear shoes in the home it feels better to do the same when visiting.

Water for Sophie

Nadia’s granddaughter is filling a bowl so that Sophie can have a drink.

I wonder if they use the stone oven?

Nadia had a wood stove burning. It has a side compartment for baking which is really neat. It certainly kept the front room where we were sitting very warm.

I will definitely miss Sipahi when we leave here. I am working on a short letter that I will ask to post in the small market in Sipahi. Denise is helping me write it. I use the Google translator and then I try to correct its mistakes and then Denise corrects all of the mistakes. We won’t be leaving until the end of April – beginning of May so I still have some time to learn more Turkish. And maybe deliver a few more apple cakes.