Cross-cultural Marriage Series Part 2: Pick a language, any language

"Dil" means "language" in Turkish

Moonpie was nice enough to contribute the picture to the left to this post. She's so advanced. She is already bilingual as evidenced by her agile switching between “Baba” and “Dada” (no “Mama”? Really?) In a funny twist, “mama” is Turkish baby talk for “food”, so that could function really well for her. But no “mama” yet.

Anyway, I love that we have more than one language in which to communicate. Probably the most common question that we get asked is “Which language do you speak at home?” The answer truly is both! We go back and forth and back again. Sometimes we have conversations where I speak English and he speaks Turkish, and sometimes we have conversations where I speak Turkish and he speaks English. Sometimes we both speak English, then switch to Turkish, and the other way around. Now, right about now some of you are probably feeling really sorry for Moonpie to be growing up in this muddled linguistic environment, but kids almost always figure it out and do just fine. “They” say (whoever “they” is) that bilingual kids generally talk later, but catch up and surpass their peers in three or so years. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Here is a typical phone conversation:

Me: Merhaba

Him: Merhaba, nasilsin?

Me: Oh, I’m fine. Sen?

Him: Iyiyim ben de. Ne var ne yok?

Me: Did you take the car today?

Him: Yeah, I did. Were you going to go somewhere?

Me: IKEA’ya gitmeye dusunuyordum but that’s ok. It’s not urgent.

Him: Ok, yeah, I’ll leave it tomorrow.

Me: Tamam. Optum.

Him: Love you

Yes, you see IKEA in there. I love IKEA here. It’s a bastion of normal products at normal prices, a stronghold of plain and simple in a wide open field with glitter and oversized and overpriced ready to attack you from every side.

Compare:

     

 








 and

Anyway, this was a post about language. We use both. I love it.

Cross-cultural Marriage Series Part 1: Throwing our differences in the culture pile

When you have the extra layer of cultural difference in your marriage, it can be a great reason to give each other the benefit of the doubt that the difference (i.e. weirdness) you encounter is because of a cultural difference and not just because the other person is just weird. I suspect that some places where we differ might possibly be a matter of personal quirks, but since we have the cultural difference, if it doesn’t really matter we just throw it in that pile. Problem solved.

These are some examples of actual conversations:

You can't tell, but this is milk.

Me: “Do you want some milk with your cookies?”

Him: “No, of course not. I’m frying fish tonight.”

Me: *blink*

Him: “You shouldn’t have any either.”

Me: “Do you want some tea?”

Him: “Yeah, we’ll have tea.”

Me: “Now?”

Him: “Now?”

Me: “Now.”

Him: “But we’re eating dessert.”

Me: “Do you want some ice cream on your brownie?”

Him: “It’s winter.”

Me: “Yes. So, ice cream or plain?”

Him: “It’s winter.”

Me: “It’s soooooo hot. I’m turning on the a/c.”

Him: “Can you hand me a blanket?”

Me: “Aren’t you hot?”

Him: “Yes.”

Wouldn't only two pillows look boring?

Him: “Why do we have 6 pillows on our bed? I don’t use any.”

Me: “Well, I use two.”

Him: “So why six?”

Me: “It just looks nice.”

Him: “Who’s looking at our bed besides us?”

Me: “No one.”

Him. “Right, no one.”

Him: “Why do you use rags to clean the bathroom?”

Me: “Why don’t you use rags to clean the bathroom?”

I could give SOOOOOO many more examples. When situations like this come up, once we realize what’s going on, we just look at each other and say “cultural difference”. We literally say this out loud. Most of the time, if it’s not something of mountain-sized importance to us, we just shrug our shoulders and it stays there. I love this about our relationship.

Mail from America and a new series

Sad and unused mailboxes

Our mailman rang our doorbell today with a stack of cards from America. Always a fun day when cards arrive! Actually, he used to leave them downstairs with the rest of the mail. Funny thing – everyone has their own mailbox at the apartment entrance, but no one uses them. The mail is just left in a pile in a slot by the door, and you have to sift through it all to find out if any of it is for you. Usually someone (I don’t know who) would take my cards from America out and put them into our mailbox, presumably because they looked special and they didn’t want them to be stolen (I don’t know who goes around stealing cards, but that’s very nice of them). 

About 6 months ago I ran into the mailman while taking Moonpie out for a walk. He said, “Hey! Are you Marie? In Stitches?” And I was like, “Yes, yes I am.” He said he was so curious about this foreigner to whom he was delivering brightly colored envelopes from America, and I said, yes, it is I. Sending cards isn’t really a thing here, so I imagine those bright reds, purples, and blues stand out in his stacks and stacks of bills and bank statements. After he saw me that day he started hand delivering our American cards to our door instead of leaving them down by the main entrance. He also loves seeing Moonpie. Today she was munching on some cheese when I answered the door, and he really got a kick out of that. We also saw him on our walk today. He was sitting down resting a few blocks away, but he came over to pinch Moonpie’s cheeks when he saw us. People here really like babies, but that’s another post. I know what you’re thinking – everyone likes babies. But Turks are real, bonafide baby lovers.

Anyway, why all the cards, you might ask? This past week we just celebrated our third anniversary, and my family is just awesome like that to rain cards on us. 

In honor of our anniversary, I thought it might be the perfect time to reflect on the things I love about our cross-cultural marriage. I brainstormed with my husband (who I really need a blog pseudonym for), and I think I’ll do four posts over the next couple of weeks. There are lots of things I love, but these four just make life really fun.

 Pentalingual anniversary napkin (If you haven't noticed by now, I make up words)

Disclaimer: this isn’t meant to be a how-to or you should/you shouldn’t advice kind of thing. Every person and thus every couple is unique. That being said, I’ve found with other friends in cross-cultural relationships that there are definitely shared experiences.  Please chime in with your comments!

Scarves a plenty

I don't know why it never occurred to me before to let Moonpie play with my scarves. She loves watching me fold laundry. She also loves, loves, loves sitting on our bed while I make it. The child loves textiles.

I showed her my scarves today and she was thrilled to just lie in the pile and squirm around.

Then she sat up and we had a  very colorful game of peekaboo.

I think the green one was her favorite. I think that's my favorite, too. Fun!

We're back! Introducing our little Moonpie.

So my last post on here was December 14, 2012, I see. Hmm. I took quite a break there. Let me fill everyone in. On December 25, 2012, this happened.

Then this happened.

 And this!

And now we’re here.

I’ve thought about writing a blog post in the past few months, I really have. But I've been having so much fun hanging out with my little Moonpie. We talk about this, we talk about that. Just this morning she was telling me, “Bababa, ga, goo, DA!” and I was like, “That must have been quite the dream you had there!”

We also have this conversation a lot:

 (To understand this you’ll need to know that “Baba” means “Daddy” in Turkish.)

Moonpie: Baba baba baba baba

Me: Mommy? Can you say Mommy?

MP: Bababababa Dada

Me: Ma Ma

MP: Dada Bababababa

Me: Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama?

MP: (pauses) Baba.

So, that’s fun. Someday she'll look up at me with those brown/green eyes (depending on who you ask) and say "Mama" with her crooked little smile and dimpled cheeks. Someday.

Also, we have a board book club going. My favorite is “You are My Sunshine” because I can sing through the book, but she seems to prefer her giraffe book, more for its flavor than the literary contents, though, I think.

So, anyway, I’ve been a little busy, but figured this would be a good time to start writing again since I’ll be going back to work soon and I’ll have a lot more free time on my hands. As I type this I realize how ridiculous it sounds, but believe me, it is so, so true. So, I’m hoping to use some of my time to write more on here.

Enjoy!

It's beginning...

So, we put up our tree and decorations. This year we made a pre-setup IKEA run to see if we could spruce up our festive, yet a-bit-sad-looking tree, especially the garland. I got the tree when I first moved here second-hand from another family who used it in their business. The decorations came with the tree, and while I had added my own, the garland was still the second-hand stuff. There was one string of gold, blue, pink, and green, and the ornaments were all different shades of pink. Not that there's anything wrong with that...,
So, we found this more tasteful and thinner red garland at IKEA, and my husband picked out the string of silver balls, too. Along with a couple of red candles and some gift boxes, we were ready to go. The garland has been repurposed in my office, where we'll take any festive cheer we can get. Haha. No, really.
Also at IKEA, we got a prefab gingerbread house, some assembly required.

I thought it was cute that the instructions for the gingerbread house were just as confusing and unreadable as most IKEA instructions. For the icing, in 25 different languages, it said "Mix 10 dL icing sugar, one egg white, and 2 tablespoons water." What the heck is a dL? I know like three languages and could probably read a few more, but that stupid "dL" was in all of them. My husband's guess was "deciliters", which would have meant 100 liters of sugar, and is sugar even measured in liters? The box we had said "250 grams." So, I opened good old Betty Crocker and made her recipe instead. And the house was/is soooo cute. We'll probably attempt to eat it this weekend, and it will probably be appropriately stale. The candies aren't completely fossilized yet, so we might have a chance. I hope our dentist isn't reading this. Hi Trent! I promise to floss afterwards!

The rest of the pre-Christmas festivities this week included having friends over for our 2nd Annual Cookie Decorating Extravaganza. We decided that 2 times constitutes a tradition, so this is our new tradition. Unfortunately, the icing was not as spreadable as we would have liked, but our friend got creative with sprinkle stencils made of wax paper.
Of course, this is all just an excuse to spend times with friends and celebrate in general. I'm so thankful for our friends, and most of all, I'm so thankful for Christ!

Thanksgiving Miracle!

Sorry I haven’t written for a while. I was busy celebrating Thanksgiving THREE TIMES! Living far away from my family, it’s easy to assume that Thanksgiving might be a sad or lonely occasion. When I first moved here, although I enjoyed celebrating with new friends, I definitely felt the absence of my family. I still miss the Arizona Thanksgivings – sitting out on my aunt’s porch, spreading the food out on a ping-pong table covered with a plastic table cloth. Eating turkey, and more turkey, and all of the delicious fixings. Drinking Martinelli’s, or punch. Taking a walk, then coming back just to eat more – pumpkin pie. And more pumpkin pie. I had a little moment on Thanksgiving when I couldn’t access a live stream of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I shed a little tear, yes, I did. Then I watched reruns on YouTube.

Last year, our first year married, I wasn’t sure exactly how we would handle holidays, so we just made stuff up as we went. Thanksgiving rolled around last year, and I thought, I wonder if my in-laws would enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner? We decided to invite the whole family, because, why not? And they came! I think they mostly came last year because they thought, Oh, this poor girl wants to celebrate this holiday and invited us, so we should go. By the week of Thanksgiving, I was more than a bit nervous. Am I crazy? I have to cook all of this food alone? And a turkey? What? The plus side was that no one coming really knew what it was supposed to be. I could have ordered Burger King and put it on fancy plates and no one would have really cared. But I cared, darn it. I cared. And it all turned out wonderfully, with everyone asking immediately after the meal – “You’re doing this next year, too, right?”

Fast forward to this year – the questions about Thanksgiving started around November 1st – When was Thanksgiving again? You’re making pumpkin pie again, right? That felt good. I told everyone we’d do it the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and everyone decided to do a three-day fast before, as a joke. Then it wasn’t a joke. We all, I mean the whole extended family, got a stomach/intestinal bug about three days before Thanksgiving, along with about half of the city, from what we heard. I’ll spare you the details, but I was so thankful that we had decided to keep the two bathrooms as functional bathrooms. Just sayin’.

I was getting nervous, since Thursday was thaw countdown T-3, ie, I had to take the turkey out of the freezer, and that’s the point of no return. My husband said all systems were go, although most systems were still way too much go, if you know what I mean. I went ahead, though, and started thawing the turkey. By Friday most people were better, and on Saturday, everyone was able to eat the dinner. It was a “Thanksgiving Miracle”! We had a great family time, complete with crazy antics from my husband’s hilarious uncle, and his cousin’s 2-year-old being cute in general.

Then, since we had so many leftovers, we invited three people in town from AZ for a repeat the next day. And we STILL had leftovers. Then, since everyone was so sick on Thanksgiving, our friends from church decided to postpone their celebration, so we had another dinner with our church family last Saturday. And another miracle – I didn’t gain any weight! Even that sickness was a blessing in disguise!

So, while I still miss my family in AZ and nothing can replace those times, we’ve also started new traditions here, going with the flow, and so thankful for an overabundance of turkey and times with friends and family this year.