QUOTE FOR TODAY

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Afternoon

Hi everyone, not blogged for a long time as Im back it seems in UK mode now which is really saddened. It makes me remember now why I moved to Turkey, why I loved living there and why I cant wait to get back there as to stay.

I find it harder to make friends here, I dunno maybe it was because like me the other English and foreign girls living in Alanya just found themselves drawn to each other and friendships were quicker and easier to form, maybe its because there was more chance to meeting these girls. Here I seem to have fallen into the go to work go home and go to bed cycle of living that I had way back in 1997 when I lived in the Uk before. After work theres nothing to do! At home in Alanya I could go for a walk in the harbour area or town centre, walk along the beach, or sit in a friends cafe, drinking, chatting and watching the world and its mother walking past.

Work in Turkey now is hard, Ive had a few e mails from people who have kindly read my blog asking advice, but after spending a year back here in the UK because work was dring up in Alanya and Turkey in general I dont feel that I am the right one to give advice at the moment so Ill post a link to other sites who have more up to date information. But please bear in mind that I have a Turkish passport and was still struggling to find employment so for those of you moving there without visaa or Turk passport then it will be hard if not impossible to find legal work paying enough to get by on.

Im disillusioned here, Im enjoying my work more now Ive learnt it more and feel more confident and my wages are probably slightly above normal, but I do work very mixed up shift patterns and these are over 24 hours a day seven days a week.

I miss the hot weather, the pace of life, the freedom I had there. But for now I have to make the most of what I have. Fikret is still working hard and my sone Alsan has started work and has recived his first wage this week. Im very proud of him, hes only 16 and will be earning a good wage working along side Fikret, and hes currently looking at joining the Army, hes already been for tests and the next thing will be his fitness test.. so fingers crossed. Im 100% behind him, a lot of my family have been soldiers and I think it will be good for him. I was a single parent for a long time and both my kids lost out on discipline and got as bit wild so it will help him to grow into a great guy. He would have to do Turkish National Service anyway if he doesnt join the British Army so he might as well be receiving training and a decent wage if he want to be in the Army here rather than getting nothing to do his National Service.

Ive decided to attempt to write another book.... lol dont laugh Im not trying to catch JK Rowling with here 3 million a week pay packet, but I do believe I have a book inside me so I plan to try. In between Ill blog occassionally although I dont have the fun life I had when I was in Turkey and therefore not so much to say for myself!!!!!!!!

Bye for now, I'll be baccckkkk

A childs View

Both my children are currently here with me in the UK, I miss them so much but they are both grown enough to realise that our future lies in creating a life here in the Uk and a business once visas have been sorted.

But the reason for the post is that it hadnt struck me before how things can seem from a youngsters eyes.

My youngest son who is normally very confident and outgoing in Turkey has suddenly become a home bird. Never leaving the house on his own, not even to venture to the local shop. I asked him about this and he said he was scared! Never occurred to me at all, he speaks English and Turkish like a native and still has his Yorkshire accent. But he said he was scared, when I asked him why, he said he didnt know how things were done here and didnt like to ask people as they would think him stupid. He said if he didnt know English very well and they knew hed been in another country for a long time then it would be ok, as they would know he was new here! It makes sense now, so I will spend a long time now explaining things to him and showing him how things are done here when shopping, visiting the post office, using buses and anything else I can think of to help him. Starting my buying him a bike for his upcoming birthday then training how to use it on the raods here so he can become a little more independent and at least get to know the local area.

The eldest is a little more comfortable with the way things are done, but even he has become more of a home bird, so I think that secretly he is having the same problems but doesnt want to admit it.

My plan... well I will pump my husband for information as to what he found the strangest things to be when he came here and then I will very quietly and without their knowing introduce them to these things so their fear is gone.

Its taught me one thing though, holding two passports and having two languages is only the first step to help these two young guys become comfortable travelling, working and living between two countries...

My husband.... the Turkish wheeler dealer

Fikret is having a wonderful time here at the moment. One of his passions, apart from me of course! is cars. Although he is not a mechanic, he can sit in a car, drive it for a couple of 100 meters and he instinctively knows whats wrong if anything with the car.

Last year when we arrived here he just didnt believe how cheap second hand cars are here in the UK. In Turkey I paid a small fortune for my car.
Once we were sorted in our accomodation here in the Uk we bought a second hand VW Jetta. It was 18 years old, but had ten months MOT and 5 months tax on it, and we only paid £200 !!!! Fikret was thrilled with it, it never let us down once, never cost us any parts and we sold it this year before the MOT ran out for £150 !! This car in Turkey would have cost in the region of £2000 yes Im serious.... so now Fikret has the bug.. He bought me a small Metro car as I needed it for work. The day after I left for Turkey in May he bought another car!! a Corsa so he sold the jetta and almost cried lol Now hes taken to visiting the local car scrappies and yesterday while I was at work he bought another car.. a Honda lol

Ive decided that I wont travel back to Turkey without him or work Saturdays again so he wont buy another ...

But now we are heading towards the second hand car business ....Hes planning to "do" the Corsa and Honda up and sell them on at a profit and then he will keep searching for deals to buy and sell, so watch this space!

Its only a hobby and hes very happy doing this so I will step back, help with the paperwork and phone calls and wait till he becomes a second hand car millionaire ......

Toys for boys ahhhhhhh. Gotta love him

Sivas Kangal

OK Tina.. whats this I hear you asking.. well its a dog, a particlarly special type of dog that has been bred in Turkey formany many years and has only just started to appear in the UK. Its the kind of dog that Fikret and I would love to buy but at the moment the selling price here is close to £1000 and in Turkey at the moment we dont have the type of accomodation to be fair to keep one. However in the hopefully near future we will buy one.

Now Ive added a link for a great site I found when we were looking for information on Kangals http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/kangaldog.htm

Although this dog was originally bred and used as a shepard dog in the Sivas region of Turkey, a lot of Turks consider this amazing dog to be the National dog of Turkey.

Fikrets family come from the sentral of Turkey originally and many have stories relating to the bravery and amazing intelligence of these dogs. One being the story of a family who had three of these dogs, it was during the winter and they were rounding herds of animals up and when they returned home they released they were an animal missing and most importantly a kangal. Now the goat or sheep although it was "cash" wasnt so important, however the kangal was incredibly important both to the livihood of its owner and that it was important to the family. A search was launched for this dog and as it was winter the snow could well have been up to a metre deep in places. It took the family a couple of days to find this missing dog. The dog had discovered a goat that had become incapacitated in some way, injury or it was stuck somewhere Im not sure, but it couldnt move. The dog had stayed by the side of the goat and had seemingly been eating grass to stay alive while someone found it and the goat.

I met a kangal once and it was the biggest dog I have ever seen but it had a small child riding round on its back and seemed so gentle, but its owner informed me that had someone unknown approached him or his family then that would have been a different matter. Now I know in this day and age there are many breds who have a bad reputation for being vicious but I firmly believe there are no bad dogs just bad owners.

One day we will buy a kangal, it will be trained properly and it will live outside our house as it should be, not a soft house dog, but a keen guard dog, an intellegent companion and a deterent for all the cats that visit to use my garden as a toilet..!

If anyone knows a Uk breeder of Kangals then I would be pleased to hear from you. If I stay in the Uk the I would like to consider breeding these animals to encourage the growth of their popularity in this country and to help maintain their pedigree.

http://images.google.co.uk/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SUNA_enGB264GB264&q=sivas+kangal&um=1&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title

Turkish Names....and Irish people

When conversation turn to names here I very often tell people a story of when I was a holiday rep, so I think I should share it with you guys too. I know there are many people who regularly read my blog who have Turks as partners or who travel to Turkey regularly and love it as much as I do, you guys will probably have heard this name before and others which for european people seem strange..

I worked for a couple of years as a transfer rep which entailed accompanying holiday makers to and from the airport and hotel. The guests were Irish and great fun most of the time unless as on occassion you had a malicious drunk or a manic depressive who had stopped talking their meds, but thats another couple of posts lol.

There were as many as eight coaches most weeks waiting to collect our guests and they all stayed in the same hotel so all the reps were friends and the drivers were mainly regular so we got to know them really well over the seasonm. Some reps never asked for tips for the drivers, some did but shared and some like me asked and never expected a share unless the driver had done particularly well. So some drivers liked particular reps and one driver seemed to take a shine for working with me as he always did well with tips.. Now I didnt mind this as most of the drivers were pleasant enough and as I can speak Turkish we could fill the trips with a little chatter.

So? I hear you all asking where is this leading? Well imagine this and as youve probably all been on a package holiday it should be easy. As the coach pulls away from the airport carpark you listen to the rep introducing herself, welcoming you to Turkey and introducing the driver, well imagine introducing your driver to a coach full of 40 Irish holiday makers, many who had been drinking on the plane journey across to Turkey and many who were in high spirits when your drivers name was Ufuk!!!!!

Yes it was fun.... the guests would repeat his name. AH UFUKKK, oh fuk, hey ufuk, and it would continue for several minutes until they calmed down and got it out of their system.

On many occassions Ufuk would say to me that they all liked his name didnt they? yes they did I would reply and on a couple of occassions he asked me why they laughed and smiled so much when I told them his name, what could I say? well I politely explained that the Irish were just like that and very friendly people.. well what would you have said?!