Learning Turkish

Arrived in Turkey with two phrase books and various tracks on my ipod.

I had been listening for some time to Turkish songs and some Turkish Cd's but had found it quite difficult to get my head round the language.

I also had a small card from a restaurant with a few helpful phrases so decided to just jump in and have a go using the few ords that I knew.

Turkish people are very friendly and love it if you make even the slightest effort to use Turkish and also like to practice a bit of English on you.

My first challenge was to try to get my small garden done by local Beche- or watchmen.

At one point there were three Turkish ladies all trying to help me at once and only two phrase books between us.
The watchman- called Ramazan came to see me and with much pointing, holding up earth and smiling we worked out that he would come in the morning and put in earth and I think he said flowers too- cheeeckeks. He also said in Turkish you are my neighbour no need to pay. Wow.
The next day he arrived with his wife and thet went with pickaxes to the field infront of us until they could find soil and brought it over to us in wheelbarrows along a wooden structure he had made to get it up my steps. My goodness they both worked so hard I gave Ramazan water and made his wife sit and have tea with me and we got out the phrasebooks and "talked" about our children.
Had a bit of debate over what to pay with brother an d sister-inlaw and settled on 100tl although probably a lot to us it was worth it not to dig in the heat find garden cenre and flowers.
Over the course of the day Ramazan came with lots of flowers and just rammed them into the earth and of course if you have a knack like that they all take. So there I had instant garden.
Dorsun his wife brought me dinner the next night- stuiffed vine leaves-from my own vine- how dumb am I not to work out that is where vine leaves come from and we then went back and forth over the next few weeks with stuffed vegetables, cakes, scones and fruits. My favourite being eric the plum. Its easy to remember a word in Turkish if it has an English name