However, knowing Jim would probably not appreciate my new insight, and Devlin really needed to go to school, I boarded the plane anyway. An odd thing happened when we touched down and deplaned. Suddenly, it all wasn't new anymore. I knew which coin to insert for the baggage trolley. I knew what "cikis" meant. (exit) Of course, Jim was waiting outside customs for us, and his was the first smiling face I saw. But the second was Gokan's, our driver. And it seemed perfectly natural, after greeting him with affection, to hand him all the baggage to carry, while Jim and I walked hand in hand to the car.
So it has been, these past two weeks. Nothing has seemed as hard as it did before Christmas. Coming back renewed, I enrolled in Turkish language classes, and attend twice weekly. I am enthused about learning it, and spend a good deal of time outside of class studying. It's a completely different language base than anything I have ever known, and the grammar structure is odd compared to ours. For example, in English, the sentence, " I would like a taxi, please", would be, "a taxi would I like, please". But just a few lessons have made a difference, since now I can actually say that sentence into the phone and a taxi actually comes.