Neighbor Wars

When we first moved overseas, I had fantasy visions of becoming best friends with all of my neighbors. In Lithuania, I would be embraced by a schoolteacher next door who would kindly teach me to master Lithuanian. In Poland, perhaps a sweet old woman who could school me in the art of perogies, and in Italy an old nonna who would give me the recipe of her sacred sauce. Unfortunately, this couldn't be further from reality. All of my neighbors since living abroad have hated me at worst, an denied my existence, at best. 

So this year, when two of the other wives instantly clicked with their Turkish neighbors, I was understandably jealous. One of the wives, Ashley, has several sets of neighbors in her building who are constantly inviting her over for wine and dinners, in spite of not speaking any English. Brittney, the other wife, just so happens to live above the greatest human, let alone neighbor, alive. As soon as she moved in she met this amazing young couple in her building. The husband speaks incredible English (he lived in New York for 6+ years) and the wife is an adorable schoolteacher who is also an incredible chef (and really wants and tries to speak English as well). This couple has become all of our close friends here and the husband, Ozgur, could not be more helpful with anything we find ourselves needing over here in Turkey. He has become my official translator when dealing with the seamstresses who are sewing my line, calls the butchers for me to order special requests, and goes above and beyond to make us feel comfortable living in this town. His wife Sibel even had us over for a cooking lesson where she translated all of the ingredients she'd be teaching us in English and printed it out for us to look at. These two are just adorable and I'm so glad I met them.

So how is it that both of my girlfriends have these awesome Turkish neighbors and I'm over here struggling for a wave? They both, admittedly, blame their good neighbor fortune on their children. The people in our town are OBSESSED with babies. When you combine their love of children with their total and utter infatuation of black babies (having never seen one before), it's easy to see why my friend's beautiful kids are such celebrities around here. After about a month of no contact with my neighbors, the girls told me I needed to quit mooching off of theirs and work on getting my own. They were right. I needed to implement a strategy.

It was clear who was going to be my first target. This sweet old woman on the bottom floor clearly runs the neighborhood around here. Her apartment is always bustling with guests, young and old, drinking tea and having dinner parties. She was my key to getting accepted into the neighborhood. Always passing her apartment on the way to my car, I would constantly throw her a smile and a wave and she would return the gesture. We went back and forth exchanging this simple formality for the first month or so until about two months ago. I was outside walking Tucker when I heard someone calling over to me. I approached this young woman who I'd never seen before and she handed me a plate of home cooked Turkish food, prepared by her mother, who happens to be my sweet old woman!

I ran upstairs to my apartment and told D the huge news. "This is a big day for our family.. we are IN!". I then texted both my wive friends who laughed at how excited I was. Since then, her and I have exchanged food to each other about 4 different times and it's safe to say that if this was 1996 we would 100% have matching BFF half-heart necklaces.

When my friends Luke and Stevi came to visit for Christmas (blog post to come), they got to see first hand how big of a deal I'm becoming in the neighborhood. First off, sweet old lady climbed all 97 stairs to our apartment to deliver some dinner so Stevi and I baked her cookies in exchange. To our surprise, and pure exhilaration, when we went to deliver them she was in the middle of a ladies luncheon! She invited us inside (I know, huge deal) and we sat at the table with her and her 10 Turkish girlfriends. All wrapped in headscarfs, they passed us around food, touched our faces and blue eyes and laughed so hard that we couldn't understand them. One woman sang traditional Turkish music to us while the others tried to force-feed us pounds and pounds of food. The woman next to Stevi would hit her arm under the table every time she put her fork down :). These gals were having so much fun with us that many forwent their prayer time just to be sure they didn't miss anything. Overall it was an epic adventure and I have never, ever wanted a camera crew to follow me so bad in my life.

We wish we would've had on hidden cameras to capture the whole thing but you get the feel here...

All of the girls!

They were all obsessed with Stevi's blonde hair & blue eyes

I told her it was beautiful, she asked me how much would I pay for it ;)

Since getting in with my first neighbor friend, I've now been delivered food, pastries, and gifts from at least two other neighbors. The turkish people have to be among the most hospitable humans I've ever met. All I can say is, it feels damn good to be in with the neighborhood. 

AMAZING pastries from the woman across the hall

Christmas Socks for both me & D from another neighbor!