All Change!

It's hard to sum up such a huge change as a move from Istanbul to Whitchurch. 

Istanbul was a huge, busy, full, constantly moving city, We spent hours travelling on busy roads. We enjoyed the multinational environments, bustling with the challenges of different languages - Turkish for practical things, French for my volunteering, Japanese for Naomi at School, and some Spanish for chatting with parents from School. Our apartment was in a curvy, modern building with a roof garden, with the constant background noise of traffic over the Bosphorus Bridge, punctuated by the call to prayer (a little closer to home than we would have liked).

Whitchurch is a small, quiet, green town, where we hear birdsong (not seagulls) and the church bells. We have short walks to School, church and friends' houses (and one long commute for Tim). We live in our own, 600 or so year old house, with a garden with apple trees and roses. After multistory everything, Whitchurch sometimes feels like a toy town. I've not heard a word spoken in a foreign language since we got here, but there are other ways in which the community is diverse.

It has been more work than I had imagined, setting everything up. Hundreds of little admin tasks, plus furnishing the house and trying to get the garden under control. My Granny will be glad to know that we now have a mostly furnished house, although our bed is yet to arrive, so we're still on a mattress on the floor for another week or so. We were pleasantly surprised that all our stuff fits in our house, although our shed is rather bulging - not designed for a family with 5 bikes!

Fortunately, the whole family are optimists, for the most part, so we tend to focus on the best things about where we are. Reuben is the one who is really glowing from his life here. He went on an 8 day Christian Houseparty (the one I went to as a child), which got him off to a great start, encouraging his maturity and deepening his faith. He is no longer tethered, dependent on me to bring him everywhere. He goes to School, the town youth club and the church youth club on his own, and spends lots of time in the garden. He has played loads of football, and his football friends have been the basis of his group of friends at School and the town Youth Club. He loves picking apples from our tree. Standing on a ladder with a pole with a penknife on the end really appeals.

Miriam is enjoying School, and right from the first day she had new friends to play with, in the playground, as well as having a good friend from church. She is going to have some repetition, as she starts another unit on habitats, but there are new things too. We're still in process of setting up violin and keyboard lessons, since it turned out that putting her name down in April for School lessons wasn't soon enough! Lots of potential though, and a sleep over last night with a great friend from church.

Naomi is delighted to be at School every day at last! She was the most affected by all the change, but as she has settled in, she has had fewer clingy or whiny moments. We went to a toddler group before School started and made a friend who's in her class, who she started referring to almost immediately as her "best friend", but she has also played with others in her class. Playdates with School friends should be simple now, since they'll all live within walking distance, and come from more or less the same culture! Naomi is the first to start swapping accent. It's strange to hear a different voice coming from her when she comes out from School.

Tim is in "Crisis Department", preparing for potential crises, although also responding to an actual crisis. He has a much longer commute, but is enjoying the hour he gets sitting on a train. He's still waiting to hear about his longer term role.

My time is basically entirely focused on our home and children for now, in contrast to life in Istanbul. I'm planning to work part time at some point, but I don't want to rush to get started, since I can imagine that the juggling will be fairly challenging for all of us once I do. The prices in England are definitely shockung - the equivalent of 3tl for ONE krimizi biber (one of the long red peppers, which cost 1/40th of that in Istanbul).

Church in Istanbul was pretty consuming, between Tim chairing the Council, and being on the Pastoral Search Committee, me Chairing the work with refugees and migrants, me leading our homegroup, with him cooking for it. We had a depth of involvement which we've not had in any other church, at a level which we couldn't have sustained for too much longer. We'll continue to pray for all those who took over the roles we had, for the work that continues and for our homegroup. In this church, there are lots of people, a number of whom are new since we last lived here, doing plenty of leading (and searching for a new Pastor). We can take our time, and choose how to participate. Having said that, I did start going to a homegroup this week (just attending), am lined up for the prayers for tomorrow, and Reuben and Miriam are doing them the following week, so our reengagement won't be slow either.

It's good to be back near family, particularly at this point when there are little cousins on both sides of the family, who change so much between visits.

We're really fortunate in our friendships in both places. We were very sad to say goodbye to our friends in Istanbul. However, we've come back to friends from all eras of our lives, from School on. Even some friends from Rwanda, Cameroon and Istanbul aren't too far away.

We're prepared for settling back in to be difficult at times, for things not to meet expectations, and for more visits from plumbers and builders,. but so far, we've felt at peace with our move on many levels.