Brief Update

Something of far greater detail will be coming a bit later, but I wanted to check in and let you all know where I've been during the last few weeks. I have been away from Istanbul since the 6th, doing a bit of traveling before I leave these blessed lands for my native soil. I first spent a day in Berlin (more of an evening really), before hoping a bus to the lovely German town of Bremen, where I've been staying with a friend of mine who I met last year while he was in Winnipeg, Gustav. This last weekend I made the relatively short trek out to Amsterdam, where I spent a solid four days with another friend of mine, Zach Dueck. Right now I'm in Bremen, sipping a hot tottie and listening to CBC radio 3. Tomorrow me and Gustav head out to Berlin, where I'll stay until next Tuesday, when I'll make for Istanbul once more. I have had an amazing time during these few weeks, and I hope for that to last to the end of my travels. I plan to write up what I've been doing in greater detail when back in Istanbul, but for now I did not want to leave you all without an update for too long.

Decisions

It has come time to decide. Well, actually, it seems more like my decision was made two months ago when I chose not to work. It has now come time to act accordingly. I have purchased a ticket back to Manitoba, by the most roundabout way possible. I will first fly to Kiev, where I have a whole fifty five minutes to catch my next flight, which is to New York City. I will spend a night in NYC, hopefully in the Menno House sleeping. The next day I will catch a flight to Winnipeg, after a layover in Toronto that is. All told I will spend almost seventeen hours in the air, which is utterly ridiculous. But for some reason this winding, lengthy road was the cheapest I could find, even with the night in NYC. And lets face it, I'm not one to pass up a night in the big apple. All this shall come to pass on January 11, with me stepping foot on my native soil shortly before midnight of the 12^th.

Once I made this decision it only made sense to make the most of the time I have left. With Europe on my doorstep (there is a great debate as to whether Turkey is in Europe or not) it would be just plain dumb to not go and see some of it. So the plan right now is to get a 21 day continuous Eurail pass and spend that almost month seeing as much as I can. I have a rough beginning in my head with a wide open end, which seems about right for this sort of endeavour. Bucharest, Prague, Berlin and Amsterdam would make a good little circuit to start with , and once I'm up there it would be a shame not to swing over to Ireland (unfortunately Britain is not included on the pass). From there who knows? I have to be back in Istanbul over Christmas, so between now and then I will go wherever my pass will take me.

Mosque to Mosque

After some delay I have finally made it out to some of the more ancient and popular sights around Istanbul. Last weekend Jess, Landon and myself decided to hit up the Sultanahmet (the Old City) and see what there was to see. We first went to the Basilica Cistern, a spectacular underground water reserve built in A.D. 532. With atmospheric lighting and 336 columns it feels larger than it actually is, though it is certainly not small. There is still about three feet of clean water on the cistern floor, containing a large supply of carp and koi that looked ghostly white. A wooden walk way guided us to various points of interest, including some ornately carved pillars and the famous two Medusa Heads as water drips from the ceiling. A very cool place.

We came up into the sunlight and made our way to the near by Mosque of Sultan Ahmet I (The Blue Mosque). It is still a functioning mosque, so after removing our shoes and Jessica covering her head, we walked into the large main room. The walls and ceiling are covered with intricate, largely blue tile work, from which it gets its name. Even with the large amount of people milling about it still feels like a peaceful place. Guests are asked to stay in the rear section, while worshipers are in the central area. Such dedication and craft devoted to ones God is humbling.

Then yesterday, about a week after, I decided to finally go see the Aya Sofya (Church of the Holy Wisdom). From the outside the Blue Mosque is certainly the more impressive of the two. The Aya Sofya just looks big, but not beautiful. As I stepped into the main chamber I realized that they put so much effort into interior that they really didn't need to make the exterior anything special. The Aya Sofya has been both a Christian church and a Mosque in it's life, though now it is a museum. What strikes first is the immensity of the place, it really is massive. Yet every inch of it is covered in a beautiful icon or an intricately carved bit of marble or an urn made of alabaster. It is truly a breathtaking building. It speaks of grandeur and great pride. I spent a good while exploring every piece of it I could find, taking pictures I knew would never capture that sense of awe it demands.

Losing a Friend

Recently I have found my mind going back over the last two years of my life. This is the span in which I worked at the Mennonite Central Committee in a program called Open Circle. We were a prison visiation program, which meant that we found volunteers from the community to go into prison and visit with people who did not otherwise receive a visitor. It was an amazing experience, to be able to sit with those people, in that place and talk with them. To spend time with them. While I have many incredible memories there is one person who keeps coming to the forefront, I'm going to call him Carl here, to protect his identity.

I sat down once to try and write what I know about Carl, but just as I was getting into a rhythm I found myself stopping up short. This happened again and again. I'd try writing it from a different angle, but I'd soon stumble and loose the thread. I now realize that there is no thread. I am no longer able to pull together my experiences of Carl into a single, fluid story, because he wasn't that in my life. I knew him for such a short while, and then only in fits and starts. He popped up irregularly and dropped away just as fast. I can no longer be sure of the chronology, but I don't think it much matters. I'm almost certain it wouldn't have mattered to Carl. He was a story teller, and his stories never took the straight forward route. They would double back, catch something that was missed, and take a different route. What I remember of Carl are the single episodes. Those times when he came into my life from the outside, said a few words, then drifted off again.

I remember going to pick him up from the boarding house he was staying in mid June, the summer of 2009. It turned out he lived only a few blocks away from where I was going to move to in a few months. A rough neighbourhood that people warned me away from. The house I ended up living in was a great place. I never had any trouble there and we made a home of it. Where Carl lived wasn't a home, but it was a place to stay, which was enough.

Open Circle was putting on its annual art show, a project that I had been working on for nine months. It was in its third year and it was the largest show yet. We had a visual art instillation at the Mennonite Heritage museum Gallery that would be up for the entire summer. That night we were going to kick off the exhibit with a performing art show. Carl was a song writer. He played the guitar and had done so at many Open Circle events. Over the last few years his health had so deteriorated that he couldn't get his hands to make the chords anymore. At the previous year's show he had got up front and just talked for ten minutes. He could do that. With no notes, he would tell stories and keep his audience captivated. Earlier in the year Open Circle had produced a CD, on which Carl was featured. For this year's show we played a track off of it, then Carl got up speak about the song.

I don't really remember what he said, but I do know he didn't just keep it to the song. He talked about Open Circle and the place it had in his life. He talked about his visitors, the friends he had and the life he had lived. Carl didn't stay long after the show. He was tired so he went home.

I remember hearing that they were going to pull the plug on Carl. I was shopping at Superstore with my roommate. Our house must have run pretty low as we had filled both his bike trailer and my large hiking backpack. We were outside of the store, just getting onto our bikes when I got the phone call. I had been expecting this to happen at some point, but I didn't know when. I was told they were doing it in half an hour, and if I wanted to be there I could. We were at the Superstore by the airport in Winnipeg, Carl was at the hospital in St. Boniface, and all I had was my bike. My roommate offered to take both my pack, full to the brim with mushrooms and pasta, as well as his trailer so I could go straight to the hospital. After transferring the pack I hoped on my bike and began making my way there. Right out of the Superstore parking lot I was stopped by a train, and had to wait for it to pass. I'm pretty sure I made it there in exactly half an hour. Up until this point the hospital had not let me in, as I wasn't family. It didn't matter that he didn't have any family, just that I wasn't them. This time when I got to the front desk, sweating and breathing hard, and asked for him they again asked if I was family. I hesitated. the nurse looked up, and I said yes.

I remember meeting him a couple of times to interview him. My first assignment with Open Circle was to write an article on Carl and his visitors. To spotlight a relationship that had lasted long and developed into something meaningful. That was the first time I met him. Later I was tasked with writing profiles of all the artists in our art show. During these two occasions I asked Carl to tell me about his life.

He talked about hitching across the country time and again for thirty years. He survived on handouts and whatever he could scrap together playing the guitar. He usually made almost enough to eat and to buy whatever drug he was on at the time. He learned how to be out in the cold, days at a time. He learned that to live in that world meant you had to steal. It was the ones that didn't steal you had to be wary of, as you never knew what they were up to. When I mention that this all sounds romantic and poetic (I had been reading a lot of Kerouac at the time) he stops for a second and smiles a bit. He says yeah, there was a bit of that. There was probably about ten minutes of romanticism a week, but everything else was just a struggle to survive. All throughout this time he never go close to anyone, or at least not for very long. At the end of it he landed up in jail in Manitoba, which is where he met Open Circle.

He also talked about going to college and getting a psychology degree. He wanted to pursue studies I think, but he never said why he didn't. He also owned a business at one point. He reckons he was close to being a millionaire, but now the money was all gone.

One story sticks out of the many where he almost died. Drunk, he had passed out in a snow bank during a blizzard. Dumb luck brought another drunk out there and he happened to notice two feet sticking up out of the snow. He dragged Carl inside and thawed him out.

I remember hearing other stories about him, from people who knew him better. He suffered a stroke a couple of years before I met him. Throughout that time the only people to visit him in the hospital were from Open Circle. When he came to for the first time he joked that he wanted to convert to Mennonitism. During the same hospital stay a nurse was trying to stick an IV into his arm. After a few failed attempts he chastised her saying he could do a better job in a back alley with a rusted needle. At one point the director of Open Circle felt afraid in his presence, he saw that man who would do anything to survive. He didn't leave though, he made sure he was by the door and kept talking to him. That was years before I met him.

I remember a woman contacting Open Circle after he died. She had read the obituary online and called us. After we talked about him she realized that Carl was her father. She hadn't seen him for sixteen years. We sent her a copy of the CD, the photos that we had and a copy of the lyric book to his songs.

I remember the hassle of trying to put on a funeral for a person with no legal family. They are officially under the jurisdiction of the province at that point, and while there is a small budget for a funeral if it is requested, it is not much. Us, along with the community chaplain, started asking around and people came forward amazingly. Thompson funeral home offered to donate space and time for the funeral, the services of a coordinator, money for an obituary and the hearse for the trip to the cemetery. The province paid for the coffin, the cemetery donated the grave site and everyone pitched in for the headstone. We were trying to do the only thing we knew how to do, send him off with as much respect as we could give him, something he hadn't had much of in his life. So many people came out to say goodbye.

I remember getting to hear that same voice we heard that the art show one last time when we played that same song at his funeral.

I remember hearing that the funeral coordinator we worked with was a student, and Carl's story inspired her to do her thesis on unclaimed bodies.

I remember hearing the first time he collapsed. The year before he had had intestinal surgery. After years of abuse his intestines could no longer work properly, so they gave him prosthetic ones. Over the year he had collapsed a few times, every time being brought to the hospital. But he would always wake up and check himself out before they could find out what had happened. He never like hospitals much, in fact there were some he would down right refuse to go to. He said they were racist.

The final time he collapsed his heart stopped. The paramedics were quick and they got him going again, but he never woke up. They did exploratory surgery and discovered the artificial intestines had not worked, and his digestive system had turned to mush. Nothing was it through and his body had gone into toxic shock. His body poisoned him.

I remember walking up to him in the hospital, seeing three other people standing around him. The director of Open Circle, the community chaplain and one of his housemates. I got there just as they were taking his breathing tube out. There was an uncanny steadiness to his breathing, which continued right up until the end. We stood around him for a while, not saying much. We prayed a bit. Carl's roommate cried. After about an hour we talked it over and decided to set up a vigil. There was no telling how long Carl would last, and there was no point in us all staying there. It could be five minute or twenty four hours. I said I could take the first shift after I had gotten something to eat and a coffee. Carl's roommate said she would wait until I got back.

I ate in the hospital cafeteria, I think I had a sub and maybe a fruit cocktail. Before I went back up I bought a magazine, the Walrus. When I got to Carl's room (more of a corner really) the roommate said that she had been having some trouble with her foot, and since we were in a hospital she wanted to get it checked out. After she was gone I settled in on a bar stool type chair. Every now and then a doctor or a nurse came in, checked something and said nothing had changed. After a while a nurse came in and said she was going to drain his urine, and asked if I could step out. After about a minute she stuck her head out from behind the curtain and called me back. She said she didn't know what happened, he had been completely steady one minute and the next, he was dead. She stood there for a while with her had over her mouth, saying how awful she felt.

Doctors and nurses came and went, checking things, and making the pronouncement. I tried to call the director of Open Circle. I couldn't get a hold of him at first, he was in a meeting. But I soon did and he started his way back over it took about twenty minutes. While I waited for him I sat with Carl. He looked different, his skin was yellower and he was completely still.

What I remember of Carl is confused. I see him sitting in a booth at Tim Horton's, cooling off his small hot chocolate with a creamer. But I also see him on that hospital bed, yellow and tattered. He is both alive and dead in my mind, walking around and lying still. These are the two pictures of him I carry around with me and I try to hold them both at the same time.

Parks

Parks in Istanbul are for lovers. Everywhere you turn there is a couple walking hand in hand, laying in each others arms, or sharing a picnic. More often than not they are kissing, oblivious to the other oblivious couples wandering around them. They do not make a sound, as they go about their business. So they will pop up in the least expected places. As you go around any corner be aware it might be concealing a lover or two. It doesn't matter what time of day you are in a park, they will be there to. Perhaps stealing away a lunch hour, or making that break between classes worthwhile. These are not parks made for families. They are steep sloped, covered in cobble stone walking paths, flower arrangements and fragile statues of girls holding baskets. Benches line every path, in part to provide a resting point for those sojourning uphill, but also to make the lovers' stay more comfortable. Sure, there are some play structures, but those are just for show. The lovers are the true patrons, finding a rare spot of solace in a city unsettled.

Delayed

Well, it seems as if I'm not to great at keeping this thing updated. I will not promise to do better, as both you and I know that promise will likely be broken quite soon. But I may try to think of these posts as less daunting than I have been. I have never been great at talking about the things I do. When people ask me what I've been up do I usually draw a blank, not for the life of me being able to remember anything I've ever done. It's a weird quirk of my brain which makes small talk difficult sometimes and blog posts often downright impossible. But I will try to drag my memories out of myself and write them down here.

I feel it's time to be more honest with you, my dedicated eight followers; I am currently not working. In fact, I have not been working during my time here. I did attempt teaching English for about a week and found that it just wasn't for me. There was a lot to this decision, and the most important factor was a sense of exhaustion I had been feeling since last spring. My work with Open Circle, while incredibly rewarding and something I will never regret, was taking a toll on me that I was largely unaware of. By the time I was finished there I was finished emotionally and spiritually. I had a span of one day between ending my work with Open Circle, packing my house in Winnipeg, doing my share of the cleaning, moving to Winkler and leaving on a family trip to New York. Once in New York our pace was frantic, and while I had an amazing time it was not what one would call restful. After we got back there were a hundred little things to do in the week and a half I had before I left for these mighty East meets West shores. With all of that I found the little energy I had left drained.

As I obtained a job here I was still living under the delusion that I was fine and would be able to handle anything. I was informed that I would be teaching my first class about twelve hours before it was to take place, not giving much time for preparation, or to finish my training. It did not go well and after attempting this for a few classes I had a sort of nervous breakdown. I reached a point where I just could no longer force myself to do things I was not adequately prepared for. I was exhausted and I knew that I needed to rest myself. So, against my accountant's judgement (just kidding, I don't have an accountant), I quite my job and have been taking the time since to rest and relax, to try and recuperate.

I have not been doing nothing, in fact it has been a wonderful time. I spend my days writing, reading, going for long walks, watching movies, seeing the sights and mostly indulging myself in those things that I love. I have been working on some short stories and poems I'm becoming really proud of. I've never had real time to dedicate to my writing before. It was always more of something I'd do in my spare time when I had the energy for it. As I try to give writing a real go I've found it incredibly difficult and boundlessly rewarding and terrifying in equal measure. Perhaps once I get some things up to snuff I'll post them here.

As I begin to feel more like myself again I am now faced with a dilemma; what do I do for work? To be honest I really do not like teaching, and I find it not something I can fake easily. And as it was the trigger of my breakdown I'm not really interested in going back to it. But after much searching there isn't really any other work for someone who does not speak Turkish (I asked a fellow ex-pat how long it took him to learn Turkish, he said about a year and a half). So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, with a dwindling bank account. I do not for a second regret my choice to take some time to heal, but it has landed me up in a rather difficult financial situation, and I'm not as of yet sure what I'm going to do. I have a few options I'm looking into, and as those hopefully become more real I'll relay them here. But until then I ask for your prayers (and if anyone has any ideas of what I should do, please let me know). I know God brought me to this place for a reason, now, the trick is figuring out what that is.

A Bit of Spontaneity

I have recently begun going through my old notebook and rereading what I wrote there. I am hoping to work some of this up and I may begin using this blog as a place to share some of what I'm working on.

This first one comes from last summer, when I was working with MCC and the Open Circle program. I am quite interested in Jack Kerouac's method of spontaneous prose and have tried my hand at to varying degrees of success. Essentially (and this is my understanding of it) it is a method of just writing down whatever you see and experience in that moment. Following wherever your mind leads. It is very much like improvising on an instrument. The idea is that you practice so that when something worthy of being recorded happens you will have the tools to do so. I do it mostly as a fun writing exercise, it is often really interesting to see what comes out. Here's a short piece I wrote on a lunch break:

I stopped and sat by a spot in the river where the water curls around some unseen object lodged in the river bed. It disrupts everything for a brief moment then the river continues on its way. Wind periodically blows through the trees, freeing the sun to shine in my eyes. I look down the river bank and wish that I could hike all the way along it. But I know that soon the brush will get thick or the edge too muddy. So I sit. The wind picks up and causes the water to wrinkle, catching the sun in a glittering display. I can just make out a drone of some kind. An unnatural sound. I'm saddened it took me this long to hear it. It's become too much a part of me.

I sat here to think, to clear my head, but it rarely works. I enjoy it while I'm here. The sun, the water, the wind. The smell of dying leaves and dirt. I sometimes feel like I have things figured out, out here. Suddenly everything comes into focus and the answers become clear. But I know that confusion and doubt are waiting for me back there. I guess this place works as a break more than anything. It's nice, peaceful and quite. I don't get any magical answers but I can maybe let my mind rest for a bit. Then I can come at things renewed. With the energy it takes to sort things out. I wonder how fast that current would take me if I just wadded in and let it drift me away?

If you can, everyday go sit by a river for a little while. And always crumble a bit of dirt in your hand while you do.

A Walking Tour

Yesterday was a good day. Not wanting to stay in another day I decided to go out on my own, take some time to see the sights. I have done this a few times already, but there is still so much I haven't seen. In fact I could likely walk for an entire year and not see everything this city has to offer. But this is no reason not to try. First I made my way to busy Istiklal Caddesi, which at one in the afternoon was not as busy as it usually is. I made my way down some steep streets and came to Galata Tower. Once a valuable defensive structure it now has a line of tourists waiting to pay 10 TL to view The Old City from what what was once a separate city altogether.

I snapped some shots of this and continued my way down the hill. Istanbul was originally built on seven hills, so one is always either walking downhill or uphill. It makes for a great workout, whether you want one or not. Soon I came to the Golden Horn, a long, narrow bay that separates the Old City from the rest of the European side of Istanbul. The Golden Horn is constantly moving, both with boat traffic and by its own unsettled waters. I walked through one of the many fish markets where you can buy that days catches or purchase delicious grilled fish, which is infinitely better than a street hotdog. I then crossed Galata bridge, itself crowded with fisherman. I am not sure if they are just catching for themselves or to sell to others. Regardless they are there everyday, rain or shine. Casting down twenty or so feet to the water below.

I had a vague idea of where I was trying to get to, so I decided to take some back streets. I quickly realized in this part of the city there really are no back streets. The Old City is a densely packed, business and tourist district and every street is filled with merchants selling whatever they can. Here are some of the oldest and most beautiful structures on the planet, and if you build it, they will come. Fortunately the incredible beauty and the magnitude of the history of this place transcends all attempts to make it cheap and sellable. This was the crown of the Ottoman Empire, one of the largest empires in history. And they made sure their city would astonish visitors.

After a while I came across the first of what I was searching for, a park that is beside Topkapi Palace. Topkapi was the traditional dwelling of the reigning Sultan. It is difficult to get a handle on its size as it is obscured by trees and the hill it sits on. The best view I have seen so far is from a ferry crossing over the Asian side. It is a complex that seems to hide many secrets, including the now famous harem. Which was traditionally the Sultans private chambers, although what went on their isn't so secret anymore. The park beside the Palace is beautiful, well kept and one of the very few green spaces I have seen so far. It was mostly empty, excepted for a few couples taking in the day on the many park benches littered around the park.

I made my way through the park to the other side and came face to face with the Sea of Marmara. In the distance where the mountains of what I think were the Princess Islands. The sea air was fresh and the road I was walking along didn't seem too busy, so I continued along it for a while. It turned out to be a long while, as I ended up circling the Palace walls and coming to the other side. I then turned back into the city and followed the signs to the two largest and most magnificent Mosques in the world, The Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofya. I did not realize how close they are to each other. These photos are taken from in between the two, I simply turned around to take them. They are marvels of architecture, the Sofya apparently as large as a domed ceiling can possibly be without collapsing in on itself. They stand there together, sisters in faith. The Blue Mosque is still a functioning mosque, holding prayers at the appropriate times, while the Sofya has been turned into a museum. It seems a shame, such a structure being reduced to a curiosity instead of a place of worship. I'll I do not know much of its history, something I hope to change soon. I understand it is complicated and bloody, and this all comes through while standing there. They are places raised to the heavens, built by broken backs and the faith of an empire. These places gave hope to the poor in a god that did indeed deserve reverence. The are beautiful and epic in a way that North America does not understand of its constructed places. They are conflicted places, owing their existence equally to faith and strife.

After spending some time at the Mosques I made my way home, moving from the sprawling grandeur of these places to my area, which is poor and crammed together. People living on people living on piles of garbage and the cats feeding off of it. I like it here, watching the people move about their lives. They do not have money, and they do not seem to care much. They are happy to share a tea with each other, make their bread, eat their cheese and olives and continue on living.

Churched

I was afraid that I would not recognize Engin on our way to meeting him. It had been at least 10 months since we had sat in the Erb's house over tea and talked about this place. Now I was walking down an Istanbul street (some say the Istanbul street), Istiklal Caddesi, going to meet him. Engin is the priest at perhaps the only Turkish speaking Anglican church in the world. We have made plans to meet him outside of the Swedish consulate, where the church used to gather in a little white chapel surrounded, as all good consulates worth their salt are, by a twenty foot tall spiked wall. It would be an imposing structure if the whole city weren't full of them, and itself one for that matter. After a few minutes of waiting a man came walking up with a boy of about thirteen, this was Engin. I was quite sure of it. Encouraged by my ability of memory, and of Landon already waiving, I waived to him. It was wonderful to meet him in his place and even as an outsider himself (a Turkish born Muslim/Christian convert) he seemed at home. As we walk from the Swedish consulate Engin pointed out other christian churches. Over here was one that is in terrible disrepair. Over there was the ex-patriot church with English services (one we plan on checking out). There are not many Christian churches in Istanbul, or in all of Turkey for that matter, but many seem to be quite close together. We were walking back the way we had come. Soon it became clear that we would probably end up quite close to our apartment. Turns out that the nice church steeple I had been taking pictures of right outside my window is the Armenian church building they meet in. It is less than fifty steps from our front door (although probably more than fifty steps if you include the 5 flights of stairs we have to descend to get to our front door). The service was great, or so I'm led to believe. It was all in Turkish so there wasn't much I was able to pick up. Everyone there was very friendly, and we were even able to enlist the help of a fellow ex-pat in getting cell phones and transit passes tomorrow. I am excited to have a church. I got a sense of community there, something larger than our little group. I hope to get to know them in some small way this year. To engage them in conversation and participate for a short while in their community.

Day one

A first day to remember.

This place is immense. I wonder how I am going to make it my own? How am I going to find my place here? with so much space there must be some space for me? For us? A little spot I can make my own. Our own. But there are so many people here. Perhaps the space is used up. Gone. Crowded in to nothingness like the road ways here and the apartment buildings growing off each other like strands of DNA. A structure surely exists in them, but it would take a lifetime to understand. And even then it would always contain a surprise or two. A lifetime. And I have a year, or less, or more. I am right now dazzled by this place. The sights, the sounds the smells. The children playing soccer in streets which are more like alleyways. The ball bouncing off of cars, which are obviously in play. The locals who don't speak any english, yet are so excited to help us and love our attempts to say thank you in Turkish. The huge monuments to different God's built on the backs of the poor and the money of the rich. A place that has been the seat of empires for millennia and is now fighting for inclusion in the European Union, which it isn't even sure it wants. The art, the commerce, the cultures. I am dazzled. But when will that end? Will I have found my place by then?

Upon Leaving One's Country

I have spent the entirety of my life in Southern Manitoba. I was born here, received my early education at the hands of Winkler's public schools, and decided to continue my studies at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. I am a prairie person. There is no denying it. I am of this place as much as anything else. I hope that you know what I mean by “prairie person.” But when I try to think of a definition I realize that I do not know what I mean. Or at least I don't know a nice, simple definition. If you give me a moment of your time maybe I can talk it out a bit.

Every year at CMU one of the many annual debates would take place amongst first years, Prairies vs Mountains. Which were better? Arguments would fly from each side. One marking the clear, definable seasons, the other pointing high above their heads to majestic peaks crowned by a mountain goat shaped cloud. I of course always came to the defence of my homeland, that vast, expansive blanket of freshly tilled soil and gently swaying grasslands.

I do love this land, but it is not a love that has come easily. With deathly cold winters and deathly hot summers it takes a toll living here. Yet mountains always seemed prosaic to me in their beauty. Sure they are beautiful, but anyone can see that from Calgary on a clear day. As you drive through the prairies they can whip by you, slyly blending into one seemingly continues (and often seemingly boring) string of wheat fields, old barns and mile roads. To truly appreciate the prairies you have to get out of the car and begin to walk around in them. To find the particular in the all the seeming sameness until you realize that it is all particular. That there is no other lonely elm tree sticking up out of a wheat field, left by the grace of a farmer generations ago. Or a dugout springing out of nowhere in a young bit of scrub brush. Or to realize you have found the most perfect mound of cow shit in the world. I have been blessed with summer jobs that have taken me off the main roads. To the gentle rolling of a freshly plowed field and the noisy swatting of a hundred horse tails. I have been able to explore this place and I have found that it expects much of you, but in time you will be rewarded by it.

I do not mean to offend any mountain lovers out there. In fact I am one of them. I always get excited as I roll down the Trans-Canada and those peaks become clearer. I would love to spend time roaming those hills. But they are not my place, this is, and I will miss it. Maybe that is what a Prairie Person is. Someone who misses it when it is gone.

The First

And here we go.

I have been thinking about starting a blog for some time and it seems that time has now come. I am about to embark on what I hope will be one of the major events of my life. One of those experiences that I will look back on in years to come and think a combination of fondness and “what the crap was I thinking?” I have trouble knowing what the crap I'm thinking generally, and I often just choose to just keep going along with it.

You see, I am about to move from my nice, cozy, homogenous Southern Manitoba town to Istanbul, Turkey. A place that can fit the entire population of Manitoba thirteen times over. A place that has a heterogeneity all its own. A place where the temperature does not go above 30 or below 0. Yes, what the crap am I thinking indeed. Maybe over the course of the next year I will figure that out here, in this most public of forums.

My hope for this blog is to be a chronicle of my next year. I'm not sure what the posts will be like, as I have never done anything like this before. But I hope that I can share a bit about what I'm doing, and, God willing, anything that I might learn along the way.

I leave in 8 days.