If it ain't one thing, it's another.

This week has been, physically, pretty sorry. Sunday I found that what I thought was a zit on my forehead was actually more likely a spider bite, since it had swollen, turned red, and had a fever in it. Monday morning the swelling had moved over into my eye and so had the color, giving me the appearance of someone who had just caught a strong left hook. That afternoon I started to feel a little nauseated, so I took a nice afternoon nap. Tuesday morning I woke up with my eye looking better, but with the slightly queasy feeling still lingering. I laid around the house until the early afternoon when I went to play basketball with the boys. I broke out into a nice cold sweet, which usually helps me snap out of this stuff. I came home with a headache, but I knew it would pass and that I'd be feeling better today, which I am. But the thing I hadn't foreseen was the jamming of my pointer finger. I reached in to knock a pass away and jammed my finger up good. It's not as bad as it could be, but it's definitely swollen and slightly discolored. But as soon as that goes away, assuming nothing new comes along, I'll be back to normal.

Some people would say at a time like this, "When it rains, it pours." I think it'd be more appropriate to say that, "When it rains, it's a slow and steady, uncomfortable drizzle that lasts for days with no foreseeable end in sight."

Like sand through an hour glass...

So go the days of our lives. Yesterday was a sad milestone for me. For seven months now I have been making friends. I'm always meeting someone new, getting together with somebody I don't really know, or just walking around aimlessly hoping someone wants a white friend. But yesterday I actually had to do the exact opposite. I had to tell a friend "Goodbye" for the first time.

The Doner Dude is leaving. He speaks English (hence our friendship) and is going to work in a tourist town along the coast for the summer. It's a great opportunity for him to make some money and spend the summer in an awesome place. I was tempted to ask him if he could hook me up with a job too. The really sad thing is, I probably won't see him again. When his summer employment is over, he will go into the military. All men in this country have to do a short stint with the army and his time has come. He'll still be in the army when I am scheduled to go home.

It was a sad event. I went to the doner shop and took him a small book of Jesus' life and the history of the first church (the Gospel of Luke, Acts, and Romans, joined in a small book). It was actually very saddening to tell him bye. He said he could tell that I looked sad and he was visibly a little down himself. Out of all the people that have come into my life since I have been here, he's really the first one to leave it. So even though it is a sad one, it is a milestone in my life here.

Happy π Day Everybody!!!

What? You forgot? Today is March 14th. 3.14! And in about ten minutes, it will be 1:59, or 3.14159. If you still don't know what I'm talking about, then let me explain. (This is where I push my glasses back up my nose and pull out the portable keyboard.)

π, or the mathematical oddity formerly known as pi, is the ratio between the diameter of a circle and it's circumference. You can multiply any circle's diameter by π and get it's circumference. No big deal right? Not really. That is until you learn that it is a never ending and never repeating number. What I mean is, computers have calculated it to over a trillion decimal places and have yet to find where it ends nor have they found any sort of pattern to the number. It's amazing actually. So amazing that I have actually heard the existence of pi used as a proof of God (since it is seemingly infinite and infinitely complex) and on the other hand, proof that God doesn't exist (since it is completely random, and the existence of God would mean order in all things).

But either way you look at it, I think we can all agree that today is a great day to remember our wonderful friend π. Maybe you can celebrate it with Chao Lu, a Chinese chemistry student who, over a 24 hour period, recited the first 67,890 decimal places of π in 2005. Or maybe you can write a "piem," a poem who's word lengths correspond to the digits of π (see http://users.aol.com/s6sj7gt/cadtext.htm for one that's 4000 words long by a man named Mike Keith). Or maybe you can just order up a nice piece of apple pie, pull out your graphing calculator (you know you still have it from high school), and see what all the fuss is really about.

Happy π Day to all!

Long Time, No Blog

I apologize for the long delay in an update to the blog. I spent five days in London last week. I got to take in two incredible Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds concerts, the sites and sounds of England, some time with a good friend, and all the Dr. Pepper, pork, and Starbucks coffee a man could ever want. It was a great week, but it's just too much to try and write about. If you want to hear the details, you'll have to run me down in çarşı or catch me on Skype.

But that week in London is over, and that reality has set in. I saw a great quote today from Philip K. Dick, a science fiction writer from the 50s up until his death in 1982 and who is seen as one of the most influential in his genre. He says, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

I guess I had stopped believing that Turkish was a hard language to learn. Maybe I had stopped believing that this was a hard place spiritually. Maybe I had stopped believing that life was hard and sometimes lonely. If I had, then I must confess that they are reality, because they still exist here. I'm still struggling in this language. I'm still struggling to make friends. And I'm still struggling to be a joyful person in a place that is still very foreign to me.

With all these realities I must acknowledge, I don't want to leave out the greatest. Our God is a mighty God and worthy to be praised. He left Heaven, which is a billion times better than London, to come to this grummy earth. He lived with people that hated him worse than any Muslim has ever hated Bush. He died to save the same people that I claim make my life difficult. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice so that I could be here. Not "here" in Turkey, but "here" in his grace and in fellowship with him. That is something I can not stop believing in, because it is reality. A reality I would like to make known to the people I am about to go visit.