My Stats For the Past Week

In the past week, I've had some great and some not so great times in the sports arena.

First of all, soccer. My teams were 2-1 this week, with one big win, one close win, and one bad loss. I had a single goal in the first game, two goals in the second game, and a single goal in the third game. I will say that there were a few near misses. A few that just missed the post or hit the post. There were also a few other near misses, as in, nearly missing the ball entirely. I have heart. Unfortunately, you play soccer with your feet, not with your heart. And my feet just don't do what I tell them to sometimes. I feel like I am beginning to understand the flow and strategy of the game, but I have yet to find the skill to implement the great ideas I have. Because of that, I think my turnover to assist ratio is a little off at the moment. But despite my short comings, I continue to give it a 110%

Basketball was a different story this week. I was wore out! For some reason last week, I just did not sleep good. Every day last week I was either up late, waking up early, or both. Come Saturday morning, I had nothing left in the tank and it showed. I'm usually about a 75-80% shooter from the 15-20 foot range, but I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn this week. We played three "halves" and the first and third halves I was ice cold. I did hit a streak in the second half and saved my stats and got our team back in the game momentarily. But in the end, it was just too much. Not enough sleep on my part, good ball movement and hustle on the other team's part, and a lack of defense and conditioning on my team's part proved to be too much to overcome. In the end, despite having a one man advantage, we lost.

In other news, I was 5-1 in backgammon last week and undefeated (3-0) on XBox football on my last trip to the V house.

And since I've been talking sports for the whole post, I thought I'd include something for the ladies. Here's looking at you Lane Marie.

The Big Anniversary

As of Sunday, August 12th, I've officially been in this country for a year. To sum up how it feels, I will steal a little from a guest we had.

We had a volunteer group come to visit our church for a while. The big group left and four people stayed behind, three girls and one guy. The guy stayed here in our apartment. Last week, as their time was winding down, I asked him how he was feeling. This was his reply:

"I'm tired, HOT, and bored. I don't feel like we've done anything the whole time we've been here. This language is hard. The people are hard. I've been sick on and off the whole time. I'm the only single guy and I am staying way over here, apart from the group. I'm lonely and I just want to go home."

You know, unfortunately, that's the way it is somedays. I ain't going to lie and say that everyday that I'm here I'm just juiced about the opportunities I have. Some days I would gladly trade them for a little AC and a chalupa. Our guest really summed up how I feel a lot of times.

But unfortunately for our friend, he doesn't get to see the other side of life here. He didn't go with me downtown Friday (though I offered) when I got to share the Gospel with the Bartender. He asked for a Bible, which I will take down there sometime this week. He never went down to the barber shop to see how the Barber and the Hawk like to goof off when nobody's in the shop. He never got to the point of juggling four or five suffixes on the end of the same word. He didn't go out to eat with me, the Anti-girlfriend, Miss Kitty, the Botanist, and Crack the other night. He didn't have a family like the Vs to go hang out with.

You can spend days listing things about this place and this time that have been hard, discouraging, uncomfortable, and just plain unwanted. But you can spend just as much time listing things that I would've never seen, heard, said, or experienced anywhere else.

I would've never sweated through 130+ degree weather without an AC. But I also would've never put a Bible in the hand of a man who has never even seen one. I would've never eaten a steady diet of lamb meat. But I also would've never been given the name Mustafa. I would've never been as lonely as I've been here. But I wouldn't have found the family I have found here either. I would've never seen men weep for their brothers who have been killed. And I would've never shared those tears. In short, I would've never become the man I am today.

The list could go on for hours, but I will stop. I have to go share a message that I'm not sure I will ever fully understand, in a language that I am sure I will never fully understand, to a man who has never heard anything like it. After that, I'm going for a nice juicy kebap with a dear friend and his Turkish buddies. It doesn't get much better than this.

Now that's a good question.

Here's one that I don't get asked very often...

This past Saturday I went to teach at the language school where I have been working for the past month or so. It was mid-afternoon when class ended and I walked across the street to the bus stop. Since the temperature has been up around 130 degrees recently, I found the only shade around. It was just a small tree and there was already an older man standing in it, but you know what, it's hot dang it. So I jumped in there with him. For reasons I'd rather not explain, I was softly singing a song by The Police to myself. The old man turned and gave me a head nod to say hello. He looked at me for a second longer and asked, in Turkish, "Are you an Arab?"

Now granted, all he knew was that I was singing a song in a foreign language and that around here, Arabic is a lot more common than English. However, he did know one other thing. He could plainly see that I am 6'3", pale as a ghost, and that I have a red beard. Any one of those three would be enough to make you question my Arabness. But there was something, and God only knows what, that made this guy wonder.