Comments from the non-blogger

Ok the pressure is on for me to write something........

I have been holding out so far because the other 4 bloggers have been busily writing away and covering most of the Schlichting adventures in Turkey. Also because it has probably taken me the longest to get my bearings and become a fan of the "turkish lifestyle".  Things have finally become routine and therefore given me a chance to think about what this trip means to me.  Having had some familiarity with the "eastern" lifestyle I can't say that I find the daily annoyances (e.g the maniacal driving and limited communication, lack of variety in grocery stores) as amusing as the rest of my family does.

However, watching the kids and Warren fall in line (and for some, in love) with this vastly different life than what we're used to in the U.S., has been both heart warming and amusing.   It gives me hope to see that the kids are so flexible that they have easily adapted to inconveniences such as sharing a bathroom between the 3 of them, and for 2 of them even sharing a room. Just the other day Zach said: "Mom I'm so glad we didn't bring our X-box, otherwise we wouldn't have spent so much time making paper airplanes"!!! (Not sure if he was being sarcastic, but I have a feeling it was sincere.) Sam has also said that he does't EVEN miss T.V. By now I'm thinking, WOW maybe this trip is having impact beyond what we set out for initially.

Being a psychotherapist it naturally makes me wonder how this has come to be, and why would 3 children raised with all the excess of U.S. lifestyle happily settle for, well, for lack of a better word, less?  For that I have a number of theories.  But the one I like to believe most is the "childcentric" approach that is obvious in most Eastern cultures and probably plays out at the kid's school, along with the simple life and relatively stress free togetherness that we have shared as a family. The latter has certainly been the biggest bonus for me and I can honestly say that after 2 months of togetherness we are still enjoying each other and looking forward to more. As much as certain quirks about living abroad have been hard, I know I will miss the simplicity and the children as we know them now, when our lives get back to normal.