Most of my blogs have been light hearted and offered a little touch of humor...until now that is. While I don't want to remember the final day of my CSC assignment as being sad, I do want to capture some of the overwhelming feelings that surrounded it. For me today's experience isn't captured in any pictures that I've taken...and I'm not sure I can even adequately write it but I will try. Over the whole weekend, today was my test of endurance!
Saturday was our final day in Istanbul together as a team. We spent time as a group debriefing on our experience. There was great discussion in a relaxed atmosphere that gave us a chance to pause and start a reflection upon the past four weeks. While there were a variety of suggestion and mixed feelings about the full impact of our contributions, many of us can attest the personal growth was far more than we may have expected.
Following the debriefing we decided to take a journey to the Grand Bazaar...WOW, this should really be GRAND BAZAAR SQUARED! This is close to a woman's dream come true! This is where you put your true bargaining skills to the test. Moving from vendor to vendor to capture the lowest price possible. It's unbelievably beautiful with an abundance of colors, energy and life!
Our "last supper" was at a fine restaurant on the waterfront overlooking the troublesome dense fog that settled in for the evening. Honorary guests to join the CSC team were dear Ozlem, Dilsah and her husband Tansel, Nithya's husband Hariharan and Madeline's friend Claudia. It was fun to have everyone together and share some final stories and laughs before parting. The entire day was great for reflecting and sharing many of our special times together. There are many jokes among us that can create endless hours of entertainment...for some, you may have had to be there to understand!
I said my good byes at the restaurant since I (and a few others) decided to go back to the hotel while others went to a club to check out the Istanbul night life. The good byes were brief which allowed me to keep my composure! :) The public setting may have helped but I also think the energy from the assignment was still running pretty high. While we logically understood, we'd reached the end and the assignment was over...I think I struggled with understanding what "over" really was going to feel like.
After just a couple short hours of sleep I awoke at 5:30 to get ready to head to the airport...perhaps this is one of those days I should have overslept and just stayed in bed!? :) As it was Saturday night, the fog was still hanging over the city. Needless to say, it wreaked havok on flight schedules as it has for the past couple days. My original flight was scheduled for 9:30am, with round about rebookings, I was scheduled and did depart at 2:30pm.
Idle time any day isn't usually good for me. Idle time today was particularly troublesome. Emotions were running very high in the airport. I saw many outburst of anger from various people, all distressed over further delays in their travel plans. I saw airport delays instantly send adults into an immature tantrum. It is a very uncomfortable expereience to be withnessing enraged travelers who are literally yelling, stomping their feet and flailing their arms while I have no idea what they're saying. I simply knew, they were NOT happy and I occassionally, was caught in the middle of some of those coversation as I was trying to get a rebooked flight as well. Bless the manager who had to face each of those customers today...that was a thankless job! With all the termoil, I was beginning to feel the world I felt I was on top of just hours before, quickly starting to crumble around me.
The anticipation of leaving has again turned into an unending good bye. The long hours of waiting in the airports over the past two days have be somewhat of an emotional torture...yet maybe it was a forced time to just "be" and reflect upon the whole experience and now decide how I will proceed forward. The easiest today would have been to completely surpress the emotions and casually carry on until another day when I'd decide to deal with it. Could I have controlled it? I'm not quite so sure.
Seeing that my stay at the airport was going to be longer than initially anticipated, I searched for a cozy quiet place to get comfortable. I figured it should be easy to pass 5 extra hours with internet and my cell phone. To my dismay, nothing was working...I went to the information/technology desk to see if they could give me guidance but no such luck as the language and technical barriers were too much to overcome. :) The next alternative...settle in with my mp3 player and a good old fashioned pen and piece of paper on which I initially wrote this blog.
Silenced today "in my own world" which so happens to be a half a world away from what I call home was too much to handle. The accumulated emotions that built up over this journey begin to uncontrolabley pour outward onto the paper in both words and tears. I'm going to miss the simplicity of life, the love of the people, the amazing food and the friends I shared this experience with. I now can't imagine how much I would have missed out on in my life if I hadn't experienced this. "You don't know what you don't know" but this was so MUCH more than I ever imagined. At that time, I was thankful for 5 hours to figure out how I would regain my composure and carry myself gracefully through to Rome.
Time is a healer and I know with time, today's emotions will get easier to control. Prior to leaving for this assignment, I had hoped that I could capture as much as the experience as possible. I'm typically not a blogger but I was dedicated to doing so through this experience to provide a lasting memory that pictures alone can not tell. Time will tell how much influence our CSC assignments will have on Malatya and Turkey. I do know with certainty the experience has changed me. I have had a WONDERFUL time in Turkey...beyond what words can fully explain. To the wonderful people I've worked with and the wonderful friends I've made along the way, thank you doesn't beging to express my appreciation for each one of you! Take care until we meet again...Turkey, I will forever love...
