Hello, it’s me again Käthe. Now it is half-time. Six month passed and six month are left. It’s slowly getting warmer. The sun is as warm as in Germany in May. Crazy. January and especially February seem so far away.
December and everything I remember of this month. We had a Christmas market, it was organized by Melika and Laurine, two of the other volunteers, it is one of the brightest memories of December I have. We made a big secret Santa for all the participants, I got a little wooden box with pictures for İzmir made by Mahir. After the official event in Brooklyn Coffee where the market took place, we went in a coffee and karaoke place. One of the nicest things besides the presents was meeting a lot of mentors and members of Pi Youth Association I had never met before. After this event it did not take a lot of time before I went to Germany to celebrate Christmas with my family. It was really interesting because, as I was sitting in the izban to get to the airport, I became quite sad. The sun was shining and I had a really nice afternoon with some of the other volunteers. And then I left. It felt like I would go back to Germany forever, as if I had already f inished my project and time here. I arrived at the airport and was much tooooo early. Well I had to wait and except that I’m German.
My week in Germany was really nice. But it ended as quick as this short sentence. I came back and you could already start counting the last hours of 2023. I celebrated New Year in İzmir. Compared to Germany and my normal New Year’s evenings and nights it was one or the quietest. To be honest I expected something else. But it was really nice, with all of the other volunteers. And January, in all its coldness, started. I didn’t and still don’t have a winter jacket here in İzmir so, some days, especially when I went to Foça, it was freezing cold. I didn’t expected this from winter near the Mediterranean Sea. My memories of January are really blurry. One of the most defining events was our continuity of sickness. Now, in February, it is much better, but January was the month for sickness particularly in my flat. But we managed to get out of this. On Fridays I always have my yoga workshop in the morning: it is one of the most fun group ever. We are only women and I am by far the youngest, most of them are between 50-60 years old. But it is a really nice workshop, because we manage to communicate with my little Turkish and their broken English.
Now it’s already March and February is history. But it was a really nice month: my family from Germany came and visited İzmir. They stayed for one week. It was so nice to show my father and everybody where I live, showing them the city, so they can imagine how living in İzmir is. We visited nearly all the touristic places you have to see in İzmir. We went together to Foça and Bostanlı Market and all the other things. Although it was so beautiful to have them here it was somehow nice again when I just got on with my life. It maybe looks mean, I really love them but I just realized I cannot go back to family life. After they left I continued with my life. Last weekend we visited Ayvalik the small town by the sea. Reeeaaaaally beautiful. Thank you for reading. See you in two months for the next episode of my blog. Stay tuned.