{"id":3450,"date":"2016-12-24T16:42:50","date_gmt":"2016-12-24T13:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/?p=3450"},"modified":"2020-10-14T13:06:53","modified_gmt":"2020-10-14T16:06:53","slug":"time-to-move-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/?p=3450","title":{"rendered":"Time to Move On"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well<\/strong>, it\u2019s been awhile since we visited.\u00a0 In the meantime, a lot has taken place.\u00a0 Good and not so good.<\/p>\n

We left Turkey with a great deal of memories that will never subside, but the preparations to leave took a toll on both of us.\u00a0 Transferring from one past to another is never easy, not just saying goodbyes, but the actual logistics of it all.\u00a0 It started months before sorting and determining what to keep, what to discard and what to put in storage.\u00a0 After the day when we saw a third of our belongings roll away, then came the scheduling and paperwork.\u00a0 We had our final wingfest and several lunches and gatherings with Embassy personnel, and cleaned out our desks.<\/p>\n

The last work day, before leaving the Embassy in a taxi (because our vehicle had already shipped out), I went through all the gates and shook hands with any guard I could find.\u00a0 Some of the guards think more of me than they should and had tears in their eyes.\u00a0 I would be lying if I told you it had no effect on me. \u00a0By the time I made it back to the main gate to leave, my hand and arm was sore from the handshaking.\u00a0 The Turks have firm handshakes when they like you.<\/p>\n

The next day, Saturday, I went back to the office to finish items left undone.\u00a0 This included paperwork and archiving files off my computer.\u00a0 But it also dealt with concealing ping pong balls in several places in the office.\u00a0 One location was in an overhead shelf above my desk.\u00a0 The Office Manager\/Logistician is stickler for everything super clean.\u00a0 I know the week after I leave, she will go to my desk and start cleaning it out.\u00a0 She will open the top shelf and the 144 ping pong balls will flow out onto the desk.\u00a0 And just to be sure it happens to her twice, I hid another 144 in a shelf above her desk that she doesn\u2019t use often.\u00a0 Someday, she will encounter those as well, if she hasn\u2019t already.<\/p>\n

Then leaving the Embassy compound for the last time, I spent a few minutes with more guards including the Most Handsomest Man in the Universe.\u00a0 According to him, I am the second Most Handsomest Man in the Universe.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>There are so many things to say about Turkey that it would take a blog spanning three years, but I can tell you, that it has made me an aggressive driver.\u00a0 It has made me enjoy sour cream and yogurt more than before.\u00a0 I developed a special friendship with Serkan<\/strong> who married our friend from Stinnett Texas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>… and a friendship with Burak<\/strong>, the guard supervisor who took us to Mogla.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We will miss our friend Stacy<\/strong> who has two masters degrees, but you would never know it from her bubbly love of life.\u00a0 Her vibrant eyes constantly smile. And the little Taiwan friend, Ann<\/strong> who is working on her third degree.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We will miss Gozde<\/strong> with her Phd.\u00a0 What little time I spent with her, she nurtured my passion for the creative spark of literature and the arts.\"\"<\/a> I will miss my friend Ozlem who speaks five languages, three fluently.\u00a0 Her English vocabulary rivals mine, and it is her third language.\u00a0 I will miss our short discussions during coffee breaks in my office.\u00a0 She would tell me things about her life that few others knew.\u00a0 She once told me I was the girlfriend she never had.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how to take that, but I think it was supposed to be good.<\/p>\n

I will miss the vibrant Selin<\/strong> who uses any obstacle in Life to jump as high as she can.\u00a0 I wish I could look into the future to see where all she lands!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And I will truly miss the smile on Nadjia\u2019s<\/strong> face when she came to the office twice a week to clean.\u00a0 Aside from the crazy Turks, Serkan and Burak, I think she made me laugh the most, just by being herself.\u00a0 When she left each time she would say, See you later alligator<\/em>.\u00a0 And I would reply Afterwhile Crocodile<\/em>, and she would reply Oinky doinky. (okey dokey)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>On Sunday the 11th<\/sup>, we were picked up at our apartment at 4am for a 6am flight.\u00a0 I had to leave a few things undone like cleaning up the apartment before leaving.\u00a0 This is one of the issues that make changing posts stressful.\u00a0 No matter how hard you try, things will still be left undone.\u00a0 I fear my life will be the same.<\/p>\n

We arrived in Virginia for medical checkups, passport issues and getting our visas for Brazil.\u00a0 I also had to apply and obtain a tax number from the Brazilian Embassy.\u00a0 Once I finally found the place at 1:15pm, I saw that they close at 1pm every day.\u00a0 No matter how hard you try, things never fall into place appropriately.\u00a0 If that should ever happen, I will quickly go out and purchase a lottery ticket.\u00a0 But all got done by jumping through the required hoops, and I headed to Texas while Terese went to New York to see her sister.\u00a0 The two of them jumped in the car and made a trip to Nova Scotia.\u00a0 A trip they had been planning for over a decade.\u00a0 In the meantime, after getting to Texas, I took the little Miata out of storage (what MotherDear calls the Barbie car<\/em>) and took a trip into the mountains of New Mexico which ended with a fishing trip with all my brothers, and then some.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After the fishing trip and Terese\u2019s trip with her sister, we headed to Pampa to see several close friends, one on which who has cancer.\u00a0 It was sad to see how far he had regressed since we last saw him.\u00a0 I fear we may lose him too soon in the future.<\/p>\n

At this point, we will stop the discussion until I am ready to discuss it further.\u00a0 Instead I will tell you about Brazil next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it\u2019s been awhile since we visited.\u00a0 In the meantime, a lot has taken place.\u00a0 Good and not so good. …<\/p>\n

Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2tztR-TE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3450"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6054,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450\/revisions\/6054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}