Scott here, adding two of my valuable cents to the blogosphere, while waiting to catch a plane in the middle of Turkey. In a future blog we’ll tell you more about that. But since being in our new city we’ve had some interesting experiences with local folks and their perception of us. I would like to share two of those with you.
#1 Haircut
I love having my wife give me haircuts. It’s a bonding experience as I sit still and avoid getting my ears literally lowered, while she hunches over and pulls muscles in her back, nipping here and trimming there. I am quite happy with her work, but she’s never satisfied. So finally after months of asking, last Friday I caved and went to a local barber. In preparation I got some haircutting terms from my tutor; “I want a haircut,” “cut it short here,” and “don’t do anything here.” I carefully memorized these words ready for my encounter. My tutor thought it strange why I wanted to know “I want a haircut.” They would of course know why I was there.
I entered the shop gingerly, expecting the workers to motion me to a chair. Instead, they stared at me for at least 10 seconds while I tried frantically to recall “I want a haircut,” that my tutor had said I didn’t need. Something close to correct came out and they all laughed and sat me in a chair. Then the bomb fell. I began telling the barber what I wanted and he said to me, “I don't know that language.” He only spoke Arabic! All that memorizing work wasn’t for nil though as I was able to communicate through another guy who told him in Arabic. Another interesting factoid: instead of using the buzzer to shave the back and sides of my hair, he used a straight razor. I came home with a great story and haircut, all for about $4, and a little knick on my neck. Here's a shot of my new haircut; sorry, the photographer surprised me.
#2 Concert
One of our English students is a very good violin player who works at a school for blind kids, and he moonlights as a music instructor for adults at the government center for the blind. He invited me to join him in a Valentine’s Day concert to sing an American love song, to which I agreed. Only a week before did he mention the need to practice. At our first practice I brought a copy of music and the recording of “That Thing You Do,” not exactly a love song, but good nonetheless, and the only song I could think of at the time. I didn’t take into account that my friend has no use for written music, and that the third guy in our band, a piano player, was in fact blind. Furthermore, the violinist only listened to the recording once! At our first practice my friend asked me to play along with one local tune with the children, followed by another, and then the day of the concert surprised me with 2 more new songs! Fortunately the melodies are not difficult here, though the rhythms are entirely new. With much pomp and two news channels on site everything went fairly well last Saturday. But the best part was the cementing of our friendship. Our friend was grateful and even came to our Saturday night meeting. Now he has asked me to use my influence in the musical world to get the first professional recording studio installed in the city. So if anyone knows of where we can get $120,000 worth of recording equipment for free, let me know!
That’s all for now. Have fun at whatever you’re doing and don’t forget to take time to thank Him for each thing.
Here's a shot of "that thing I did."
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