CHRISTMAS DAY - Diyarbakir, Turkey

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day. Thanks for the many Christmas greetings; they really mean a great deal to me.

I have enjoyed hugely cycling through Turkey. Again I have experienced warmth and hospitality with a family when there was no formal accommodation. I had been told there were both church and hotel accommodation in two towns, but this was not the case; not even pension-type. The light was fading. On the edge of a small village I made inquiries at a filling station and was directed to the house next door at which I asked if I could put up my tent in their garden. The upshot was, that, having put it up, I was invited into their cosy warm home, ate with them (sheep's-intestines-&-other-stuff soup! , but they kept giving me more!), drank loads of hot, sweet 'chay' (wonderful), and slept in their cosy warm home (having first gone to the freezing outdoor loo and washed hands and brushed teeth at the outside cold water tap - brrr).

A couple of days ago I spent the night at a school house and then ended up as a guest in four of the English classes ın the school. It was great; I really enjoyed it. Apparently, it was the first time that most of the children would have encountered a foreigner. It gave them the opportunity to realise that their textbook English actually had a use! I have to say that the national English course they have to follow is dreadful: it does not result in any conversational English at all. What a waste.

This part of Turkey is strongly Kurdish. Diyarbakir is a great place, despite the fact that, a few days ago, a car at the nearby military airport, was found full of explosives and kalashnikovs and that, yesterday evening, when I was walking back to the hotel, a couple of local rival gangs were shooting at each other in the street with real live guns!! At first I hadn't realised they were gunshots; I just thought they were firecrackers or something. Even when I did realise they were real gunshots and bullets I wasn't afraid, cos the local guy I was with was great; he was quite calm about it and we took it in our stride and just kept on walking. Even so, Diyarbakir is still a great place: Christians, Jews, Moslems live here very happily together. I've met some locals and it's been interesting and enjoyable talking with them.

I tried going to a Christmas service today: I went along to St Mary the Virgin Syrian Orthodox Church, but it was like no other service I had experienced. Apart from the fact that there was no order of service of any kind it was not even clear when the service itself started; there was no attempt by the priest to involve the congregation at all - he didn't even acknowledge we were there, even by a glance in our direction; and then, halfway through the service, about a dozen people suddenly entered with huge professional-looking film cameras and flashing still cameras walking round the church filming and taking pictures of everyone, as though there was no service going on. Fınally, to cap it all, when I was quietly sitting and praying and attempting to get something out of this Christmas Day service, a woman indicated to me that it was disrespectful to sit with my legs crossed. I gave up trying to suggest to her that, possibly, the cameras were rather more disrespectful but nobody seemed to be telling them to stop! By this stage I had had enough, put my shoes back on and walked out. So, the most Christmassy thing I did today from when I woke up at 6 o'clock excited to see what Father Christmas had brought me! [a pair of brightly-colourful, toe-ed socks and a 2009 diary :-) ], was listen to Handel's Messiah on my ipod and to wear my Christmas earrings I'd brought out with me from UK.

I have enjoyed the day. I Skyped my children in the morning and then my family later on. After which, a local guide I had met when I arrived on the 23rd showed me round the city: the city walls date back to somewhere BC; there are many churches and mosques and beautiful, stripey pashas (buildings), similar to those in Damascus; and the souks are always fun to visit (I learnt lots about knotted rugs and kilims. If anyone wants rugs at really good prices I can supply a contact number. :-)