Turkey, May 2005

This picture is one of my favourites from Turkey. We (two bus loads of young Australian and New Zealand tourists) had pulled up at a lookout to watch the sunset in the amazing Cappadocia region. A Turkish family had the same idea. I approached the girl and her older sister (not pictured) and asked using gestures if I could take a photo of them. They were shy and ran away, and I chased them around for a bit playing a version of tag, where the tagging was me getting a picture of them and they ran around screaming delightedly. The older lady (pictured) offered me nuts and we attempted conversation, unfortunately not very successfully as she spoke zero English and my Turkish was limited to 'Hello', 'Thank you' and one other phrase which I'll get to shortly. Once they realised they could see the picture immediately on my digital camera, the girl and the older lady posed for me. As I left I tried out the phrase our Turkish tour guide had taught us. He said it sounds like 'Allah lost my duck' and is used on departure, and means roughly, 'I am leaving, but god will look after you'. So, feeling ridiculous, I raised my hand, waved and let rip 'Allah lost my duck'. I was rewarded with smiles and waving in return. The whole episode was a warm fuzzy one.