Blessing

For any of you who are aware of some of the struggles of my life in the past year, one thing has become a little better...

For those of you who are unaware, here it is.

A few months after I moved to Turkey, my fiance's family (Dad) became unsupportive of us getting married. They started out fine with it, then around last Oct/Nov they said they didn't want anything to do with us. This is a different kind of society than the US and Western Europe...We can't even go visit them, see the grandparents or his 5 brothers and sisters. This is really important to me, to meet his family and see where he came from before we get married. Also, his grandma who raised him, is getting really, really old and is in ill health.
Its also been really hard because it means we can't have a wedding. Especially with my family being in the US, we have no real emotional support or family here. We both feel very alone and "us against the world".

This month his sister and her husband came to Istanbul for 3 weeks. The brother in law talked to us about the situation, then talked to the Dad about it. Well, now the family is behind us and our relationship has their blessing. They will have a proper traditional village wedding for us, complete with henna, folk dancing, 3 days of celebrations and gifts of gold (and goats?). We just have to get *officially engaged*.