no, you're a turkey!

We left Kavala on the morning of March 18th and headed into Turkey. As soon as we entered the country, it was evident that there is a lot of Turkish pride. I think I saw something close to 16 million Turkish flags all over the place. Our bus even had one hanging in the back window. Once we got into Istanbul we saw a lot of mosques, as well. It was pretty ridiculous. We spent two nights in Istanbul and we looked at all of the normal stuff: Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, and a big museum. It was all good stuff. Our first night there a small group of us went out to a little restaurant and drank apple tea and ate chocolate cake. They might have been a little upset that we didn't get any real food, but it was all good. The second day we were dropped off at the Grand Bazaar to do some shopping and that was a lot of fun.

We also went to Nicea, which is where they had some of the Ecumenical Councils a long time ago. It might sound interesting, but all we did was go see a tile factory and it was actually a little boring. We went to some other places but it's really not even worth noting.

We went to Troy the next day and it was very crowded. I'm sure most of you know basically what happened at Troy, at least I hope so. As far as describing what it was like there, I really can't. It was cool. A lot of ruins. Check out the pictures. The whole city isn't uncovered yet, but I know that Schliemann did a great job when he started to uncover it as he went around, tearing things up and assuming things were something they weren't. Best archeologist in history!

We stayed that night in Izmir. The next day we had a free day, or at least they called it that. We still had to get up relatively early and head to some restaurant across town to eat lunch. Then they gave us something like 3 hours to do whatever. So what is there to do in a big city like Izmir for three hours? Some people chose to go shopping, others went and just walked around, but Mark, Cody, and I went with the more obvious choice of going to go see a bad Dennis Quaid movie called The Horsemen.

The next day we went to Ephesus, which was one of my favorite parts of this trip. I've said before that these sites are never what I expected, but this one was even different from that. Ephesus was huge, and there was a lot of it that was preserved fairly well, mostly the library (which I took pictures of). The library actually looks more like a movie set than ancient ruins, but that was pretty cool. After we had spent something like 2 hours walking around here they told us that they still have only uncovered something like 10 percent of it. It was pretty awesome. At the end they gave us some time to walk around and a lot of us went to a spot where I'm sure we weren't supposed to go. We climbed around on the ruins and then went down to pet some horses that were tied up near to the ruins.

We stayed in Kusadasi that night and got ready to leave on a cruise the next morning.

just when you thought i was never speaking to you again..

Things around here have been pretty busy for the last few weeks so I haven't been able to make any updates. For anyone that doesn't know, we went on another 2 week trip that took us to northern Greece and to Turkey. We left on March 15th and headed to Meteora, where there are some pretty awesome rock formations that have some monasteries sitting all throughout. We ate our lunches on top of one of the cliffs and then headed in to see one of the monasteries. I have a feeling that the best place to get some descriptions about these places is to look at my pictures. They are kinda hard to describe. We stayed in Kalambaka that night, though. It is a small town at the base of the cliffs. At some point during the day we also stopped by Thermopylae, which is where the whole Leonidas and the 300 Spartans thing happened.

The next morning we left and headed to Berea, where Paul came in Acts 17. We didn't stay long here, just long enough to go and see the vima (step) where Paul might have stood when he preached outside of one of the synagogues.

After Berea we went to Thessaloniki, which is the second largest city in Greece (next to Athens, of course). We went to a museum (which is a huge surprise, I'm sure) and then Tim took us on a little walk around the city to see some old stuff. We were looking at some old baptismal pool when a bird pooped on my shoe. I apparently have pretty good reflexes because when I saw something falling out of the corner of my eye, I instinctively scrunched my toes, which is why I said a bird pooped on my shoe and not on my foot. Dr. Alice had some alcohol wipes to clean it off, though. Tim took us to get some ice cream after that and it was delicious. Then Jane did a back flip and sprained her ankle.

The next morning we left Thessaloniki and drove for a very long time until we got to Philippi. We didn't get to eat lunch until like 3:30, and when we did finally get to eat we only had about 10 minutes because we had a lot to do. We saw another theater, the marketplace, the prison where Paul and Silas might have been kept, and then went on a walk to the place where Lydia might have been baptized somewhere near Acts 16. We stayed in Kavala that night, and Tim took the guys to some coffee shop-like place and we played shuffleboard and drank tea. It was a lot of fun.

Then we left.