Returning from my Adventures

Let me just say this: If you ever have the chance to see Turkey – go during Christmas. It was AWESOME. For the most part. If you will remember, winter break started back in mid-December, and I thus fled my Paradise Island for Turkey. I met up with Owen, a friend from high school, where we thus traveled around the country on random buses, seeing much of the Mediterranean coast. Here are the top 10 highlights (links to are pictures taken by me):

1) Seeing the Aya Sophia. This is a church built in the 4th century by the Emperor of Rome. It was destroyed and rebuilt a few times, each time bigger and better than the last.

2) Istanbul in general is a great city (minus all the shopkeepers). I would put it on the top 10 cities for history buffs (and any one else, too).

3) The Lycian tombs. It was amazing to see these on the top of the mountain, shadows of a past that seems more a dream than reality.

4) Apparently Turkish shop keepers think that the phrase “Where are you from?” means “Let me charge you an exorbitant price for mostly worthless merchandise.” I told them they needed to work on their English

5) Ephesus: The largest city of ruins in the Mediterranean. I stood in the church of Ephesus and read Ephesians.

6) A lot of the pieces of “ruins” were not ruins at all. Rather, they were made to look old and ruined, so as to the aura that was missing from the original ruins. Awesome.

7) Half the world Turkish population lives in the US, apparently. Every one we talked to had a brother or a cousin selling carpets in Chicago and New York!

8) Breaking (storming!?!) into the Castle in Selcuk. Shhh.

9) Randomly meeting a girl who I swore was the sister of my friend Cassie. But it wasn’t.

10) Hanging out with Marco, learning about the Turks from him, and him teaching us backgammon.

I am currently sitting in my living room on Saturday morning. This means two things:
1) Tomorrow is Sunday.
2) Sunday is the day school starts up again.

Now as a teacher, you would think that I am excited to go back to school, assign homework, and give students dirty looks. But to be honest, I’ve enjoyed sleeping in and not spending all of my time doing lesson planning. Such is life, I guess. Back to the grind.