Turkish Delight

I usually have three options when it comes to free time: do something memorable, do my homework, or catch up on blogging. And sometimes I sleep too. You can guess which order my priorities are in... do something memorable trumps everything else and I squeeze homework in when I can. Usually my eyelids start to close at some point and then next thing I know it's 6:30 in the morning and I'm miraculously up and starting another adventure. Needless to say, life here is crazy busy and I've neglected this blog and I apologize for it. Here's a list of the things I've done in the past month that I haven't blogged about:

• the rest of the Turkey trip
• Bethlehem field trip
• some friends and I spent a day stalking President Obama on his visit to Jerusalem
• snorkeling in the Red Sea
• Jerusalem Old City field trips
• Holy Week
• Easter at the Garden Tomb
• field trip to the separation wall
• all 11 days of being in Galilee, including a bunch of field trips all over northern Israel, rafting on the Jordan River, hiking in the Golan Heights, having bonfires on the lake, watching general conference on the shores of Galilee, seeing Tiberias... and a bunch of other things but we'll get to that later!

I'll go ahead and point out the obvious: life here is pretty dang cool. I'm at the point where seeing something amazing is just a part of daily life that I expect when I wake up in the morning. I wish I could say that for the rest of my life! I decided to dedicate the rest of this blog post to some highlights of Turkey, and hopefully I'll catch up on the other things in the near future.

(I blogged about the first few days of Turkey already here) We took off in our bus early in the morning down the European coast of Turkey on the Mediterranean Sea, and it was sunny, blue and absolutely beautiful. We had lunch Gallipolli and stopped at the battlegrounds of the Battle of Gallipolli for a devotional, then continued down the coast. The Turkey trip was full of long bus rides that I absolutely loved because we got to see beautiful scenery from the comfort of our rockstar tour bus, relax, and catch up on the sleep we never seemed to have enough time for. We took a ferry across the Dardanelles, crossing from the small European part of Turkey to the much larger Asian part of the country.

Gallipolli

Ferry ride across the Dardanelles, Europe to Asia!

We then went to Troy, and our sweet and adorable tour guide named Negep was shocked when we pulled up because the one cool thing to see there- the giant wooden Trojan horse that you can go inside of- was under construction and completely covered in a black tarp. While it was a little disappointing, it was actually pretty funny that the one cool thing to see was under construction. We of course had to have a tour of a bunch of archaeological ruins of Troy, during which I found the most entertainment in making friends with a big snail.

Behind us is what was supposed to be the Trojan horse. You can see our disappointment. Negep is the one behind me with the sunglasses (we were all secretly in love with him).

Just practicing being a safari tour guide with my pet snail

 Our hotel was on the beach of the Dardanelles strait (which connects the Sea of Marmara to the Mediterranean Sea) and it had a picture perfect dock, beautiful beach, and we pretty much had the whole resort to ourselves. My roommate Erica and I felt like we won the lottery because we got the room with a balcony with the best view of the beach and pool. That night was full of hanging out on the dock, taking cheesy pictures on the dock, watching the sunset, stargazing at the end of the dock and playing on the beach.

On our awesome balcony, and obviously so excited about it!

The next day, we took off down the coast of the Mediterranean and our first stop was a beautiful archaeological site called Assos, which was a town that St. Paul visited. The sea was SO unbelievably blue!

Athena temple at Assos. The island in the distance is Lesbos, which is a part of Greece and the origin of the word "lesbian".

Our next site was Pergamum, which was an ancient Greek city on top of a huge hill. We rode a tram to the top and it was suuuuper windy! It was stunning up there though, with tons of wildflowers and greenery. It is home to the steepest ancient theater in the world, with a really great view of the hills and countryside.

Hair in the face during every picture was unavoidable

Greek theater at Pergamum

The hotel for the next two nights was on a really nice beach on the Mediterranean, and we all had a ton of fun playing games and talking on it. The next day of the trip we went to Ephesus, which is the remains of a huge Greek and Roman city that was in the Ionian League and where the apostle Paul lived for 2 years, spreading Christianity (the book of Ephesians in the New Testament comes from here). It was also the site of the famous Temple of Artemis, previously one of the seven wonders of the ancient world but nothing of it remains.

Recognize this? It's the goddess Nike, you can see the Nike swoosh.

Roman toilets

Library of Celsus

Huge Roman theater where Paul taught

Cat napping. I secretly love all the cats that hang out in the Middle East.

We also went to the ruins of a beautiful little city called Priene. We acted out a play in a little theater there and just had some chill time to absorb the beautiful landscape. We found a cool turtle there who turned out to not be the biggest fan of being held!

Priene

The next day was super rainy, so I didn't take a lot of pictures of the sites we went to. At this point, the trip was wearing us out and we all pretty much just wanted to be on the bus where it was dry which was lucky because we did a lot of driving that day. Sardis was cool though, it was ruins of another ancient Roman city.

This is inside of the Roman gymnasium- where boys would wrestle in the nude with olive oil all over their bodies. Obviously, the boys in our class had to reenact this (with clothes) so the girls did too.

That afternoon, we arrived at Bursa which is a modern city in Turkey. We went to the Ulu Cami or Grand Mosque there which is huge with 20 domes and still in use, and then had some free time to roam the giant bazaar. Some of us went back to the mosque during call to prayer and got to watch the prayers inside the mosque happen! It was such a cool experience being in the small women's section right behind the women praying to Allah. The women were super friendly to us although they were talking our ear off in Turkish and we didn't understand a word of it. They even invited a few of the BYU girls to pray with them which was really cool to watch, especially in such a grand and beautiful mosque. Islam is the prevalent religion in Turkey, and it was cool to see their worship in action.

Grand Mosque in Bursa

Bazaar in Bursa

Evening prayer in the Grand Mosque

The next day, we went to Nicea and saw the church where the Council of Nicea happened, which is a very important event in the history of Christianity because Constantine gathered Christian leaders who established the Nicene Creed, establishing the belief that God and Jesus are one in the same.

Reenacting the Council of Nicea at the Nicene church

We then took a ferry back to the European side of Turkey, and drove back to Istanbul. We almost didn't make it in time before the Hagia Sophia closed, but we luckily got there just in time to see the largest christian church in the world for over a thousand years! It's definitely something everyone should try to go see in their lifetime.

Hagia Sophia

That night we had a really fun dinner at a fish restaurant before heading off to the airport, which even had live Turkish fiddlers. The fish was great and I might have accepted the challenge of sucking out and eating the eye haha. It was a great end to a fabulous trip, Turkey certainly was delightful!