A Week in Turkey

OK, so I'm going to try to keep up with my blog and see if it's easier to share my life this way.  I'm having a great time in Jerusalem.  Part of the program used to be a trip to Egypt, since we study the Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern Studies.  Since the Arab Spring, Egypt is a lot less stable, so the program now takes us to Turkey.  We get to visit many ancient sites and cities, many of which are a large part of missionary work for the early apostles like Paul.

Initially I wasn't super excited about going to Turkey.  It's a replacement for the Egypt trip so I thought, "Eh, that'll work.  I'm sure it'll be fun."  But just from driving on the bus from the airport to the restaurant for dinner I fell in love with Istanbul!  Turkey was a beautiful country and the sites we got to see were amazing! I have to go back there again someday.

It's difficult to post a lot of pictures here because there isn't much bandwidth.  If I make it to the neighboring Hebrew University I can load much more, especially on facebook.

My favorite cities were the ancient cities of Assos and Ephesus.  Assos was small, but it was a great site. It overlooked the Aegean Sea and there was a rain storm out in the middle of it.  It's located in a really small town.  Our Turkish guide, Negeb said most of the residents were retirees.  It's out a little further so it doesn't get too many tourists, so it's still relatively quiet.  I'd love to retire there too.

Ephesus was amazing and huge!  It was so cool to walk down the main street and see all the buildings and imaging what life was like there.  Paul stayed there in Ephesus for two years.  It has a huge amphitheater that Paul got dragged into when the merchants who sold statues of the goddess Diana started a revolt.  A few of our classmates re-created the event.  It was quite entertaining.  Mormons are weird.  We got some funny looks from other tourists.  There was also some filming going on, so there were people in Roman clothing walking around, so by comparison, we may not have looked so strange this time.

The picture above is of the Celsus Library in Ephesus.  It was the 3rd largest library of the classical world (the first being the library in Alexandrian in Egypt, the second Pergamum in Turkey which we also visited).

Hope this will suffice for now.  Thanks for visiting!

My First Attempts at Creating a Marketable Product

So I managed to get my hands on some free materials, and then I managed to buy some extra stuff, and I started tinkering around to see if I could create something to sell as a fundraiser.  I still have not yet actually FINISHED something, but I'm getting close, so here's a sneak-peek of my styrofoam wall creations:

The above creations were done with fabric.  They were some of my first, so I made the most mistakes with them, like the edges not being very straight.  Fabric takes a lot longer to do, so my finished fabric products will be worth more than the paper versions you see below:

 With paper, I have a variety of nature scenes.  I have some ocean/beach themed ones (above) desert themes (below) and other leaf, forest, snow, water, autumn versions not shown here.  It's hard to tell in the pictures, but they protrude from the wall about 3/4 inches.  I will have a nice edging on them, but this is just a sneak peak anyway.  After the edging and some sealant, they will look much better.

I only have one sample of this so far, but the bulk of my products will be these 12x12" squares.  There will be several different designs that can be mixed and matched to create whatever effect you are looking for for decorating your space.  I'll include an example I pulled from online so you get the idea.  This piece is the most complete of anything I have so far.  Hopefully I will have more to show soon.
 

This is a close-up so you can see some texture.  Below is a sample of what the whole idea looks like.

Comments and suggestions are welcome!  Please don't make me beg for them!

BYU-Jerusalem

I was accepted into Brigham young University's Jerusalem Center Program for this summer.  Everyone I know of who has been there described it as life-changing.  I'm so excited to go!  The Center is located in Jerusalem on Mount Scopus.  

I need a little help with funding though, so I've created a widget with Paypal to track my funding progress.  I also have a few projects I've been working on to sell (coming soon) so hopefully I can earn some money that way too.

Thanks for all your help!