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!
