Istanbul, Turkey

Istanbul, Turkey!

Ups: Good food, cheap shopping, TURKISH DELIGHTS! Hannah Cha, of course. But she's not really Turkish.

Downs: Grey skies, lack of organization from the school, and 12 hour bus ride both ways.

What I thought said Turkey in Turkish. But no. I think it's the name of a city in Turkey though!
Though the clouds were grey, the flowers were superbly VIBRANTLY bright. They were incredible to see! The parks in Turkey were also very fun-looking. I kept eyeing the cool-looking rings (the kind you hang from) and jungle gyms they had. =)

Hannah REALLYYY enjoying her bread! We hadn't eaten a real meal since maybe 14 hours before. haha!

I was very excited to see Korean! AND there were Korean tour groups hanging around Istanbul as well. I really wanted to ask if they knew where the nearest Korean restaraunt was located, buuuut I didn't.
Inside of Aghia Sophia - the first Christian Church ever built!!! (Well, it was built as wood 5 times and burned 5 times, so the emperor got sick and tired of having to constantly rebuild it and decided to build this MONUMENTAL thing. 20,000 workers hired, finished in 5 years! This place was seriously huge huge. My neck hurt from craning to stare at the ceiling.) Later, it got turned into a mosque, so look! In Arabic, the green circular plaques say "Mohammed" on the left and "Allah" on the right. Then, between the two is a picture of Mary and Jesus. The Muslims respected diversity and didn't ruin any of the Christian emblems.
The Blue Mosque. We got to go inside during prayer time and we had to take off our shoes while girls with skirts/sleeveless shirts were given material to cover their bare skin. It was quite an experience hearing the instrumental-less singing of hundreds.
The awesome pita man rolling out the dough at the place we had dinner the first night!
The kabob man skewering his awesome kabobs! What a great picture.

Top to bottom: Apple, Orange, and Turkish tea
The Apple tasted like heated apple juice, the Orange tasted like heated fanta, and the Turkish tasted like...tea?

The impressive Turkish flag at the border.

Amazing scenery on the way home.

sooo. Other then Turkey, King Simeon the II of Bulgaria came to our school yesterday! He held a Q. & A. session about Bulgaria's entrance to the E.U. for the group of 30 students that came. And even though I didn't say a single thing, I had this silly smile the whole time because he kept mentioning prayer and referred to the "Good Lord." This man was so truthful in answering questions and his passion to see Bulgaria become a stable/successful country through HONEST means was very inspiring. Many times, I read the Bible and it seems so difficult to live my life that way, but he's trying to mold an entire country to reflect Jesus. And, random tidbit, he graduated from Valley Forge Christian Academy! (Grace Lee's brother goes there!!)

How cool. What a small world.

Tonight: My roommate and I are having Mexican for dinner! So incredibly excited for good food.

yay for Spring!!!!

hannah hannah bo bannah

important note: this is my THIRD post today. =)

What a lovely week with Hannah in Thessaloniki then our somewhat unorganized school trip to Turkey (again WITH HANNAH!). =) It was like a piece of my 'real life' came back and now I feel refreshed and ready to tackle study abroad life once again. Which, in all honesty, is not that busy but trying just because of the foreign-ness. mmk, time for visuals!

Hannah trying to steal my frappe. haha! just kidding. But we did drink Greece's famous frappes. It's basically like an iced mocha, but evverrybody drinks them here.

Frappe + Cigarette = breakfast in Greece.

We also played backgammon!

kimbap with sriracha. mmmm.

we climbed a tree!!

oook. so this picture has many amazing aspects:
1. Beautiful church!
2. Beautiful sky!
3. Random people! =) While Hannah was setting up the timer for this picture, the grandmas decided to join the picture, and the grandpa in the back suddenly appeared to fill in the gap between Hannah and Grandma 2! It was pretty hilarious cuz it looks like they're supposed to be in the picture, but really, they're not. hahah!

sitting on top of some ruins.

the progression of an amazing sunset. =) [amy chang! wouldn't this be an amazing powerpoint bkgd? if maybe you crammed the words in at the bottom where it's black? =D ]

That was Thessaloniki with Hannah! (Tried not to duplicate pictures with Hannah's blog, but this sunset is beautiful no matter how many times you see it.)

ahhh koinonia leadership selection!

Skopje, Macedonia - birthplace of Mother Theresa!

And another post from a short trip to Skopje, Macedonia:

This is downtown Skopje. It's a small city - and we were there for all of Sunday so everything was sadly closed.

Mother Theresa's monument

of course. =)

the stone bridge that connects modern Skopje to its more traditional sector. The most interesting thing about Skopje is that it's in the process of becoming westernized. But the people there reminded me a little bit of Cleveland-ers. Maybe they're just more quiet than the Greeks, or maybe it's cuz it was a Sunday, but the morale seemed pretty low in this city.

They had an amazing park though!

This was what the non-modernized side of Skopje looked like.

-In just a week and a half, i maayy be going scuba diving!!! I've wanted to go my whole life, so this is a huge deal. =)

-I'm gonna try to take some shots of the house-church I've been attending.

-I can't believe it's almost the end of March already!!! That's crazy.

-I have an international relations quiz in a little bit, and i've studied poli ligo (very little) so i'm off to prepare!!

Food. The city of Veria, Greece.

Sorry for the delaaayyyed update - i tried, then gave up, then tried, and gave up, and now I have all I need for a substantial update with corresponding pictures. [working internet and pictures that have been transferred from my camera to my computer.] =D

as promised: huge spits

just a single bakery shot. they're EVERYWHERE!

Just an hour north of Thessaloniki is the small town of Veria - so we took a day trip to this city where Paul preached. There was a huge marble alter dedicated to him, but I thought this piece of scripture at the entrance was pretttyyy cool to see.

Mick? It's part of apostle Paul's alter

One of the churches there had AMAZING pictures on the ceilings detailing Jesus's life. They were really really cool to see - but this was the only clear shot I got. I think it's Jesus's transfiguration when He met with Moses and Elijah.

potluck, carnaval,

Seeing as how I eat up all the sweets and gyros here (pictures in next post! promise!), I'm trying to keep up running on a regular basis. What I really like about running here is the amazing view from a quarter of the track:

And though we could do gyros everyday no problem, our pockets say no...eating out can't happen everyday. So, sometimes, we'll settle for some simple spaghetti, or frozen pizza, or a bunch of snacks. Then someone brilliant thought of a :potluck: [there's about 20 of us living in the same building] so with our powers combined, here are the AMAZING results!!!

Jen and I contributed by serving devilled eggs.

Just look at this dessert. Baklava was bought. Everything else hoooommeeemade. We have amazing cooks - thank goodness!

Last Thursday was MEAT Thursday and people were going crazy in the main square. It was like halloween, with many disturbing costumes of guys dressed up like girls, but I learned my lesson to NOT EVER wear a toga in Greece again. I got so many stares. And then, people who saw me, told their friends, and then whole groups were staring at me. Very awkward and weird and well, I guess I stood out! (i just don't see how it was any worse than guys dressed up as french maids...but that's my American view.)

This was the most adorable boy in ALL of Thessaloniki that night. =)
a camel!

the square

Jen and Me. She did NOT do the toga as planned. =( Maybe if there had been two of us, there would've been less staring??

Jen, me, Dino
They were supposed to make a face. =)

Mk. Other than that...yesterday I had the most amazing night doing NOTHING. Sat in my bed with a great book (Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller - same author as Blue Like Jazz), English breakfast tea mixed with the perfect amount of milk, and a chocolate biscuit that was on sale at the grocery store. It was amazing. I'm planning on repeating tonight. hahaha

Definitely having difficulty trying to buckle down to study for the MCAT, but it's coming along...

It's been a fiasco trying to find a piano and I miss it SO MUCH. We found a couple of them, but they were horribly out of tune: if you play one note, it sounds like the mallet is hitting two different notes. Kinda makes you cringe..doesn't it?

That was a LONG post!!! How is everybody else???