Turkey!

So, I finally have some time to get on here and write something. I’m about a month behind on my blogging, so I will try and catch you up. This time I will be telling you about the Educational Field Trip that we, as a class, took to Turkey. We left February 5^th and we got back on the 9^th. It was a really amazing trip. I think that I had more fun on the last Educational Field trip in Sicily, but this was a much better location. It was so amazing! So, we took a bus to Rome, early, Tuesday morning and then got a plane to Istanbul. Then we ran to another plane, which we almost missed because we were late arriving to Istanbul. This plane brought us to Ishmir. This is on the Asian side of Istanbul. The city is split by a river, which is actually a dividing line between Europe and Asia. So this was my first time in Asia! I was stoked. We got on another bus, which took us to our hotel. That night we had an amazing Turkish meal. I tried a bunch of new and delicious things. The meats and the breads were amazing. There was a yogurt salad dressing that was absolutely amazing. Then we went down to the beach and I took some photos. We all hung out and talked outside. Then we went to bed because we had to get up early to go to Ephesus. We jumped on a bus that took us about an hour to get to Ephesus. This was simply amazing. I was walking around an ancient Biblical city, which Paul spoke at. We walked down a huge marble road, saw the public bathrooms, walked through an ancient library, and sat in the huge amphitheater where Paul actually spoke to the people of Ephesus. It was one of the coolest places that I have ever been too. I wasn’t supposed to use my tripod there, but I couldn’t resist so I snuck a few pictures behind columns and ruins. Then we went to a little museum, which wasn’t very cool. We were starving and tired and we couldn’t handle more history. We ate more delicious Turkish food and then we went to the rug making factory. All of the rugs were hand-make and cost thousands of dollars, and that is just for the small ones. They were beautiful. We got to see them displayed while we sipped hot, apple tea. There was no way that we could have afforded any of the rugs, but it was fun laying and relaxing on $25, 000 rugs. :) Then we went to the ceramic making factory. These were also handmade and hand painted. Mom, you would have loved this place. It had tons of plates, bowls, cups, and teapots. They were really cool and a lot less expensive then the rugs. :) After that we left for the airport. We had to catch a flight back to Istanbul. We stayed there for the rest of the trip. It was a nice hotel, but there was no room to hang out with people, so it was not ideal for group bonding. We had dinner after we got there, some people went to smoke some hookah, and I decided to play cards with some people. It was fun, but I was still so wiped. Then Thursday we went to an old church, I’m not sure of the name, which has been turned into a museum. It had some amazing mosaics. It was unbelievable how ornate everything was. Then we went to the Blue Mosque. Now this was so cool. It has six spires, has rounded roofs, and is absolutely breath-taking. It is also huge! We had to take our shoes off and carry them in a bag when we went inside. The inside was massive and really cool. There were really low chandeliers and a lot of paintings all over the walls. There was a lot of Arabic writing too, which was cool. Then we went to Hagia Sophia, which is another mosque. This mosque was actually a converted church. You could see where they took beams away from certain places so that they crosses would no longer be crosses. It was under restoration, which was lame, but it was still cool. The lighting was fabulous. There is also a little hole on one of the pillars where you put your thumb and if you can spin your hand in a complete circle, then you get a wish. You have to do it a special way or it your arm can’t twist that much. It’s hard to explain, but I’m sure you can google it or something. :) We had lunch on our own at this point. We found a place with kebabs. The kebabs were good, but everyone smoked inside and I got a huge headache. After that we had a chance to go to the Grand Bazaar. This was absolutely crazy! It has thousands and thousands of stores, and they mostly all sold the same things. This is barterer’s dream. You argue and lower prices. I was able to get about $40 off the cup that I bought. They purposefully make the prices big so you have to barter with them or you will get ripped off. It is both indoor and outdoor, but we stayed indoors so we wouldn’t get lost in the numerous acres of shops. After that we went to a Turkish bath. Now this was cool. I had been to a bath before in Granada, but this was different. Here you don’t chill in a big pool. Here you walk in, towel on, and lay on huge marble slab. The room is heated and there is a lot of steam everywhere. You wait your turn and then when a fat Turkish man gestures at you, you walk over to him. He then pours water on you, then scrubs off your dead skin, then he literally cleans you with soap and water, then he gives you a massage, then he washes your face and hair (multiple times), and he asks you if it was good. You say, “Yes,” because it definitely was. After that you head to little room that are branches of the big room and douse yourself with water. There are little basins that you can fill up with hot or cold water. You mix your own temperature and then you just relax. It was really cool. After that there was dinner, and then bed. I was so wiped by the end of that day. That night I found it hard to sleep because I had developed a sore throat. The whole next day I felt sick and a little nauseous, but I didn’t think that much of it. We visited a really cool spice bazaar where we bought apple tea and Turkish delight. Then we took a ferry, which I slept through because I felt very sick. I felt better when we got to our lunch, but it was all fish. This was on the Asian side, so we were supposed to try fishy things. It might not have been the smartest thing that I have done, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to try weird food in Asia. I ate whole fish that had bones and eyes and skin. It still makes me gag thinking about it. It tried fish eggs and other weird things that I don’t remember now. The actual cooked fish was really good though, especially with lemon. I know, me liking fish, crazy! :) Then we had a break where I slept until the Whirling Dervishes. This is a special ceremony, where Muslim Dervishes do a sort of spinning dance as a spiritual way to connect to Allah. They have their right palm pointing up to Allah, to receive his energy. Their left palm is pointing down to release it into the earth for the people. It was really interesting, but also very weird. I have never been in a Muslim country before. I was amazed by their ability to spin in circles for such long periods of time. They do four times of circling, but sometimes only three if they can’t physically do it. One of the older ones was breathing heavily and he was sweating a lot. There were also others, behind them, that played instruments. It was quite the experience. It was too bad that I felt horrible during it. Then we went to dinner and I knew I should eat, so I did. That was a bad idea. That night I threw up. It was not good. Then on the bus back to the airport on Saturday, I barfed again. It was not good, but I felt better after it was out of my system. We got back Saturday afternoon, and I did nothing the next few days. Overall, besides the whole sick thing, it was a great trip. I saw some amazing things, and I ate some great food. Well, now I correlate Turkish food with puking, so I can’t eat kebabs anymore, but at the time it was good. :) Anyways, that’s it for me. Later!

Paris!

So this weekend was Paris and it was supposed to be relaxing and fun, but it wound up being one of the most expensive and stressful weekends of my life, but luckily it was still fun. So we left Thursday night (31^st of January) and we took a night train to Paris. It was a 12 hour train ride so we boarded around 9 and didn’t get to Paris until 9ish, but I think the train ran late. Anyways, the train ride was fun. I went with 5 other people: Rachel (newby), Adam, Chase, Becky (newby), and Jillian (newby to Florence, but we were friends in Malibu). So we all got one cabin together so we didn’t have to worry about our stuff being stolen, but by the end of the trip that was the least of our worries. We decided, after a few hours of fun conversation, to go to bed around 11 or 12. Chase and I were stuck with the bottom, and it sucked. There were head rests on the seats that stuck out and we had to fold those seats down to make our bed, but since they stuck out we barely had any room to fit in our beds. I wish I had a picture to show you or that I could explain it better. Basically I was cramped in a bed that was as hard as rock, which made my sides go numb so I had to keep flipping over. It wasn’t the best night sleep, but I knew it would be worth it to be able to chill in Paris. We arrived and headed to the metro to get to our hostel and to buy a three day metro pass. This was when the bad stuff started to happen. We were trying to figure out how to by our tickets when a guy came over to help us. He told us that our credit cards would not work and that he would use his, then we would just pay him. We were tired, disoriented, and basically too trusting, but that doesn’t excuse us from being stupid. We each gave this guy 12 euro and we thought we had multiple rides, but apparently he ripped us off and we only paid for one, a very expensive one way ticket. Then we got to our hostel and found out that we were staying in the ghetto. We found a kebab place for lunch and then went to explore the city. We visited the Eiffel Tower, which we climbed all the way up. :) It was cool because last time I took the elevator and it was cool being inside the structure itself. They had fake snow that we played in on the first level and an ice-sculpture of the Eiffel Tower. Then we saw Notre Dame and headed over to the Louvre. It was raining so that was a drag, but we still had fun. The Louvre was free for us because we were under 25, it was Friday, and it was past 6:00pm. So that was sweet and it was so interesting. I had gone to it before, but this time I knew what I was looking at. The renaissance art part was so amazing and so was the French art. We have been studying all of this art for school and it was so cool seeing and understanding the significance of the paintings. We tried to see Bonaparte’s apartment, but they kicked us out because we got there too late. Then we ate some McDonald’s, where Adam, Chase, and I fell asleep at the table for about 45 minutes. I drooled all over the table! I was so embarrassed. :) Then we got some delicious crepes. After that we decided to hit the hay because we had to get up early to go to Disneyland! :) I was so excited! So the trip really only had two bad parts leading up to Disneyland and I was being optimistic, but then we took a hit. We had been paying for tickets for all of the metros and this was already a drag, but when we got off the train at the stop for Disneyland, we found out that we couldn’t get outside. We had to buy a ticket to get out or we had to go back the way that we came. This meant that we had to pay 25 euro! It was outrageous! So we paid the money, but we were all not happy and then we got to Disneyland. When I went there was nobody there at all, but when we got there it was super crowded. Lame. We waited in line to buy tickets for an hour, which was also lame because we could have purchased the tickets online and not had to deal with that, but hey what could we do? Then we got to the desk and found out that it was 25 euro more expensive then what it had said online. It was 55 euro instead of 30 euro. Lame. So we fumed for a little bit, but we didn’t let it ruin our day. We had a wonderful time and we went on tons of stuff. Jillian got to trade her pins and we talked to some cool staff about how much they enjoyed Disneyland back in California and how we love it too. Then we used out 25 euro ticket, luckily it was more than just an exit ticket, to get back to our hostel. We grabbed a kebab for dinner and then were walking back when it happened. I had purchased a picture frame for Bailey because she gave me money to get her one, so I was holding it in a bag on my left side. There was a black couple that was walking behind us and so Adam moved aside so that they could pass since they were walking faster then us. Well the guy decided that he wanted to steal my bag, so he did. I tried to wrestle it from him for a moment then I just let it go, but instead of running away with it he stayed and looked at us. We were all so done with today because we had been cheated out of so much money and we were all in shock that we were getting mugged that we just stared blankly at him. I think that might have thrown him off a little or he was just high or drunk or something. I’m not sure why, but he opened the bag, while his girlfriend watched nonchalantly, and he saw that it was a picture frame. Then he bowed, smiled, and gave the bag and frame back to me. Then he just walked away and left us all stunned watching him go. It was so crazy! I got mugged then he gave it back because he didn’t want it. It was funny when we were remembering it because if he had asked for cash we would have had none to give him because we had spent it all in the last two days. :) Then we went back to the hotel and went to bed. We took the early train home on Sunday and were so ready to be back in the safety of the villa. It was a crazy trip and I know that I made it sound awful, but I look back and I laugh about it and there were a lot of fun times, so it was overall a great memory, even if it did come with a few speed-bumps. :)

Orvieto (My Birthday Weekend)!

Orvieto! Ok, so this was my birthday weekend and it was a blast! I tried to find somewhere that would be fun, relaxing, and stress free. The place that I found was Orvieto. This is an old Entruscan town that was built on a huge plateau. It was absolutely gorgeous and it was so much fun. I had seven of my friends come with me: Bailey, Martin, Jillian, Kyle, Jon, Blake, and Sam. It was one of my favorite trips. Orvieto was only about 2 hours away so we left on Friday morning and we arrived there around 11 or 12. Then we took the funicular up to the plateau and we found our hostel. It was surprisingly cheap, like 15 or 16 euros a person, and it was really nice. We had two large rooms and they both had private bathrooms. We got breakfast in the morning and they even had a cheap dinner for all of us, at least for one of the nights. So we got there and we were so tired that we all took a nap. We napped until 6 or so and then w siesta until 7, so we decided to wander around. We found part of the wall surrounding the city that faced the sunset and we watched it go down. It was gorgeous. The clouds were amazing and it was so beautiful. I forgot my camera, not like me at all, so I couldn’t get a picture for myself, but I was able to steal some from my buddies. Then we explored these tunnels until the restaurant that we wanted to go to opened up. It was a very cool restaurant. It was built into the rock and so we felt like were in a cave. We were the only ones in the restaurant so they put on some really good American songs. The pizzas were amaze decided to go find some dinner, but everything didn’t reopen from theing and the conversation was so fun. Then we headed back to the hostel and played cards. We played Apples to Apples and it was fun for the first hour or so, but once we started getting into the second and almost the third hour, we were done. We didn’t want anything to do with that game anymore. People started to hide cards so that the game would end faster and at one point I got into an all out brawl with Bailey and Jillian. It was fun though. Then we went to bed and woke up for a quite delicious breakfast. I enjoyed a hot shower afterwards, but only one other person was as lucky as me to get the luxury of warm water. I can still remember Kyle crying out from the bathroom as we were all laughing at him. Then, after everyone was clean, we went to the Orvieto Duomo. It was really cool and it was huge. Then we took a bunch of photos of each other on a spot near the edge of the plateau. After that we had some panini and went on our tour of the caves. The caves were really cool, but our guide was really boring. She had no sense of humor and she was so monotonous. I learned that the caves were used as quarries and to get water during sieges, so she wasn’t totally worthless. :) It was really cool to be in there though. Then we went back, played Hearts for a few hours, relaxed, and then went down and had my birthday dinner. It was really fun. We had great conversation and we laughed a lot. Orvieto is known for their white wine, so I had to try some. It was weird because it was my first birthday that I ever drank alcohol. :) Then we went back and they gave me my presents. They included a small, chocolate pastry as my cake, and a bottle of Blood Orange Juice. It was great and they were delicious. :) The next day we got up, had breakfast, and then jumped on the next train back to Florence. It was an absolutely amazing trip. I wish that I could tell you all the funny things that happened and all the jokes, but that would take too long. Just know that it was so much fun and that God has blessed me with the best friends. :) Basta!