Today is the day that I depart from this beautiful country. The country that I loved and taught me much this summer. I realized last night as I was walking down a kalıbalık (crowded) Istiklal Street in Taksim with Jess and Chelsea and our new Turkish friend, Saba---that I am not exactly "prepared" to leave yet. Now, I have surely been longing to see my family and friends and to taste the comfort of familiar food, but for some reason I am still emotionally residing in Turkey. I think there will definitely be a piece of Anneliese left behind in Istanbul...I just loved it so much here.
So, I am leaving on a jet plane. In three hours, in fact. I want to think that I will be back again to Turkey soon.
Thank you to all--for your prayers and love that you have constantly showered me with. It's been a consistent encouragement throughout this challenging, but fruitful summer. I await the day when I can see your faces, for it has been too long. It will be soon.
with love from Istanbul,
Anneliese
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
One Week
That's it, that's all that remains of our time here. This time next week I will be suspended somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, passing through hours that don't exist in the normal day.
I wouldn't say that I'm home sick, but I do miss my home a lot. I'm a bit tired of everything being new and different and... foreign. I'm ready for familiar faces and some regularity. I'm ready to shop at Fry's again (believe it or not). I'm ready for wide, level sidewalks. I'm ready to do my own laundry in my own washer and dryer. I'm ready to hug you.
There are two more days of class, in which we will mostly review. I hope to discipline myself enough to study on my own outside of class too. It's sooo hard, though. I can't believe I've gone through four years of college and still don't know how to study. I need to study pretty bad though. This course is pass/fail, so I'll either take 12 credits home with me or zero. And after all the work put in, I really want those credits more now than before. Anyway, I'd love your prayers this week. Prayers for perseverance and confidence and credit would be nice, I think. Also, ask Jesus to give us the language in some miraculous way. Because we're so ready for him to do that.
I like the people here a lot. I wonder what saying goodbye to them will be like. I don't really want to say goodbye to some of them.
Love you.
I wouldn't say that I'm home sick, but I do miss my home a lot. I'm a bit tired of everything being new and different and... foreign. I'm ready for familiar faces and some regularity. I'm ready to shop at Fry's again (believe it or not). I'm ready for wide, level sidewalks. I'm ready to do my own laundry in my own washer and dryer. I'm ready to hug you.
There are two more days of class, in which we will mostly review. I hope to discipline myself enough to study on my own outside of class too. It's sooo hard, though. I can't believe I've gone through four years of college and still don't know how to study. I need to study pretty bad though. This course is pass/fail, so I'll either take 12 credits home with me or zero. And after all the work put in, I really want those credits more now than before. Anyway, I'd love your prayers this week. Prayers for perseverance and confidence and credit would be nice, I think. Also, ask Jesus to give us the language in some miraculous way. Because we're so ready for him to do that.
I like the people here a lot. I wonder what saying goodbye to them will be like. I don't really want to say goodbye to some of them.
Love you.
You are painfully true.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
The Saddest Day...
The day that I ran out of money. [[Param yok!]] But aside from that fact, today was really not sad at all. More like, anti-sad actually. So I lied in my title, but whatever. You'll get over it.
What happened?? (you may be wondering) Well, the girls and I met up with Saba, our new Turkish friend and went to the most fabulous place for breakfast. It's called Malta Kosku and (from what I understood) it was one of the homes of a sultan. It is where the women and children stayed but now it is a city forest reserve. It was so neat because we riding in a taxi (along the normal, busy streets of Istanbul) when the driver turned and suddenly we were surrounded by lush forest. The breakfast was SO luxurious. We ate on a veranda outside this old home that has a great view of the Bosphorus. We even got to look around the place. After breakfast we walked around Ortakoy (the neighborhood nearby) with Saba and she helped us shop. Anneliese got this great dress and I bought some movies that are "essential to Turkish cinema" Saba said. After parting ways with Saba we went to the Grand Bazar and shopped, not until we dropped, but close.
Look, you're over already.
Oh my goodness, the most delightful thing just happened to me at the cornerstore market! Anneliese and I were standing in front of the very small meat section discussing dinner and if we should buy chicken this time. But we don't have any spices and what if the chicken is bland. Sick, we might as well not buy it. We might as well get kofte or iskender again because we can be sure that it will be flavorful. Blah, blah, blah. When suddenly we noticed these two little girls watching us curiously. They whispered amongst themselves. I smiled and said "Merhaba" to them. They smiled back at me and the younger of the two girls (in this sweet small voice) said, "Ne konusuyorsun?" I didn't quite understand her at first, partly because she spoke really softly and partly because when someone speaks Turkish to me, even a small child, I tend to tense up a bit. I think because I feel this pressure to understand and be able to communicate with them, or maybe I'm worried they think I'm a Turk, but anyway... What she asked me was "What are you speaking?". So I said, "Ingilizce" And they smiled and said "Aah" with this sort of amazed look on their faces. And that was it. It was a simple interaction, but a great victory. We communicated. And they were so precious, you should have seen them.
Okay so, enough about me. Let's talk about you for a minute. What was the best thing that happened to you this week? What has blessed you lately? I wanna know... so tell me.
Your friend,
Jessica SusanWright
What happened?? (you may be wondering) Well, the girls and I met up with Saba, our new Turkish friend and went to the most fabulous place for breakfast. It's called Malta Kosku and (from what I understood) it was one of the homes of a sultan. It is where the women and children stayed but now it is a city forest reserve. It was so neat because we riding in a taxi (along the normal, busy streets of Istanbul) when the driver turned and suddenly we were surrounded by lush forest. The breakfast was SO luxurious. We ate on a veranda outside this old home that has a great view of the Bosphorus. We even got to look around the place. After breakfast we walked around Ortakoy (the neighborhood nearby) with Saba and she helped us shop. Anneliese got this great dress and I bought some movies that are "essential to Turkish cinema" Saba said. After parting ways with Saba we went to the Grand Bazar and shopped, not until we dropped, but close.
Look, you're over already.
Oh my goodness, the most delightful thing just happened to me at the cornerstore market! Anneliese and I were standing in front of the very small meat section discussing dinner and if we should buy chicken this time. But we don't have any spices and what if the chicken is bland. Sick, we might as well not buy it. We might as well get kofte or iskender again because we can be sure that it will be flavorful. Blah, blah, blah. When suddenly we noticed these two little girls watching us curiously. They whispered amongst themselves. I smiled and said "Merhaba" to them. They smiled back at me and the younger of the two girls (in this sweet small voice) said, "Ne konusuyorsun?" I didn't quite understand her at first, partly because she spoke really softly and partly because when someone speaks Turkish to me, even a small child, I tend to tense up a bit. I think because I feel this pressure to understand and be able to communicate with them, or maybe I'm worried they think I'm a Turk, but anyway... What she asked me was "What are you speaking?". So I said, "Ingilizce" And they smiled and said "Aah" with this sort of amazed look on their faces. And that was it. It was a simple interaction, but a great victory. We communicated. And they were so precious, you should have seen them.
Okay so, enough about me. Let's talk about you for a minute. What was the best thing that happened to you this week? What has blessed you lately? I wanna know... so tell me.
Your friend,
Jessica SusanWright
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Walking where Paul walked...
Merhaba, friends! I want to let you all know that there are updated photos on our photobucket site. Check out the "Trip to Efes" album to view all of our adventures while in ancient Ephesus and the neighboring towns of Selçuk and Sirince. Also, check out the album titled "People" as there are more pictures of classmates and friends from outings we have taken around town. Again, if you still need the password to the site, contact Chelsea, Jess, or myself.
Thank you all for your prayers and love. We had a lovely time while in Ephesus and are having a amazing time in the language program. It was neat to walk where Paul had once lived, worked, and sent a letter to the church there! While among the ruins, we read the Letter to the Ephesians together. I hope to send a real update soon for you all. In short, Jesus has been bringing us neat, encouraging relationships within and outside of our program.
Also, guess what?!!? We have the awesome opportunity to hang out with our fellow InterVarsity friends tomorrow. The IV team from Antalya is spending a day in the old part (Sultanahmet) of Istanbul before they head back to the States. We will get to see great sites such as the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque with them. The three of us cannot wait to be reunited with the team, which includes favorites such as Theo Davis, Seth "my brother" Knox, and Erin Brankel!!! We anticipating tomorrow to be a sweet, encouraging reunion...Our God is Good!
The Three Turkeys in front of the Celsus Library in Efes.
Thank you all for your prayers and love. We had a lovely time while in Ephesus and are having a amazing time in the language program. It was neat to walk where Paul had once lived, worked, and sent a letter to the church there! While among the ruins, we read the Letter to the Ephesians together. I hope to send a real update soon for you all. In short, Jesus has been bringing us neat, encouraging relationships within and outside of our program.
Also, guess what?!!? We have the awesome opportunity to hang out with our fellow InterVarsity friends tomorrow. The IV team from Antalya is spending a day in the old part (Sultanahmet) of Istanbul before they head back to the States. We will get to see great sites such as the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque with them. The three of us cannot wait to be reunited with the team, which includes favorites such as Theo Davis, Seth "my brother" Knox, and Erin Brankel!!! We anticipating tomorrow to be a sweet, encouraging reunion...Our God is Good!
The Three Turkeys in front of the Celsus Library in Efes.We love you all so much! Can you believe that we have been here for almost 5 weeks? Only three to go until we see your beautiful faces again. Know that our God is good and is upholding us in his righteous hand. Do not fear, for He is with us. And He is with You. He will help and strengthen us for He is a gracious and loving God.
In His Hands,
Anneliese
PS - Take heart in Isaiah 41:8-13. <3
In His Hands,
Anneliese
PS - Take heart in Isaiah 41:8-13. <3
Saturday, July 7, 2007
::Our First Trimester::
Sizi çok özleyoruz (We miss you all a lot!)!! Türkiye'de üç hafta kaldık (We have stayed in Turkey three weeks). Bu Türkçe Dili Programı'da, her gün çok öğreniyoruz ama her zaman çok zor (In this Turkish Language Program, every day we are learning so much but it is always difficult)!!...
Well hello again from Istanbul, friends and family! It is true. We have just completed our first trimester (2.5 weeks) of the language program--and I am sure that you have been awaiting an update on us and our activities. Again, thank you all for your consistent, strong prayers and love. We truly love and miss you all.
To start, we have been surprisingly blessed by the simple comforts of our living situation. I mean, we have balconies (see left)! How lovely is that? We have enjoyed many a breakfast and dinner on our balconies--truly believing that having a beautiful view enhances whatever we may be eating at the time! Also, we have been given space and allowed entire bedrooms to ourselves. Not to mention, I (Anneliese) have been blessed by a sweet random roommate. Her name is Sarah and she is a Turkish translator from Austria with a great accent. Our dorm, Uçaksavar, is also quite close to a local market where we can make quick trips for things like fresh fruit and 5L jugs of water.
As for the language program itself, it is much more demanding than we had anticipated. Our scheduled class time is from 9am-1pm every weekday. These 20 hours consist of 8 hours of grammar, 4 hours of Lab (listening and speaking activities), 2 hours of writing, 3 hours of speaking, and 3 hours of reading. Most of are teachers are absolutely amazing and lovable. One of our favorite teachers has been our writing and speaking teacher, Ayşe. She is so petite and cute! Also, our grammar teacher and other favorite, Ceyda, is so knowledgeable and beautifully feminine (she sort of floats around the room and speaks in a high, sweet voice!). Chelsea, Jess, and I have really appreciated how gracious these two teachers are. They are so successful at making the classroom a safe place to learn, take risks, and be challenged. For example, they do not show ANY sign of exasperation or frustration if they need to repeat instructions two or even three times! I can tell they really want us to learn and to them, in order for that to happen--extreme patience is required. Also, after hearing from the other classes and their learning experiences, we feel doubly blessed. God is good and takes care of us in these seemingly small, but significant ways!
And then there is Betül. Betül is our teaching assistant for our class and a true delight. She is a few years older than us and a graduate student at Boğaziçi. We want to be
her friend. Pray that we can pursue her intentionally and lovingly. We have been getting caught up in th
e frustration of not having the daily interaction with Turks as we had expected (since we are in a language program where most of our classmates are Americans). As students, our primary environment is the classroom. Therefore, the Turks that we interact with daily are our teachers and Betül. So, yes, we want to be her friend. We see her so much as she is in charge of holding informal speaking sessions with our class so that we can get some practice. The picture here is of one of these speaking sessions. Betül is sitting behind Chelsea in the striped shirt. We just cannot help but love her. Pray also that we would not be intimidated to initiate friendship with her because of our language barriers. She speaks English fluently, but the three of us feel some pressure to speak to her in Turkish all the time as she is our teacher!
Along with regular classes, we have the opportunity to get a taste of the Turkish culture through this program. Every Monday we get to see some recent movies in Turkish with English subtitles which have been a hit thus far. Also, there are weekly talks on various aspects of culture. Last weekend, we along with about 40 other program attendees went on a excursion to see parts of the old city. If you look in our "Istanbul Gezesi" sub-album on our photobucket site you can see all of the photos from that adventure. Though tiring, we saw many old Ottoman camiis (mosques) and Byzantine architecture which were all stunning.
Another unexpected adventure during our time here has been the process of getting to know our diverse and interesting class
mates! Our class consists of 10 Americans and two Israelis. We were not expecting that! They all have unique stories of how they started learning Turkish. Just so you can get a small taste of the kind of people we get to interact with daily, here are some descriptions of our classmates. In the picture, I will start with Lihi, who is in the red at the front left and move clockwise around the table.
Lihi :: Lihi is an Israeli computer engineering grad student who came to start learning Turkish by working here during the summers. She lives in the room across the hall from me. She is very outgoing and not afraid to ask the embarrassing questions in class like "what does that mean?" She also is an avid swimmer...she goes to the pool everyday!
Betül :: Our cute Turkish assistant I mentioned earlier. She got her degree in Foreign Language Education.
Suzy :: Suzy is a real city girl and journalist who is on a fellowship to live and work in Istanbul. She worked for the New York Observer and has great red hair and style. She just started learning Turkish this summer. Before this program, she did a similar beginning program.
Chris :: He is the newest addition to our class. He is a Yale graduate going to Cambridge for his master's in the fall who just picks up language sickeningly well. He just started learning a month ago.
Mike :: Mike is bit of a mystery, but he seems to pick up the language well. He is a grad student in Indiana who went through the beginning level of this program a few years ago.
Berk :: ...is our resident Turkish student and baby of the class. Both of his parents are Turkish and met here, but he has grown up in California his whole life. He picked up casual spoken Turkish while growing up, but he never learned any mechanics like grammar and writing associated with the language. Sometimes he seems light years ahead of us, but then sometimes we appear light years ahead of him. Interesting situation. He is a great addition to our class though as he adds lots of laughs...
Elihai :: He is another Israeli student pursuing the language with us. His English is not as strong as Lihi's, so we have noticed that it is very difficult to communicate in class with him and thus, it is hard to get to know him. We have realized that it must be extremely hard to learn a foreign language in a foreign language (his speaks Hebrew as his mother tongue)!
And then Chelsea, Jessica, and me!!!
Joe :: He is another grad student from Indiana. His degree is in Central Asian Studies (I think!), so he has been studying a variety of languages including Russian. He also has a Turkish girlfriend who lives in Ankara.
Ranin :: Ranin is quite the interesting character. He is Iranian who fled Iran as a teenager with his brother to come the U.S. due to religious persecution. He is currently working on his doctorate at Yale. He knows loads of languages already including Arabic, Persian, and French. He is very funny and makes us laugh a lot.
Kelly :: Kelly is missing in the picture, but she is our resident linguist. I think she is studying in Illinois working on her doctorate. She has done a lot of work with the Albanian language and got into learning Turkish when she engaged with a group of ethnic Albanians in Turkey who had a dialect that interested her.
And that's our class!! We are learning to love them and not be intimidated by their Ivy League, prestigious titles... :-)
As I will soon bid you all farewell, I want to let you know what is in store for us the next few weeks. This upcoming Thursday we are taking our Midterm, which we are all very anxious about. Pray for peace and the wisdom to manage our time well. After we finish our test, we are then going to make our way to the old city of Ephesus (Efes) by overnight bus! We will spend the weekend seeing the ruins and meeting up with Jessica's UA turkish teacher, Deniz. The following weekend we will be meeting the InterVarsity team in the old part of Istanbul and seeing the great Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque (SultanAhmet)! This means I will get to see my little brother, Seth, and our friends! Praise Jesus for joyful reunions.
Well, everyone...it is evening here. 9:45pm to be exact. So, iyi akşamlar (good evening/night) to you all! We send all of our love and thoughts to you all back home. Keep praying for strength and peace of mind for us during this challenging and sometimes discouraging experience. Our God is a good and gracious God...
peace be to you,
Anneliese
Well hello again from Istanbul, friends and family! It is true. We have just completed our first trimester (2.5 weeks) of the language program--and I am sure that you have been awaiting an update on us and our activities. Again, thank you all for your consistent, strong prayers and love. We truly love and miss you all.
To start, we have been surprisingly blessed by the simple comforts of our living situation. I mean, we have balconies (see left)! How lovely is that? We have enjoyed many a breakfast and dinner on our balconies--truly believing that having a beautiful view enhances whatever we may be eating at the time! Also, we have been given space and allowed entire bedrooms to ourselves. Not to mention, I (Anneliese) have been blessed by a sweet random roommate. Her name is Sarah and she is a Turkish translator from Austria with a great accent. Our dorm, Uçaksavar, is also quite close to a local market where we can make quick trips for things like fresh fruit and 5L jugs of water.
As for the language program itself, it is much more demanding than we had anticipated. Our scheduled class time is from 9am-1pm every weekday. These 20 hours consist of 8 hours of grammar, 4 hours of Lab (listening and speaking activities), 2 hours of writing, 3 hours of speaking, and 3 hours of reading. Most of are teachers are absolutely amazing and lovable. One of our favorite teachers has been our writing and speaking teacher, Ayşe. She is so petite and cute! Also, our grammar teacher and other favorite, Ceyda, is so knowledgeable and beautifully feminine (she sort of floats around the room and speaks in a high, sweet voice!). Chelsea, Jess, and I have really appreciated how gracious these two teachers are. They are so successful at making the classroom a safe place to learn, take risks, and be challenged. For example, they do not show ANY sign of exasperation or frustration if they need to repeat instructions two or even three times! I can tell they really want us to learn and to them, in order for that to happen--extreme patience is required. Also, after hearing from the other classes and their learning experiences, we feel doubly blessed. God is good and takes care of us in these seemingly small, but significant ways!
And then there is Betül. Betül is our teaching assistant for our class and a true delight. She is a few years older than us and a graduate student at Boğaziçi. We want to be
her friend. Pray that we can pursue her intentionally and lovingly. We have been getting caught up in the frustration of not having the daily interaction with Turks as we had expected (since we are in a language program where most of our classmates are Americans). As students, our primary environment is the classroom. Therefore, the Turks that we interact with daily are our teachers and Betül. So, yes, we want to be her friend. We see her so much as she is in charge of holding informal speaking sessions with our class so that we can get some practice. The picture here is of one of these speaking sessions. Betül is sitting behind Chelsea in the striped shirt. We just cannot help but love her. Pray also that we would not be intimidated to initiate friendship with her because of our language barriers. She speaks English fluently, but the three of us feel some pressure to speak to her in Turkish all the time as she is our teacher!Along with regular classes, we have the opportunity to get a taste of the Turkish culture through this program. Every Monday we get to see some recent movies in Turkish with English subtitles which have been a hit thus far. Also, there are weekly talks on various aspects of culture. Last weekend, we along with about 40 other program attendees went on a excursion to see parts of the old city. If you look in our "Istanbul Gezesi" sub-album on our photobucket site you can see all of the photos from that adventure. Though tiring, we saw many old Ottoman camiis (mosques) and Byzantine architecture which were all stunning.
Another unexpected adventure during our time here has been the process of getting to know our diverse and interesting class
mates! Our class consists of 10 Americans and two Israelis. We were not expecting that! They all have unique stories of how they started learning Turkish. Just so you can get a small taste of the kind of people we get to interact with daily, here are some descriptions of our classmates. In the picture, I will start with Lihi, who is in the red at the front left and move clockwise around the table.Lihi :: Lihi is an Israeli computer engineering grad student who came to start learning Turkish by working here during the summers. She lives in the room across the hall from me. She is very outgoing and not afraid to ask the embarrassing questions in class like "what does that mean?" She also is an avid swimmer...she goes to the pool everyday!
Betül :: Our cute Turkish assistant I mentioned earlier. She got her degree in Foreign Language Education.
Suzy :: Suzy is a real city girl and journalist who is on a fellowship to live and work in Istanbul. She worked for the New York Observer and has great red hair and style. She just started learning Turkish this summer. Before this program, she did a similar beginning program.
Chris :: He is the newest addition to our class. He is a Yale graduate going to Cambridge for his master's in the fall who just picks up language sickeningly well. He just started learning a month ago.
Mike :: Mike is bit of a mystery, but he seems to pick up the language well. He is a grad student in Indiana who went through the beginning level of this program a few years ago.
Berk :: ...is our resident Turkish student and baby of the class. Both of his parents are Turkish and met here, but he has grown up in California his whole life. He picked up casual spoken Turkish while growing up, but he never learned any mechanics like grammar and writing associated with the language. Sometimes he seems light years ahead of us, but then sometimes we appear light years ahead of him. Interesting situation. He is a great addition to our class though as he adds lots of laughs...
Elihai :: He is another Israeli student pursuing the language with us. His English is not as strong as Lihi's, so we have noticed that it is very difficult to communicate in class with him and thus, it is hard to get to know him. We have realized that it must be extremely hard to learn a foreign language in a foreign language (his speaks Hebrew as his mother tongue)!
And then Chelsea, Jessica, and me!!!
Joe :: He is another grad student from Indiana. His degree is in Central Asian Studies (I think!), so he has been studying a variety of languages including Russian. He also has a Turkish girlfriend who lives in Ankara.
Ranin :: Ranin is quite the interesting character. He is Iranian who fled Iran as a teenager with his brother to come the U.S. due to religious persecution. He is currently working on his doctorate at Yale. He knows loads of languages already including Arabic, Persian, and French. He is very funny and makes us laugh a lot.
Kelly :: Kelly is missing in the picture, but she is our resident linguist. I think she is studying in Illinois working on her doctorate. She has done a lot of work with the Albanian language and got into learning Turkish when she engaged with a group of ethnic Albanians in Turkey who had a dialect that interested her.
And that's our class!! We are learning to love them and not be intimidated by their Ivy League, prestigious titles... :-)
As I will soon bid you all farewell, I want to let you know what is in store for us the next few weeks. This upcoming Thursday we are taking our Midterm, which we are all very anxious about. Pray for peace and the wisdom to manage our time well. After we finish our test, we are then going to make our way to the old city of Ephesus (Efes) by overnight bus! We will spend the weekend seeing the ruins and meeting up with Jessica's UA turkish teacher, Deniz. The following weekend we will be meeting the InterVarsity team in the old part of Istanbul and seeing the great Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque (SultanAhmet)! This means I will get to see my little brother, Seth, and our friends! Praise Jesus for joyful reunions.
Well, everyone...it is evening here. 9:45pm to be exact. So, iyi akşamlar (good evening/night) to you all! We send all of our love and thoughts to you all back home. Keep praying for strength and peace of mind for us during this challenging and sometimes discouraging experience. Our God is a good and gracious God...
peace be to you,
Anneliese
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Welcome...
to our NEW threeturkeys photo website!!
Dear Friends,
We have have found a way to both consolidate all of our photos and continuously update you with the new photos we are taking now and have yet to take. We have done this by creating a photobucket.com account. The account name is: threeturkeys. If you would like access to account please email, facebook, or tell us any of us and we will share the password with you. We are doing it this way just to make sure that only people we trust have access. The site is organized so that there are themed sub-albums that you can look at. We will continue to update the site and create more sub-albums as necessary.
We love you all so so soo much,
Jessica Susan
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Today in Istanbul had record-breaking high temperatures. 42.2 degrees Celsius, which to me means nothing. But thanks to DoganApartmani (a turkish variation of google homepage) I understand that to be 87 degrees Farenheit with 61% humidity. The last few nights have been hard to sleep through because there has been no breeze, but tonight is looking up.
The Turkish Language and Culture program has been taking up more of our time than I had anticipated it would. We pull some long days, sometimes 9am-5pm even. And then we have homework on top of that. By the time all of our school responsibilities are accomplished we have just enough time to eat, shower, and get a little bit of computer time. Overall I have felt pretty disconnected from my life back home considering I sleep about 15 feet away from two friends' computers. I long to write posts much more frequently than this on both xanga and the threeturkeys.blogspot.com site, to post pictures of these amazing places we've been seeing, to email and skype and everything, but there's just not enough time.
Satan has been on the move. He's trying really hard to spoil our adventure with irritation, discouragement, physical and linguistic discomfort and so on, but we're wise to him. One thought that's really been on my mind is this: Satan wants nothing more than to isolate us. From Turks, from the people involved with our program, from each other. The fight between heaven and hell is real, my friends. I'm totally convinced of that. I feel it. The war wages inside of my very body! Anyway, I'm really thankful that our eyes have been graciously able to see through some of this stuff. We're praying against it and you're more than welcome to join us in that.
I've been putting some of my energies towards creating an online photo album in which all of our pictures are consolidated. It'll be ready for viewing in just a couple of days, I hope. (Insallah!) And we can continue to add pictures to the album as we take them throughout the next 7 weeks.
It is SO good to be here. The campus is beautiful. We walk right by the Bosphorus every day on our way to class and I say, sometimes aloud and sometimes just in my head, "Gunaydin Bogaz..." (which means "Goodmorning Bosphorus") I am so blessed to be here and to be sharing this experience with my two girlfriends.
I
am
alive.
The Turkish Language and Culture program has been taking up more of our time than I had anticipated it would. We pull some long days, sometimes 9am-5pm even. And then we have homework on top of that. By the time all of our school responsibilities are accomplished we have just enough time to eat, shower, and get a little bit of computer time. Overall I have felt pretty disconnected from my life back home considering I sleep about 15 feet away from two friends' computers. I long to write posts much more frequently than this on both xanga and the threeturkeys.blogspot.com site, to post pictures of these amazing places we've been seeing, to email and skype and everything, but there's just not enough time.
Satan has been on the move. He's trying really hard to spoil our adventure with irritation, discouragement, physical and linguistic discomfort and so on, but we're wise to him. One thought that's really been on my mind is this: Satan wants nothing more than to isolate us. From Turks, from the people involved with our program, from each other. The fight between heaven and hell is real, my friends. I'm totally convinced of that. I feel it. The war wages inside of my very body! Anyway, I'm really thankful that our eyes have been graciously able to see through some of this stuff. We're praying against it and you're more than welcome to join us in that.
I've been putting some of my energies towards creating an online photo album in which all of our pictures are consolidated. It'll be ready for viewing in just a couple of days, I hope. (Insallah!) And we can continue to add pictures to the album as we take them throughout the next 7 weeks.
It is SO good to be here. The campus is beautiful. We walk right by the Bosphorus every day on our way to class and I say, sometimes aloud and sometimes just in my head, "Gunaydin Bogaz..." (which means "Goodmorning Bosphorus") I am so blessed to be here and to be sharing this experience with my two girlfriends.
I
am
alive.
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