Inter-continental trip

Well, I'm glad I'm home. It's really nice to get back to a place and feel like you're home. Today was really hard on our jet-lagged bodies. We haven't been sleeping for our first two nights here... Last night we were up re-arranging our room at 3am... I'm hoping that we get some decent sleep tonight. Luckily we have no plans for tomorrow, so we will be able to sleep in and then do some much needed cleaning and putting things away. We got a lot of things we needed at Ikea (the Turks say (ee kay ah)), so that was great, to actually get a lot of things in one place. I never thought I would be saying this, but there are certain times in your life when you really wish for a Walmart. Back to the trek to Ikea... well, it was on another continent, but it literally felt as if it were on the other side of the world! First off, we walked to the sea and waited 40mins for the next sea bus to show up. The ferry trip was about 20mins. Then, we got off at kadikoy (on the asian side) and searched for the right bus to take us to umraniye, which took quite some time. The bus had to have been over an hour. We were a little confused as to where Ikea was when we got off of the bus, and the guy who sits on the bus and takes your money pointed over the highway. We didn't see anything. So, we decided to cross the street to see what we could see. We found a dirt path leading over the highway bridge, and after we walked quite a long time we started to see Ikea flags and the top of a blue building. It was hilarious, here we were, we had already been on this Ikea quest for a good 3 hours or something and are trekking across a bridge on a dirt path full of trash in the hot sun and with the wind whipping the dirt into our eyes all to go to stinking IKEA! We had decided already that this was never going to happen again. If we want to go to Ikea we will have to wait until they build the new one on the European side. So, since we had taken this route to begin with, imagine us taking the route back but this time with a ton of ikea crap in our hands. And it was quite the load. We bought two rugs (not big ones), a sheet, pillowcases, a lamp, bulbs, 6glasses, 4 glass canisters, etc.... It's a miracle I didn't just dump the stuff in the Bosphorus... It's kind of funny that the things I think to talk about the most are complain-y things when there are so many wonderful things about being here! Oh yeah, before I'm entirely done complaining, who wants to ship us some Dawn dish soap???????? Anyway, as I mentioned before it's really starting to feel like home. We're starting to be able to find our way around Bakirkoy by ourselves (and find our way home!) There's still a ton to do to get settled, like setting up getting jugs of water delivered to us so we have some to drink, and getting a cell phone. If you want to pray for us, seriously pray that Leyla and I get some sleep tonight (and before 5am!)

(everything up there was written last night, Friday night. Now it's 11am Saturday morning)
I finally got some REAL sleep!!! I went to bed around 11:30 and I woke up at 9am (but got out of bed at 10) :) yay.

The ferry on the way there.

A view from the window of the ferry (unfortunately since a the fast ferry you have to be inside in seats instead of outside, so you an get very good pics).

Our first views of the Asian side! I liked a it a lot.
The crazy dirt path we found...
Our first glimmer of hope that we were going the right way... the Ikea flags..
It may not seem like it... but the cutest thing ever. Look at the size of the toilet in relation to the toilet paper dispenser. It's a small toilet for kids!
All of the crap we bought
Leyla sleeping on the ferry home.

I think the best thing that we got out of the Ikea trip was that we now can probably figure out how to get to kadikoy (on the asian side) by ourselves, how to catch the ferry for the islands, and also we decided we want to go on a tour of Istanbul up the bosphorus on a ferry, and now we know how to get where we need to catch it. It was a good day, but oh so tiring.
I'm really really nervous about starting to teach... but I know it will be ok. I will probably spend hours preparing for my first class in horror. But then I will realize that it's no big deal.

Pictures

Okay, I am so tired and have to get ready to make the trek to Ikea so I'm not going to blog right now (though I have soo much to say). However, I figured if I didn't put up some pictures my mom would slap me silly all the way from Michigan... so here are a few. I love you all and we are doing great (minus terrible jet lag).




















Warsaw as we were landing.









Leyla and I being crazy on our 10 hour flight...can
you tell were were VERY tired?? I have my ugly blow up pillow on and Polish Air's ghetto ear phones (looks like a stethescope(sp?) right?)























frost on the window.




















Leyla deciding what to eat.











Our new friend Charlotte (who is leaving for the UK in about a month..sad)
















Living room



















My room









Living room (We're going to rearrange it very soon)













Hallway looking on the bedrooms.




















Kitchen table




















Leyla's room after we rearranged it.

































My crazy new orange bed set (that doesn't really fit my bed...going to have to get a new one at ikea)




























Kitchen!



































Pictures of the entry way and one of Leyla's table in her room.


























































Dining room table











Our cute little washer... we still have yet to figure out how to use it.









































The toilet...kind of jammed in there between the "shower" and the sink...


















Our clothes lines off of the balcony.

















Pictures of the balcony (sorry for the sideways one!)

Some pics from Missouri

Okay, so this one isn't from Missouri, but it's a pic I took of Simon so that Tori could see pics of him. Isn't he sooo cute? (Even though he's so annoying sometimes that I want to throw him across the room...)








You know how McFlurrys have a top like this-->?
Well, the new popcorn chicken shakers at Arby's have this kind of top, only there isn't a hole at the top (obviously, otherwise how could you shake it, it would go right out the top!) Well, we stopped at Arby's on the way, and dad got the popcorn chicken things, and being the smart guy he is, he tried to put the barbeque in the top hole... that doesn't exist! I was laughing so hard I thought I might fall out of the booth!




Here is a picture of us as we pulled onto the tow-truck platform... fun stuff.












A picture in the pitch-black when i blew the fuse in the room... I was sad at how well this picture took, it was supposed to look all dark... oh well. Take my word for it.








Driving through St. Louis.















Tori reading us the book that she has memorized...















Tori and I outside of the Bass Pro Shop








Tori riding the pig at Buckingham's Smoke House BBQ in Springfield.

longest night EVER...

Since I am leaving for a year and my sister and niece (oh yeah, her husband also) moved to Missouri, I had been so sad that I wouldn't get to see them before I leave. My parents and I had the hair-brained idea that we should drive the 12 hours to Missouri when my mom got out of work today (to surprise them) and stay until Saturday. The day was already frustrating for me because my mom didn't get home until later than I thought she would, and when she did get home she decided she needed a shower. We finally got on the road, and were cruising along with me in the back (all the seats down, on the blow up mattress watching Breakfast at Tiffany's) and all of a sudden there was a clanking noise and the van started to shake. Oh crap. There was barely any shoulder and semis kept blowing past us like nobody's business, so there was no way we could put the spare on (which we found out by the manual is underneath in the middle of the van!). It was inevitable for us to get it towed at least to a place that we could put the donut on (if we even could), so dad called the police and they called a tow. The tow truck driver informed us that we would have to get towed to the hotel and that the tire place in town doesn't open until 7am. (We were planning on making it to Springfield at 4ish in the morning... and are still about four or five hours away!) Quite the setback. I was a little ticked, as this is cutting into my "Tori time"! Then we got to the hotel after the nice tow truck man dropped the van off at the tire place and let us get our stuff out. We walked into the one hotel in this nowheresville Indiana town, and were a little scared, as it is quite ghetto and apparently they have had a problem with somebody pulling the fire alarm tonight... *sigh* We got to our room, set our stuff down and I started about the business of figuring how to get connected to the internet. I decided that I should probably plug my computer in, and so I looked at the outlet by my bed and there were already two things plugged in. I started to follow the bottom plug with my had just to see which direction it was coming from so that I could decide if it was something important or if I could unplug it. I barely touched the thing and sparks went flying five inches in all directions and immediately all the power to our room went out!! Needless to day, this is the longest night ever, and nothing else better happen in the new room we are in. If the fire alarm gets pulled while I'm sleeping, I don't think I will be able to keep my sense of humor about the whole situation! :)

A week from today...

A week from today I leave, and the restless nights have already started...

On a happier note, today I went shopping a bought a lot of things I need, like over-the-counter drugs (well I should say my mom bought them for me). One reason I decided to buy a lot of this stuff here (and in bulk at Sams) is that I have already packed one suitcase and weighed it, thinking it was going to be way over the limit (50lbs) and that I didn't have room for such things, and it happened to only be at 40 lbs and it's pretty much full.

Also, I bought an external hard drive today. I have been wanting one for quite some time (my laptop only has 30gig and is almost full), as I don't want to be stuck and not be able to put my pictures from my camera to my laptop. So, since I intend to take a LOT of pictures this year, I decided it was something that I have to have. I was lucky, I was going to purchase a 250gig drive, and the 320gig was on sale for the same price! Already tonight I've freed up over 3 1/2 gigs by moving a lot of my old files and pictures over to it. yay!

I think this has been the most boring blog ever... toiletries and hard drive space? Sorry!

Webcam

Today I finally got the cheap webcam that I purchased in the mail. It's pretty much what I expected it to be: mediocre. The problem for us mac users is that in the way of webcams there are not very many options. It's either the highly expensive iSight or one or two crappy ones. A pc user can go anywhere, even walmart, and purchase an ok webcam from several choices. They don't carry any mac-compatible ones there. Anway, I purcased the icecam by macally so that I can chat with family and friends on skype (a free internet calling and chat service) with video. So yeah, if anyone wants to talk to me on skype when I get to Turkey, I would love that. :)

My new scrapblog

35W Bridge and Anxiety

I have to keep telling myself that the bridge that I've been on probably a thousand times is completely collapsed into the Mississippi... It seems totally unreal! Thank God I've finally gotten ahold of all of my close friends that live there, and they are all O.K. (Thanks for scaring me Leyla by not calling me back right away!!) :P I'm so thankful that some of the lanes were closed for construction, or this would have been an even bigger tragedy than it is. I'm still in shock over it, and I can't look at the images without crying and thanking the Lord that the people I know they are safe...

I was sitting in the doctor's office today (sinus infection, eew) and I started thinking about how in week and a half I will be living in Istanbul... It's entirely surreal right now, almost like the bridge collapsing: it's hard to believe unless you actually see it... and I'll be in Minneapolis for a day before I leave and I'll have to see that wreckage (and maybe then it will seem real). I have so much to do and so many things I have to get before I leave that I feel weighed down by anxiety about it all... (not to mention by a migrane and sinus infection) I'm really in need of some peace and faith right now.