Church

Well, we made the journey to Taksim to go to the Dutch Chapel, and it turned out really well. Not only was it nice to go to a church service, we made some really good contacts. We met two Americans who both live on the Asian side in Kadiköy. I think we're going to "try" to get to bed, so I'm just going to upload a few pictures of İstiklal Caddesi (pronouned ist-ick-lal Jahd-a-see for those of you who don't know...) and our little trip there, and then go to bed!

Our dolmuş ride to Taksim: boy do we look sweaty and gross.
The view from the window.

Some street views of İstiklal Caddesi...A cool looking McDonalds

The weird cows that travel around the world.

A view of the sea from Florya, which is two stops down from us on the old train. We went there tonight when we got back from Kadiköy

Dutch Chapel

Well, it's 9:30 Sunday morning, and we are getting ready to head to Taksim to try to find the Dutch Chapel. This should be a really fun adventure. Yesterday we totally re-arranged and cleaned the living room. It was crazy! We made the fatal move to try to wash some of the walls... boy that was a mistake! It just kind of moved the dirt around and showed how nasty it is all around the spot you just cleaned! We really like the way we moved it, it has a lot more of a homey feel and the dining room is closer to the kitchen and we put a bunch of pictures on the book shelf.

Cleaning after moving furniture! Eew!

more cleaning
Finished Product!!

Our beautiful pics (we need to get more frames so I can get pics up of the rest of my fam and friends!)

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!)