Don't drink the Kool Aid (or water)

Hello everybody! So yes, I am alive. The last few days have been incredibly busy, but instead of complaining about them why don't I just tell you what happened!

Starting out on January 7th, I flew from the MSP to Amsterdam airport where the group had a five hour layover. Oh, we also time traveled 7 hours ahead to January 8th. After waiting such a long time we boarded our next flight and arrived in Istanbul. I won't bore you with unnecessary bland details such as how many time I went to the bathroom or how I almost was arrested by airport security. However, the jet lag did not fair well on the group forcing most of us to head to bed around 8:30. (Just joking about the airport security).

One thing you might not know about Turkey is that you can NOT drink tap water. Even the hotels do not advise it. Basically, the Turkish government laces the tap water with some sort of formula to kill the Crocodiles in the sewers. So, any water you drink, or even use to brush your teeth, needs to come out of a water bottle.

Moving on.

Today, I was lucky enough to visit a couple of sites including:

• The Hippodrome
• Blue Mosque
• Hagi Sophie
• Archaeological Museum

I could spend hours and hours explaining each, however, I will just give you a picture and list some information about such sites. I encourage you to look up extra information as they were each fascinating.

The Hippodrome was a stadium for chariot racing and could seat 100,000 individuals (something like Ben Hur). It was the largest stadium ever built in the ancient world. The pictures above show some statues that were in the middle of the field. The Egyptian basilica dates back to between 1500-1200 B.C. (Think back to Moses).

The Sultan Ahmed or Blue Mosque, as you silly Americans know it as, was built by the 20/21 year old sultan in 1616 A.D. and no, the Blue man group had nothing to do with it.

On the land that the Hagia Sophie was built stood a Roman temple to Jupiter, which fell over and sunk into the swamp. Than, a church was built, which also fell over and sunk into the swamp. But the third time, the third time the Hagia Sophie was built. Which caught on fire, turned into a Mosque, and than fell down and sunk into the swamp. But the fourth time, the fourth time the Turkish government just turned the place into a museum. (Use wikipedia to see which is true and false).

Finally, the archaeological museum, in this picture stands part of the Jerusalem wall which was standing around when Jesus was alive.


So, there you have it kids! I hope you enjoyed catching up on my adventures. 25 days left and counting which is already going by so fast. Tomorrow is Koney (ancient Iconium) and Anitoch. Both are mentioned in the Biblical texts and also have important Islamic context.

I'm still unsure if I will be blogging every night or every other night. I might go with the later but leave a comment and tell me what you think.

As they say in Turkey, sicak tuvaletler!