Hey everyone! After a solid weekend in Luxor and Aswan, I am back to continue regaling you with the story of my Spring break. Are you excited? You should be. But first, I need to finish a story I forgot to tell about Olympos.
So, while we were in Olympos it rained. And, by rained...I mean stormed. First off, this was AWESOME. I haven't been even near a storm since coming to Egypt. I miss the sound of thunder. But, it also was a bit unfortunate since we went there to enjoy the beach. We spent a few hours laying out and then decided to take a kayak out to a couple caves we saw across the way. This wouldn't have been a big deal except that we had chosen to ignore the possibility of that whole storm thing and so when the wind started whipping us about when we were 20 minutes out....i may have gotten a bit freaked. But, luckily after some intense arm-busting attempting to row the kayak back...we made it to the beach. I'm pretty sure at some point during all of that, someone yelled for us to come back and we ignored it. Ahh well...we wanted an adventure, right?
Anyways, so on to this week's tale. After Olympos we took a bus to Kas, which is kind of a small ex-pat town on the harbor. It's got a few ruins (as do most places in Turkey) but overall it's just a beautiful place. We got the chance to watch the sunset on the Harbor, eat some ice cream, do a little shopping and eat dinner at this wonderfully quaint, restaurant where you could tell everything had just been made in the woman's kitchen. I had this amazing ravioli with yogurt (Turks love yogurt). Fantastic=]
That evening we all (Andrew and I, as well as the other gents who'd been in Kas that day) grabbed a bus to Selcuk which is the small town near Ephesus. The bus ride there was a bit much...to say the least. We left at 9pm and then got to a train station at 3am only to find out that the next bus to take us to Selcuk didn't come until 6am....so we may or may not have sat at a bus station playing cards, drinking tea and generally wasting time until then. But, we got there, passed out for a bit and got to spend the entire day walking around the glorious ruins of Ephesus! Ya'll, I was SO SO SO excited. Paul is one of the most interesting people in the Bible and while I don't always agree with his take on everything...his letters are some of my favorites. So, to be in a place that he not only specifically wrote a letter to, but that he also spent a significant portion of time in, was AMAZING. I read most of his letters (Ephesians included of course=]) while we were in Turkey to keep things fresh in mind. I love how much Biblical history is scattered around all the places I'm going. I'm an incredibly visual person and so to see the places and walk the landscapes that i've heard about since I was little is quite honestly a dream come true. Hopefully the next one on that list will be Israel and Palestine!
Get ready...next time we're off to ISTANBUL!
Oh and a quick lesson I learned this week:
"That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
2 Corinthians 12:10
Regardless of what happens, no matter how I fail...every time I get back up again I want other people to realize that it's not me. The fact that when life sends me its worst I can move on and get through it, is only because I know what Christ has done for me. And if that's what people see when I get back up? Well, let me tell you. That makes every problem a little easier to handle. God is wonderful.
