Coming to a close....

Wow, my last blog entry for the official semester. For some reason, I thought I would have more than 21 blog entries… oh well! School officially ends tomorrow, although I finished all my homework and projects three or four days ago (which felt really good!). But don’t worry, faithful followers—I will try to write periodically while I am traveling around Europe for the next three weeks, as well.

Before I get too far into this, I want to say that I officially lived up to the name of my blog… I had an olives and cheese sandwich! I was pretty excited.

But anyhow, we had a wonderful last few days in Turkey. We saw a lot of really great sites like the ancient city of Ephesus, the wonderfully preserved churches in Cappidocia that are built into the sides of funny looking rock structures (that's what the picture is of), and a final two days in Istanbul exploring the Grand Bazaar, Suleyman the Magnificant’s mosque, a cruise down the Bosporus. We had a ridiculously long bus ride one day—14 hours with only one stop besides bathroom breaks—but even that was OK because the dynamics of our group are so great. I am really going to miss the other 22 people on this trip when it is over.

We got to Athens yesterday and had a free day today. I had a terrible morning trying to sort out things with the Greek post office to ship a large box to London so we don’t have to lug it around Europe but also don’t have to pay three times the amount to ship it to the United States. Today is Saturday, and apparently every Hellenic Post branch doesn’t ever ship packages weighing more than 2 kilo, and the only one that does is closed on Saturdays. (Fun fact… 2 kilo is 4.4 pounds, and our suitcase was roughly 30 kilo-- ~66 lbs. Somehow we got a price quote for that weight from the post offices that we went to… go figure. Ugh!!)

Anyways, after taking the metro three times carrying a 66 lb suitcase and three large cardboard boxes, visiting two different post offices, crying in front of one postal worker who had no idea how to handle a 20-year-old crying in public, and traveling for two hours, we finally made it back to the hotel and were EXTREMELY frustrated. The post office suggested splitting it into 15 2-kilo boxes at 21 Euro per box… we said no. The front desk called UPS and they said they could ship it for nearly 500 euro—that’s about $800. We said no. But We have two lifesavers in the group and they offered to take our bags on the plane under their name (since you’re allowed to check 2 bags when you fly) and then it will be waiting in Fargo for us whenever we come pick it up. Hooray! This means that nobody reading this will get souvenirs those first few days I am home, but you’ll have to deal with it. :-) Plus, these two people are saving Lissie and I almost 60 euros a piece. Thank goodness!

Other than that, I am really excited and sad. We are having a going away party tonight with our language lesson teacher from the beginning of the trip and also a viewing of our acting workshop that I wrote about in February (if you didn’t read that entry, you should. It was the strangest thing we did all trip and you will understand why I am excited to see the video that they made!). Lissie and I are going back up the Acropolis tomorrow morning as a last hurrah and we are going to leave on a train at 11:38 in the afternoon (although we’re leaving our hotel at like 10:30 to allow for ample time since neither of us really know what we are doing!).
I will update this when I get the chance… my guess is that I will have lots and lots of time on trains and ferries to write, the only problem is sketchy internet in the hostels. We’ll see, and I plan on keeping up-to-date as well as I can.

One final note… please pray for Lissie and me. We don’t know what we are doing and are kind of winging it and we both confessed to each other last night that we are scared out of our minds. It is going to be such a good adventure that we are sure we won’t ever regret doing it, and I will be sure to keep track of all the stupid things we do because we don’t know better. But if you could keep us in your prayers, I would be very grateful.

Take care, everyone!

I also have more pictures from Turkey!! Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000688&l=250f0&id=1273320032