Escapade to Istanbul

Wampa wampa,

I still have no pictures because it would appear that the flash drive I'm toting everything around on is causing problems. I'll figure it out at some point. Anyways,

Last Saturday night John and I decided it would be fun to take the late train back to Thessaloniki to go building climbing and have adventures in general. Andrew and (student) James came along as well, and we did indeed have adventures. We spent quite a while climbing around on hotel roofs and eating free apples from the lobby. We also climbed around some ruins and did some excavation in some of the untouched areas. I need to find some pictures of these people. In the Hip hop dancing part 1 picture, James is in the foreground with the black shirt.

We were back in time for breakfast on Sunday morning, after which me (leader) James, Ina (one of the kitchen staff), Dave (another leader), and Dan went hiking up one of the gorges running down the side of Mount Olympus. We hiked for about 7 hours in total, and most of it was through waist deep snow. Forging trails through that much snow is so much fun, and we spent a good amount of time making slides down the rock and jumping off ledges into the massive mounds of white goodness. I wish I had pictures!

I didn't feel the exhaustion till later that day after we got back, when I apparently began mumbling incoherently and making whacko gestures from my bed in an odd suspension of sleep. I also missed the Souvlaki for dinner which was disappointing.

This past week we had Mark Thomas from the England Capernwray as our speaker. He didn't have quite the same punch as Hans Peter had from a week before, but he was still really good. We worked our way through Philippians, and we topped it off with a trip to Philippi and Cavala on Friday.

Me and John had been discussing how to work Istanbul in, and since Philippi was quite far east already and we had the weekend free, we decided to hoof it. 5 other people ended up coming along as well, which ended up working out better than I thought it might.

We caught a bus from Cavala (on the southern coast of the North Eastern side of Greece) up to a small town with a train station and caught the night train for 40 Euro to Istanbul. Canadian Visas ended up being 45 Euro (30 more than an American one) which was more than we had been told they were, but it was 3 in the morning at the Turkey-Greece border in the middle of nowhere and Istanbul is entirely worth it.

We got into Istanbul at 9:30 the next morning and moved at a decent pace through the more interesting sections of the city. I could spend quite a bit more time there, just because there is so much to explore. The fact that it straddles the border between Asia and Europe is emphasised by every street you walk down. There are plenty of both Arabs and Turks in the streets, and prayer calls echo throughout the city at all the right times. Not even close to everyone stops for prayer, but the mosques were always full of people praying. We visited a very large number of mosques (including the Blue Mosque), and walked through a ton of different markets. I wish I could plug my camera in to upload pictures!

We took a boat across the River so that everyone could say that they had been to Asia. There wasn't much there, but the ferry ride was cool. We stopped for dinner, a shared Strawberry Hooka Pipe, and live Turkish music on one of the main bridges that crosses the Bosphorus River. Quite cool.

There wasn't a train that left until the next morning, and getting to the Bus depot was a hassle so we found a hotel for 10 each a night and caught the all day train back to Thessaloniki yesterday morning. We're currently all sitting in an internet Cafe in snowy Thessaloniki waiting for the 6 am train back to Leptokaria (our town). Definitely good sport. The trip ended up costing more than I thought it would, but it was well worth it.

We'll be back in time for breakfast on Monday morning, and we'll have to catch up on sleep this afternoon. I never really caught up from last weekend, so I'll have to do some sweet napping.

That's that I suppose!

See ya