Long time, no post

Hello!  (Shannon here, finally)

I am sure you have noticed our lack of posting lately!  I apologize.  However, the Turkish government actually blocked this entire blogging provider to the whole country for a while... so, whenever I tried to access the blog to update, all I got were a couple lines of angry red Turkish words.  So sorry!  I hope you all have been able to see the pictures that I put up on facebook at least.  (If not, the link is http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035069&id=1191361000&l=29c61fdadf) 

Beth and I are really enjoying how familiar the city has become to us now that we've been here for a while.  Public transportation is great, although usually crowded and pretty slow going.  Be prepared for it to take over an hour to get where you want to go, ha.

What a fun, full couple weeks it has been!  My amazing brother came to visit me for 2 whole weeks :) and just left yesterday.  It was fun to be able to take him around the city and show him what my life here looks like.  And it was an excuse for me to go do more sightseeing around Istanbul, such as going to the famous Hagia Sofia, taking a cruise up the Bosphorus to the entrance of the Black Sea, and eating some delicious seafood.  Also, we took a long weekend and went to Greece!  We got to spend time in Athens, and then fly on a fun little propeller plane to the beautiful Aegean island of Santorini.  It was gorgeous.

In Athens, I loved getting to see the place where so much history has happened.  Here Andrew and I are at the Acropolis in from of the Parthenon.  It was really neat.

Jumping from old architecture to new, we went north of the city to the 2004 summer olympic park.  It was designed by one of Andrew's favorite architects - Santiago Calatrava.  Ha, although it was a bit of an adventure getting there, because the metro workers had decided to be on strike that day... so no convenient metro for us.  Oh well!  And we had a cool sunset to watch there.

Ah, Santorini.  So beautiful and picturesque!!  I loved it.  Here, we had just finished a 6 mile walk along the rim of the caldera from the place we were staying to the little town of Ia.  The Aegean was really pretty, and I love all the white buildings.  Yup, the colors of Greece: white and blue.  Ha, and, a really random thing happened here - we ran in to a couple K-State alums, one of which Andrew actually was acquainted with!  Ha.  Who would have thought.

Here we are sitting at a really cute cafe, drinking delicious beverages, and watching the sun set over the caldera.  Breathtaking in fact.  

It was the perfect thing to do after a morning full of walking, and an afternoon at the beach.  Ha, the water was indeed chilly, but we braved it and swam for a bit anyway.  Also, my sunglasses now reside at that beach permanently, as I left them in the sand on accident.

So there is a little bit of catch up.  I will post more pictures on facebook soon from the recent weeks, and will put that link here as well.  This semester is already flying by!  Ha, and it looks like I'll have an invalid driver's license in about 3 days too due to becoming 21 :)  

Alright, well that's it for now!

~Shannon (and Beth)