Before I go...

I just wanted to give you all a quick update before I leave for another vacation. Like i said before there is rarely two weeks of school without a week long vacation. so i am going on a trip to Ephesus, Pamukkale, Pergamum (modern-day Bergama), Smyrna (modern-day Izmir), all of which are some of the seven churches of Revelation with the exception of Pamukkale. Pamukkale is a place with cool hot spring things! yay for exfoliation! So i cant wait to get back and tell you all about this next trip because so much has happened in these cities! wow its going to be cool.

As far as school that past week haha, well as i said before turkish students dont come to class the first week because its just introduction stuff, well they dont show up the next week either because the week after, the week im leaving, is vacation! haha so need less to say i have learned nothing academically and i have only have like 9 weeks of school after this! some notable occurances this week: i have met a lot of cool turkish people, one girl is burning me the entire second season of heroes onto dvd! haha another girl paid for my photo copies, it has been great! oh i think i should tell you about the culture of my university if i havent already. Yeditepe is the DU of turkey, but even more so. all the girls are dressed to impress in designer clothes and hand bags and all the guys are sporting abercrombie and fitch appareal. it is crazy! i mean i thought we were driven by out word apperence at DU and in the states but it is crazy at Yeditepe! either way the people are great and always willing to help a confused foreigner. Oh and we got a new dog on campus, it is a really cool one, its a campaign colored golden retreiver! seems nice, we will see how the other dogs accept him.

Alright, well i will have plenty to tell you about when i get back, until then pray for safe travels and know that i miss you all at home!

much love,

Brit

p.s. Remon took the picture above, we tried getting an advertising gig with Gloria Jean's.

A lot to cover!

First im sorry i havent updated this in a while the internet at school is really weird right now because one its Turkey and two the new guys dorm doesnt have internet and because of that internet all of campus is out of whack. i dunno? ok so there is a lot to go over i hope i can remember it all and have it make sense. so here it goes, classes were postponed for a week because the guys dorm was not finished so men could move on campus so classes couldnt start, so we had a week off. the dorms still are done really, our bathroom floods and there is construction dirt and dust all over the room. so the international office planned a trip for us all to go on during that week. We first went to Cappadocia, this place is ammazing! There are pictures on facebook, the ones of the caves and carvings and all the white rock! Early Christians lived here to escape persecution, it is soo cool! You can see beds they carved out of rock, shelves, windows, its really really cool. We also went to a valley near by that is the same rock and cave dwelling but this place literally is an oasis in the middel of the desert. it is beautiful, i dont have pics of it because my camera ran out of batteries, sorry guys but take my word for it. There is a river running through the valley that feeds apple trees and grape vines and so many trees and grass it is beautiful. we all picked our own grapes and had a feast. So while i was hear i couldnt help but have a somewhat spiritual experience. I mean in the face of certain death God provided these people with an oasis in the desert which provided every need even protection. i mean that is awesome! so it was so cool to see how God has provided for these people and this idea came up again later this week, ill cover that in a bit. While in Cappadocia I had a great convo with my new found friends from Holland, South Africa and such and we talked about religion and more importantly spirituality. It was great! it is amazing to hear what other people think about God and Christianity, they spoke of how the church has been percieved and how they percieve Christians and such and it was great to hear and then respond to because so many people have been hurt by so called religion. oh i almost forgot, we went on a hike on these hills just a few of us and we explored some caves and dwellings and when we were walking back to town we were further away than we though, so we started walking up this long long road to town and the tractor driver drove by and just stared at us. we were a little confused but we waved and he stopped. we ran up to him and he gave us a ride to town on his tractor hauling sand, it was so cool, and he didnt ask for a sigle lira, how mnice of him haha. (the currency is lira here) anyways, on to Konya, this was a short stop. Konya is where the Islamic sect called Sufi or Suffy or Suffi-ism was created. (not sure how to spell it) but we saw this tomb of this guy Roomey, this guy who stressed spirituality and mysticism in faith and so created a new sect of Islam. It was kinda cool, form this the whirling dervishes were founded, they are the guys who spin for a long time and it is merely a form of worship really. its interesting. the hotel we stayed in was a freaky nightmare of a place, everything was pink and they had mothballs everywhere. the lights were white crystal and the carpet was pink too it was so weird i felt like i was living in bubble gum or some old cat ladies house. ok from there we went to Side, you will see pictures of Roman ruins i took there. This place was beautiful, touristy too though. The Mediterannean is soo warm! The ruins were great too, in Turkey they dont really block you off from any history with gaurd rails of nets, so i could touch and climb on these ruins and it was so cool. We went out on the town that night and while we were eating dinner this shop owner guy came up to us and asked if we wanted to share is water pipe (hookah) we were like... ok. so we went into his shot of plates and glasses and weird airbrush paitings and we drank tea and smoked peach hookah and watched the Turkay football team play on tv. it was great! so that all ended we went to bed. the next day we drove up the coast to Fetiye, a beatiful little beach town, there we stayed in bungalows well they were more like tuff sheds with beds in them but bungalow sound better. here we just kinda relaxed, a lot! a day and a half of just beach lounging, it was great! We then drove back in the night and made it back to Istanbul at 11am, i then stood in line for 4 hours to move into the new guys dorm. it was not amusing, if there is one thing to know about turkey it is that it is unorganized and inefficient. so two things. but we got a new room and its half way finished like i said before. ok back to what i was saying about God providing, i have been worried and praying about just being a follower of Christ while here in a place that is 99% Muslim, i was just worried about not have a faith community or fellowship whatever you wanna call it. but this is not to say that much cannot be learned while you are on your own, God has worked in great ways in me all while I had no other believer to talk to. but after many prayers i meet a guy in the international office here and he is a MBA student from america who is a Christian, so out of no where i have a brother in Christ, and he invited me to church this weekend. also just today i met a new girl from Germany and we got to talking and she is also studying religious studies and she is a believer. its just so cool! where there is seemingly no probability of meeting a follower of Christ, God has put two right in front of me. I guess when i talk about it now its not THAT cool but i am just so happy that i dont want to write it off to coinincedence. i read through 1 John just the other day and right at the end he says, ch.4 "14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him." wow! i read that the nigth before i met the guy in the international office and before i met the girl. so cool. remember to pray always, it is so freeing in a way, just how because of Christ we can call God father and speak to him like a father, like a best friend and he hears it all and responds. so thats my experience till now, i write again about classes and how Turkey again has no real rules, expectations, procedures, its just kinda do whatever and if it works out great. they have a saying here,"inshallah" it means if God wills it. so they say this with regards to everything. if you plan to meet for lunch with someone they say inshallah, so if they dont show up they are off the hook, it was Gods will that they did not show up. just another way people have used the name of God to excuse actions. great.

First few days in Turkey!

Hey everybody! Let me just start by saying that I miss you all a lot but the affects of that are wearing off because Turkey is so stinkin' awesome! My very first cultural experience was the highway. The driving is a bit like Mexico if you have been there, so its crazy, lane lines are optional to follow and so are stop lights. The are street vendors on the highway, they stand in between the "lanes" and sell anything from bananas to t.v. remotes. random yes. also police men patrol the highway on foot, it doesn't make much sense but they do. oh yeah and our bus stalled on the highway! lots of angry turkeys! We finally got to campus and it is beautiful, you can all see the pictures on facebook, but it is very secluded. It is in a small corner of the city and we have everything we need on campus, bank, grocery, post office, its impressive but that doesn't mean I wont be going out. The night i got here i introduced some Dutch kids, Greg, Gerkin, and Remen, to PIG (the cue ball and eight ball game on the pool table) they loved it! we almost broke a window too! The next day Louis and I, my roommate, met up with some girls from South Africa, Poland, and Holland. We walked around the neighbor hood near the campus, it was great, lots of markets, bakeries, and cell phone shops. i bought a customized Ethernet cord (meaning they cut the length and made it for me there, i think its awewsome!) That night we went down to Kadikoy, the big business district near our school, there we saw a swan (see picture haha!) and we ate at a restaurant that cook an entire sea bass for us! sooo good. we looked around some more and then headed back because it was getting pretty late and public transit only runs so late. one thing to know about turkey is that they are obsessed with there first elected president Ataturk. His face and statue is everywhere! picture an eight year old girls room covered in Hannah Montana pictures, then change that to a creepy guy and put it all over Istanbul then you have an idea. today was orientation, there are only four Americans here (sweet!) out of 130 international students, a lot of Germany and Holland (Netherlands) kids. Most of them are very nice and we all talk a lot to each other and its in english!!! haha i have been happy to learn that most of the people in our generation speak at least some English and turkey is pretty easy to learn, all of their words sound like ours just they are spelled horribly wrong such as felefase= philosophy. Oh! our campus has dogs! yeah there are like a dozen dogs that just roam campus and we have been told that they are for our safety! and sure enough when it is late at night one dog at least will follow you, during the day they just sleep. also there is normally a pigeon in the cafeteria. haha love it! our classes have been postponed for a week because the new male dorm has not been finished yet and they want us to move in there before they start classes so that means i will be going on a week long trip down to kapadokya and up the Mediterranean coast. also that means that my semester is only 12 weeks long! haha because of religious holidays here we rarely so a week without a break of some kind. so i will be out of touch for the next week or so but leave me something nice to come back to on facebook. ill update you all again after my trip, miss you and i hope all is well!

With love from above,

Brit