Christians, Greeks, and Native Americans – Just Another Day in Ephesus

After another great night of sleep, I started the day with a bang. Literally. Unthinking, I plugged the breastpump that I’d brought with me into the wrong socket and blew out the electricity in our room. Crap. Luckily the hotel maintenance guy came up and fixed it quickly, shooting me a look of mild disgust.

I slept through the flight to Izmir, because there’s no such thing as too much sleep when you’re a mother of three. From Izmir, a city on the Aegean Sea, we drove an hour to Ephesus, of New Testament fame. We were joined by a tour guide that we all wanted to throttle pretty quickly.

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Turkish Delights

It’s amazing what a difference a good night’s sleep makes. I woke up on our second day in Istanbul energized and bouncy. When I went downstairs one of the women in our group commented on how young and fresh I looked. I felt so good and because of the e-mail updates my mom was sending, I knew that the kids were happy and doing just fine.

We started the day by going to the small but nice Jewish Museum. It was clearly a token interfaith experience but was still impressive to learn about how hospitable Turkey was to Jews throughout history while other countries were expelling and persecuting them. Outside of the museum though, was the highlight of the morning, hung outside a frame shop.

Istanbul (not Constantinople)

We started our Turkish excursion in Istanbul. We had visited for two days back in 2008 and enjoyed the city- partly because it was such a clean and organized contrast to Cairo. Istanbul is a city of similar size to Cairo, with a similar ancient history of multiple civilizations, conquerings, etc. And yet. And yet, Istanbul is clean, well-planned, hygienic. Basically there is sense that someone is in charge and that someone isn’t completely asleep at the wheel. Sorry Cairo, I love you, but…

Happy. Like Clam.

Just came in from a morning swim in the Mediterranean. Too relaxed to blog.

Life is good.

More later…