Packing for Turkey

I get to leave for Turkey in just three days! It's a little crazy just thinking about leaving for two weeks since we only recently moved in, but I'm excited nonetheless to have an adventure.  This trip is for course credit with my Master's program, so the bulk of it is planned for me, however a friend and I are going five days early to see a little more of the country on our own.

Five days by ourselves isn't a lot of time considering how large Turkey is, but luckily there seems to be a nice transportation system and a large tourism industry, so I don't think we'll have a problem getting around.  For the class credit portion of the trip we will be visiting three cities: Istanbul, Ankara and Gaziantep.  Here is a map to show you where we are going:


View Turkey in a larger map

We start in Istanbul, take a bus to Ankara, fly to Gaziantep and then fly back to Istanbul at the end.  We have information about all of the things we get to see with the group, but honestly I am mainly focusing on the first five days of travel since that is what my friend and I have to plan ourselves!  I will be sure to update along the way, or probably once I return about this portion of the trip.  For now, here is where my friend and I are going on our own for five days:

View Turkey2 in a larger map

We both arrive in Istanbul midday on Friday, and since we will have Istanbul time with the class portion, we decided to immediately head out of the city.  We have a ferry/bus combo booked for midnight the day we arrive, so after an evening in Istanbul we're setting sail towards Bandirma, and then bus to Izmir by sunrise the next day.  We have a hotel booked for one night in a nearby town, and we have our eyes on visiting Pamukkale which is a three hour bus away, but we don't have anything else booked.  We are hoping it will be clear where we should go and what we should visit.  It's only five days after all, so there isn't a whole lot of time to fill!

We will be back in Istanbul on the 15th at some point in order to meet up with our class group on the 16th.  Here's to a fun couple of weeks in Turkey! :) I'll update when I return, or along the way if at all possible.

My New Garden

We've been in our house in Delaware for three weeks today and it is feeling more like home every day now! We were really good about unpacking everything right away to not drag out the dreaded unpacking process longer than it had to be -- okay, this was boyfriend's idea since I love to procrastinate.  It was a great decision though since we're now able to spend free time exploring the area, not dealing with house stuff.

Philadelphia is only about 45 minutes away without traffic, so we've visited the city twice already (more Philly stories to come in another blog soon) and we are also making use of our Delaware State Park pass we purchased.  It's really nice having so many state parks and other parks around the area, so we are trying to go as much as possible.

One of the first things I wanted to do when we moved in was to plant a garden.  Ever since starting to garden in Ethiopia, and planting seeds again last year in Atlanta, I'm hooked.  Before leaving Atlanta in April I even replanted my garden from last year for my mom to take care of and enjoy!

The Atlanta garden all planted.

Arbay was thirsty from helping me garden ;)

My mom's picture update: the garden is growing!

Within a week of moving in I had planted some flowers in front of the house to make it more cheery! I'm not so skilled with flower gardens, so my mom advised me on some of the flowers that might work well.  Here is how it turned out:

Perfect, I thought!

However, we've discovered that it rains here, a lot. I mean almost every day. Seriously, a lot of rain.  And, we've discovered that the gutter in the front leaks, right onto my flower garden!

Can you see the huge puddle that forms?

For now, I've moved the flowers back towards the house a bit.  But it isn't looking good for our flower garden.  Oh well, at least I tried.  My real pet project, however, was the vegetable garden.  It took me a couple weeks to get motivated to start digging in the hard soil, but I finally got out the shovel last weekend.  The soil is very different since I'm used to Georgia red clay and here it is very sandy.  With a little manure mixture I hope the soil will do just fine for my vegetables though!  After a long Saturday of digging, here are my new beds for planting.

The Delaware garden.

I just put seeds in the ground on Sunday, and ever since it has rained every day, which is good, however the sun has only peaked through the clouds once or twice.  I'll be sure to update as things start growing.

Now I'm off to continue planning my trip to Turkey.  I leave in less than a week now for about two weeks in Turkey. I'll write soon about that adventure :)