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PICTURES!!!


One of those wonderful poppies.


Me overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys in Turkey, according to Arzu.


Jody falling into said valley.

Our hotel terrace in Cappadocia. The ground floor rooms opened out onto the garden/pool area, which made it very easy to slip out the back door and hop into someone else's room, giving them a nice surprise. We did this several times, and it never got old. As long as you made sure you weren't jumping into the room of one of the random Japanese tourists. ;o)


Yes, these pictures are royally out of order. That's all right. Hope you don't mind. Anyway, this is at the mosaic museum in Antioch (ANTIOCH!) and one of the only exciting things that happened that day, which was Sunday, largely comprised of a fourteen hour bus ride. Ugh. Between the frequent sitting and the less than stellar mattresses, my muscles are all kinked up. Lucky for me that I have friends who give really good back massages...


Musicians at Turkey night.

Um, back at the mosaic museum. This is Hannah and the crossword mosaic. We decided that this was definitely an ancient crossword puzzle (hey, we were museumed out and we had to find SOME way to keep ourselves amused!).


The Euphrates at sunset.


My roommate atop the citadel of Urfa. According to the Koran, this is the city of Abraham's birth, and a tyrant king threw him from atop this mountain. Don't worry, he lived, because...


God created a pool of fish. And Abraham fell in. Hurray! Here we have purple-scarved women feeding the sacred carp in Urfa.


Craig with kids at Haran. Wherever we go, the little boys seem to gravitate toward the tall guys in our group: Craig, Jeremy, and David. They are softies and let the kids climb all over them. It's very cute.

More of the same: Jeremy and some small friends.


OK, Haran itself. These are the remains of the first university in the world. I loved going to Haran, because of my namesake connection to the place. I just stood by the well for a while, wondering if I'd have that same astounding faith that Rebekah had...to pick up and go at the drop of a hat, simply because God had called her. No matter how uncomfortable or frightening the task.


Our view out of the hotel at Urfa.


I forget what mountain this is...I know, I'm such a bad student...but Cameron sure is pretty. :o) I do know that a king related to the Seleucids, perhaps Mithridates, buried his beloved sister and mother up here. Quite an impressive burial mound.


Kirsty Westblade, Professor Westblade's daughter. This is on Mount Nemrut. Kirsty has been quite a trooper, marching along with us through every museum and up every cliff. She even swam out to the castle yesterday!


Backing up slightly, this is a chasm river fjord dealie we stopped at on the way to Nemrut. It had a sweet Roman bridge and cold water for wading. Also mulberry trees, which made for a good dessert. If you look really hard, you can see Jody waaaay down at the bottom of the valley...when I took this picture, I was very high up on the crags above the river. I do like climbing.


Betsy at our hotel on Mount Nemrut. The hotel had cold showers, but other than that, nice accommodations.


We climbed windy Mount Nemrut to watch the sunset and take lots of pictures. Here we have our "adopted family" foursome, from left to right: me, Jody, Joy, and Chris.

We do a lot of window gazing on the bus. Here, Kathryn looks beautiful and meditative...


The nicest rest stop we've seen so far. Flowers!!! Also plenty of room for Frisbee.