November

In the phase of my life when all I wanted to be was Anne Shirley, I struggled a bit with the idea that Anne thought November was the worst month of the year. I couldn't disagree more. The leaves are almost as pretty on the ground as in the trees (and with Jason's new leaf blower, not a bit of a problem), there's that nice nip in the air, the panic of not having finished my Christmas shopping hasn't hit yet, and all we can talk about is food. Yummm... Plus, to add to the niceness, the weather this month has been just about perfect.

So, apart from randomly heading to Asia Minor, what have we been doing this month? Well, we've been:

Hay Wagoning with our friends from church, all bundled up and armed with hot dogs and s'mores stuff. Mmm. Serious good times.

Rocking out with the David Crowder Band at GW on Tuesday. We are serious DCB grouppies and knew every single song they sang. What is better, it was like an awesome fabulous worship session, which you can get a teeny taste of by watching this video.

Turkeying up by hosting a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner with friends. It just seemed like a shame to let my china and cute turkey plates gather dust for one more year. I made some pretty amazing stuffing and my first batch of cranberry sauce, and our southern friends gave us a crash course in dumplings and the difference between stuffing and dressing (apparently the latter has cornbread?).

Lacing up my new running shoes. Not to go running, of course, but to make sure they were the ones I wanted to buy (they are very pink...). The sore knees and achy hips that resulted from my old shoes made me feel older than 30. Besides, I just joined a workout competition with Kaylyn (think am losing already), and our office is planning to sign up for the Cherry Blossom 5K. In, um, April. Gotta get ready...

And tomorrow we're off to Ohio to spend Thanksgiving with Jason's family. Let the season of celebration begin!

Turkish Delight

Actually, for most of our time in Turkey we thought Turkish Delight was borderline disgusting and instead ate baklava at an alarming rate. It turns out, though, that only the cheap Turkish Delight is semi-nasty—if you’re willing to pay, you can get Turkish Delight that is positively delightful. Needless to say, between the pastries and the sweets (and the kebabs and the hummus and the lentil soup), we ate remarkably well in Turkey.

Jet lag has me up really early for a Saturday and I just finished weeding out some of the bad pictures from our trip, so a good time for blogging. We cashed in some of our large pile of frequent flier miles this week and spent three days in Turkey. I’m not really prepared to provide you with a complete history of Istanbul (Constantine and the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, 1500 years of history, etc.), fascinating though it is. Our knowledge of Istanbul comes primarily from Wikipedia, our guide book, and The Historian, which, being about Dracula, is of course completely historically accurate.

We arrived Monday evening and ate dinner at the Oriental Express, a nice restaurant in the train station (which, incidentally, is the end of the Oriental Express). We had the most amazing lamb we have ever tasted. Seriously. Then we started out Monday morning at Hagia Sophia, a basillica (and you thought Music and Art of the Western World was a waste of time!) that was built 1500 years ago after Constantine (first Christian Roman Emperor) moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople (now Istanbul). Seriously amazing. The church was turned into a mosque when the Ottomans took over, so it has a crazy mix of Christian and Islamic art and symbolism inside. Kind of amazing.

Inside Hagia Sophia

Mosaics in Hagia Sophia

Afterwards we crossed the street and headed toward Sultan Ahmed Mosque, more commonly known as the Blue Mosque because of all the blue tiles inside, where we took off our shoes and covered our heads (me) to the Islamic singing and look at the goregous blue tiles that lined the entire dome. As we left the call to prayer rang out over the city.

Inside the Blue Mosque

The Blue Mosque

We walked around the park that was once the Hippodrome, then went underground to explore the Basilica Cisterns, an amazing underground water structure that was built during the Roman period. We both thought it seemed a little Phantom of the Opera-esque.

After some fresh-squeezed orange and pomegranate juice (which was amazing, by the way), we took a boat cruise down the Bosphoros, checking out both the European and Asian sides of Istanbul, which set us up nicely for our day in Asia.

View of Istanbul from the Bosphoros

Wednesday we took a flight down to Izmir and got a tour guide to take us to Ephesus. There are lots and lots of reasons to visit Ephesus—largest archeological site in the world, walking the streets where Paul walked, my never ending fascination with Greek and Roman mythology. Our tour guide hurried us along inexplicably (later we discovered he wanted to take us to a rug shop where he got a bit of commission), which was kind of a downer, but Ephesus was seriously so cool. We got to sit in the theatre where Paul was supposed to speak to the Ephesians (read about it in Acts 19) and then saw the prison where Paul was held for his own protection.

At the Library at Ephesus

Ephesus Theatre

The area around Ephesus was absolutely beautiful. The weather was perfect and sunny, the Aegean Sea was shining, and there were fruit trees—oranges, pomegranates, olives—along the road. We also stopped briefly by St. John’s Basilica, where the Apostle John is buried, the House of the Virgin Mary (which is apparently one of two pilgrimage sites), and what is left of Artemis’s Temple (the rest, incidentally, is in the British Museum, which you can see here).

Statue of Artemis

On the Aegean Sea

Roadside Orange Stand

Thursday was the day for rain, and also for spending the morning in the Topkapi Palace, where we saw what it was like to live as a sultan. Then we spent the afternoon at the Grand Bazaar, where Jason brushed up his haggling skills (for the record, I like haggling with Kenyans much better than Turks. We laughed a lot more with the Kenyans.).

It was three days of go-go-going, and by dinner time, we were almost magnetically drawn to a restaurant that had cushions instead of chairs so that we could lounge a bit. Two last pieces of baklava and glasses of tea from the curvy Turkish teacups (my mom has had one of these in our house my whole life, and I only now know what it is!), and we headed home!

Note: I had a miserable time trying to choose which pictures to share, so to see more, head to the Flickr link on the side of the blog...

The Greater Washington Tour

We gave my parents the Whirlwind Tour of the Greater Washington Area this past weekend! We had such a good time with them and we really enjoy it when they come to hang out with us. Jason and I took Friday off from work (the final version of my bill passed on Thursday, yay!), and we drove to Shenandoah National Park for a spin on Skyline Drive. Unfortunately, after a week of hard rain, the leaves were past their prime, but it was still a pretty fabulous view.

Saturday we went the other direction-- to Maryland and across the Bay Bridge for some crab. And boy, did we have crab! We ordered a dozen crabs AND the big seafood platter filled with mussels, shrimp, and disgusting-looking soft shelled clams with long necks sticking out of their shells. Crab eating is hard work, and after a couple hours of hammering away at the shells we were either too full or too exhausted to eat more and came home with lots of leftovers!

Mom and I dressed up as Mother-Daughter Bobsie Twins for Halloween and spent a little time helping out at our church's Trunk or Treat event. We loved having Mom and Dad come to church and Sunday school with us on Sunday morning. Jason recently started teaching a series on the spiritual disciplines, using Richard Foster's Celebration of Disciplines as the starting point, and it is awesome. It's exciting to watch our friends stretch themselves with us! Last night we also went to see Much Ado About Nothing at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Um, favorite Shakespeare play ever, and it was absolutely fabulous. I kind of want to go again. Or at least watch the movie a few times this week.

I love love love it when my parents come to play. Dad helped Jason with some woodworking, gave great gardening advice (as usual), and even sharpened our knives for us, and Mom and I had our long-anticipated chocolate molten cake at Chili's accompanied by long talks. And the best part is that we get to see them again in only a few weeks when we are in Idaho for Christmas!

The Dragon, the Cowboy, and Mr. Incredible

Courtesy of Mom's camera, here are a few pics of my favorite trick-or-treaters:

Team Redrum

I figured it was time for another ice hockey update. My team stepped up its image for the Fall/Winter season by picking up a local sponsorship. The Red team as we were known during the summer, is now The Frontpage Redrum, a combination of the name of the restaurant/bar across the street from the ice rink and an allusion to the Stephen King thriller "The Shining." The bartender at the restaurant apparently grew up with one of our captains.

Complete with brand new jerseys, Redrum swarms the ice each Friday night looking for its next prey. Since I had an "early" game this past Friday (at 10 pm - some games start as late at 11:30pm!), Missy and her parents (visiting from Idaho) came by to cheer on the team. We delivered with a 9-1 blowout of the poor Brewins. So the next time you are in Arlington on a Friday night, stop by and check out Redrum in action!