We've Been Playing Hard

The owner of the school invited the team to breakfast at her house. She has two stories on the top floor of a beautiful building with a view of mountains and ocean. She fed us and fed us and then fed us some more. Sort of reminded me of our first trip to Ireland, when all the relatives wanted us to eat more. So when we were so full we couldn’t take another bite, she served chocolate. (Always room for cold chocolate, isn’t there?) And then we had Turkish coffee. I’m getting more used to it. In Albania I didn’t let the grounds settle, and it tasted like, well, grounds. Then we couldn’t go home without having a Coca Cola. We are Americans, after all, right? She kept telling us how wonderful we were, and couldn’t we eat more? We gave her a present. (A Threads of Yunnan plaque, but we changed the words to read “You are a bright and shining star to all you meet”.) She loved it. She’s going to hang a huge picture of us in the new school. Then she brought out presents for US: Pants!! I wore my pants today, and several Turkish people a) assumed I spoke Turkish, and b) wanted to know where to buy them. Very fun.

Later we went to the Turkish Bath (the Hamam) together as a team. We took pictures, but for some reason the team won’t let me post them! We should have done this bonding experience as a cross training exercise…it brought us closer than the ropes course. Here you are completely naked, at the mercy of someone massaging your body and roughly scrubbing you, and YOU CAN’T COMMUNICATE AT ALL!!! Very humbling. They put huge mounds of soap bubbles on you, and I got some in my eye. So I pointed to my eyes. Big mistake. For the next three minutes they poured cold water over my face. I couldn’t catch my breath, and almost drowned. They just laughed at me sputtering! And they say water-boarding isn’t torture!

Verna, Cindy, Patti, Jenn, and Marsh in Antalya

We leave Antalya tomorrow. It will be sad to leave. I don’t know if I’ll have Internet at Ephesus, so don’t worry if I don’t post.