The Sun Rises in Egypt

A 4:15am wake up call led to sunrise at the pyramids.
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Istanbul, Constantinople, Istanbul, Constantinople...and so on...

We are just pushing off of the port in Istanbul, Turkey.  However, let’s begin the evening with a lifeboat drill.  For those of you who haven’t been on a cruise or something like that, it’s a lot like a fire drill…except EVERYONE looks like a bunch of idiots wearing over-sized, uncomfortable life jackets (or as we like to call them F.O.T.—Funky Orange Things).  We wait around for the captains approval (I’m just waiting for him to bust up laughing at us all), and then mosey on back to normal life.

But on to the Turkey wrap up:

Day 1:
We got in early early on Tuesday, July 20th.  Mal had a ‘Ship-Trip’ (catchy eh?) that was basically a city orientation.  It took her to a lot of the main sites...Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Cisterns, lovely views…you know, the works.  I had an FDP (Faculty Directed Practicum) for my law class called “Women and Law in Turkey”.  We were scheduled to go to the Turkish Bar association…and naturally I though it would be fun.  Oh no…we spent 3.5 hours sitting in a lecture hall listening to a panel of women speaking Turkish with our guide “translating” (I put that in quotes because it was a very loose definition of ‘translating’). 
My thoughts: “Ummm…yea….can I have my afternoon back please??”
That night we walked around a bit and turned in early because……..

Day 2:
……Mal and I had to wake up early for our trip to Cappadocia (pronunciation guide: ‘kapa-doh-KIA’).  It’s a city on the Asian side located in Central/South Turkey and looks a lot like Utah.  But really there is some awesome landscape…these cone looking rock formations were formed and people dug massive tunnel systems and miniature cities underground.  Some of the cities go as far as 40 meters down.  That, we found, is the coolest (temperature) part in Turkey…most everywhere else is pretty stinkin hot.  So we rode our bus around all day and stopped at different sites.  That night we had a HUGE buffet dinner (I’m still working it off) and then we went to a “Whirling Dervishes” ceremony, which was really sweet.  Basically it’s a religious/meditation ceremony with these guys in robe-dress-lookin-things that spin around in circles longer than humanly possible.  If dizziness does not agree with you, neither will Whirling Dervishes.  (enter youtube/google for more info)

Day 3:
We could have chosen to do a hot air balloon ride to see some of the formations and the sun rise but instead we examined the inside of our eyelids for another 3 hours (which was much needed).  We did a bit more walking around.  One place we stopped was really cool: We went into a cave-ish thing in one formation and it got darker and darker and darker until *poof* you can’t see your nose in front of you [haha I can just see everyone cross-eyed in front of the computer trying to see their nose…oh that’s rich].  We were holding onto butts and shoulders of people we couldn’t see to make our way through and we ended up crawling down this tiny tunnel for like 10 meters in the pitch dark.  For Mal and I it was wicked fun…for  tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumber right behind me it wasn’t fun cause they think flip-flops and flats are “really good walking shoes”. [side note: I am now a believer in Survival of the Fittest…..they would not be surviving]  In the afternoon we got to go the airport and flew back to Istanbul (Constantinople, Istanbul, Constantinople….you just can’t help it).  We were in absolutely NO condition to go out and crashed in a stinky, sweaty, dirty mess.

Day 4:
We didn’t waste anytime getting around in the morning cause we wanted to see the sites before the sun could burn a stake on the street.  Our first stop: the Egyptian Bazaar (aka Spice Bazaar).  This place was sweet.  It’s just a looooong row of shops with snacks and spices and Turkish Delight up the WAZOOO! (“what’s a wazoo?”)  Everything smells amazing and if you make eye contact or show any interest in something you WILL be called over for “Best [fill in the blank] in town!!! Very Good Price!!!”  Anyway we bought some spices, some tea, and a few other things and had a fun time bartering down the prices (We’re just poor students!  *on an expensive study abroad* We need a discount!”)  After that we walked to the Grand Bazaar…can you say ‘sensory overload’??  It’s nuts!  They estimate that there are around 4000 shops in the Grand Bazaar and I swear we saw a good portion of that.  But we did some more bartering and bought a few more things.  As it turns out every single vendor in the Bazaar is your best friend (or in Mal's case, wants to be her Turkish husband) and has a very special price JUST for you!  Fun times.  Then we went to the Blue Mosque, which is huge and extravagant and is the only mosque in the world that has 6 minarets around it.  Pretty cool.  Then we walked around for a bit before heading back to the ship.  That night we walked to Taksim Square, which has a lot of fun nightlife and is really good for people watching…especially with a Starbucks Frappuccino (you can run but Starbucks will find you). 

Day 5:
This morning we woke up and went to find a boat tour up the Bosporus River, which connects the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea and splits Turkey’s Europe and Asia sides.  There were a bunch of cool buildings and some sweet houses/hotels along the River.  And at one point on the tour we counted 18 Turkish flags on the shore…they like their crescent moon and star I suppose.  After the Bosporus we went to a recommended place for the infamous Turkish Bath!  It was awesome…it’s like a sauna, bath, pool, hot tub, scrub down, massage, meditation all combined on steroids!  Ya…….awesome!  You don’t want to sweat ever again after the Bath.  I don’t have the words or time to describe further but if you want to learn more…I don’t even have to tell you what to do anymore. 

And now we are back on the ship.  Two school days between Turkey and Egypt which is going to feel a lot like the length of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas break (haha get it?  Thanksgiving→Turkey and Egypt→I don’t really know but I’m easily amused).  So class is going to be rough since we haven’t done work in like 11 days.  I know…we have a lot to complain about…it’s so rough…cry a river.

As usual, we hope everyone is enjoying their side of the rainbow.  Cause ours is pretty stinkin colorful…

We miss you all!

Love always,

John and Mally

It's all _______ to (us)!!!

OOOPAAHHHH!!!!!!

Mal is going to write this blog for the most part but she is taking too long to finish up some other emails and I’m impatient.  So for all you joyous followers, now will be the only semblance of sarcastic whit you will find in this blog.

Anyone who has never been to Greece has the exact same expectations…and those expectations are directly from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”.  However, in most places in Greece, and its surrounding parts, that stereotype doesn’t always play out.  But I guess you’ll just have to see for yourself because there is no way of describing it in this little shout out we call a blog.

We spent a whopping 5 days in the port of Piraeus, which is about 6 miles south of Athens.  To get to Athens you can choose from the overwhelming taxi drivers who are convincing you that paying 15 Euro per person is more logical than taking the cheap metro for 2 Euro round trip.  But I digress…

To get away from it all, Mal and I booked a *last-minute* trip to the island of Paros.  We went with 4 other “SAS-quatches” (I didn’t make it up…I’m just the parrot here) and stayed the town of Naoussa, which is on the other side of the capital Parikia.
(I will now leave this to Mal to finish the story…)

I’m going to back it up here and say that the dad in my big fat Greek wedding, with his whole “give me a word and I will show u the root of the word is Greek” was my tour guide! I had to do an FDP (faculty direct program) for my speech class.  Our tour guide would constantly say a word, break it down, give u the Greek meaning and then say “there you go.”  I really could not stop laughing! Every big word he did!  Did you know the Nike also has Greek roots? Well it does and it stands for victory! Ha! I learned something on this whole voyage, even though I am sure most of you knew that already.  John didn’t so I bask in the glory.

So back to our island adventure:
We get off the ferry and are not sure if our hostel owner will be there to pick us up.  So we followed the crowd to find this big, Greek, smiling man holding a sign to our hostel.  We load up our bags into his “mature” van.  I think the ancient Greeks made this and said “HA, the first suburban!” It was pretty special, especially when we weren't sure if we would have to get out and push it up the hill to the hostel.  Oh the memories! ("Come on ol' girl just keep chuggin!!")

So we ran into the little town and got some food.  I insisted on having something very authentic and the only thing I could remember from My Greek Fat Wedding was “Moosekaka” (cue the mean girls at the lunch table) but really it is 'Mousaka'.  It was really good…

So we woke up the next morning and listen to the owners wife give us her tips on the island.  She said you must go beach hoping and rent a scooter.  So we did just that! Rented a scooter, against the rules of Semester at Sea (shhhhh!), and were off.  We followed this really useful map (sarcasm) but the good thing is there is really only one main road to take around the island and 'usually' (but not always) signs were helpful.  The beaches were simply beautiful with never many people on them.  I mean extremely beautiful with golden beaches and bright turquoise water of just cool enough to relieve us from the hot sun. 

After a good hardy lunch, dinner was nothing more than appetizers and an experimental try of Ouzo.  The waiter informed us that only the elder like it and I guess that is true since my mom said she enjoys it.  However, for you young folks, no dice...  Tastes like extreme black liquorish or as someone described it to us, bad Anise (my family you know the other name for this...everyone else can probably guess).  The house wines on the other hand are very delightful...and cheap!

The next day we kept the scooter for a little longer and decided to bop around to different villages.  We saw the 100 door church, great windmills, and spectacular views from a village in the mountain called Lefkey.  After our short motorcycle adventures we cooled off in the ocean at our favorite beach yet.  Very warm, shallow waters, great sandy bottom and spectacular views.  So after we showered off at the hostel we uploaded some pictures on our facebooks.  We really didn’t make much progress on them seeing as we had to catch the bus back to the port area.

We grab a great dinner, as the food is always amazing! (Generally we ate was gyros (yee-ros) or souvlaki (soov-LAH-kee).

[(Side quote: My Big Fat Greek Wedding)
 “He is a vegetarian”
 “What?! He don’t eat no meat?! Ok I make lamb”]

Meat meat and more meat!  Oh the restaurant was called 'Zorbas'! It wasn’t "Dancing Zorbas"  but oh well.  (If you haven’t seen My Greek Fat Greek Wedding then you really do not understand any of this!) So we then waited as our ferry became more, more and more delayed.  It really wasn’t a problem since we had a great bench to sit and watch the people and the other ferries go by.  So to end this long story we got home at 2am and had to walk a mile and half back to the ship to finally sleep in the comfort of our “home”.  So it really does not matter that we almost missed the ferry ;)

So the next day we enjoyed the heat! And the Plaka, a market place.  For dinner, we got lost, no one spoke English so the food was amazing!  Best time! It was all Greek to me!  The last day we went to the Acropolis before the tons of tourist and the heat set in!  And also caught the new museum they built for the Acropolis and toured around the city.

So in short (I understand nothing is ever short with me) [John: 'except her height'] Greece was a grand old time and we cannot wait to go back!

Onwards to 'Istanbul, Constantinople, Istanbul, Constantinople!'  Play that song and think of us!...unless you're too young in which case go play outside or something

Love always!

Mally & Johnny

Correction...I know...

My attentive brother pointed out the misunderstanding about the metric system.

He's always been so good at telling me I'm wrong.  Anyway you should get the picture...

I blame the mistake on the freezing water and maybe a little decompression sickness (ok not really).

Thanks!

John

Croatia--knocked out of the world cup...but still a sweet Port!

Greetings universe!

Our shallowest apologies for not having updated this lonely blog for many many days.  I just know everyone out there has been religiously refreshing their webpages….so don’t look now people but this is hot off the press!

Well I suppose you all want to hear about Croatia…so here goes.

Day 1:
We got into port late on the 14th but of course didn’t get off the boat until 15th.  Mal and I both went on a tour of the City Walls in the Old Town of Dubrovnik.  Basically, a long time ago, they built up these big walls around their city.  It was supposed to protect them from attacks but in 1991 the Serb and Montenegro armies bombed them.  It’s actually kind of crazy to think about what these people went through not 20 years ago (at the beginning of Mal’s and my lifetimes….crazy…sad…).  The walls did give us great views of Dubrovnik, the old Harbor (or as they say…’harbour’), and the “mountains” above the city.  (for visual reference…Google is your friend—“Dubrovnik City Walls”)  The actual Old Town is awesome!  The streets are all made of these huge, white marble slabs and everything is so clean.  There are a bunch of alleyways that have pizza places and shops and all that fun stuff.  After our tour we walked around the city and took it all in.  That night we found a nice little wine bar (thank you Trip Advisor) and played Scategories (only because Pictionary was in Croatian…).  But we were pretty cooked after walking around all day so we called it a *relatively early* night and headed back to the boat.

Day 2:
Ok now Mal’s turn to talk: We got up early to go on a Semester at Sea trip to visit an orphanage and hospital.  It is hard to call it an orphanage seeing as many kids do meet up with their parents, especially during the summer time.  Also the views of this orphanage were just spectacular of the old city and the island Lokrum.  Unfortunately we came on a bad time seeing as many of the kids went to the beach for the morning.  So we got a little interaction with them.  Mostly we talked to the director and saw where they live.  It was very well maintained and a nice place for the kids to stay.  We did get to walk down to the closer beach with some of the children that remained at the house, waiting for us.  Then went to the pediatric wing of the hospital and talk with the head doctor.  It is incredible that their little public hospital serves Dubrovnik’s 4.5 million residents and the surrounding islands yet it isn’t big and not many people were there!  They say they have very little extreme cases.  I really could go on about the hospital but to sum it up is going to be hard:  The head doctor was incredibly nice and informative, truly an amazing women!  All women worked in the pediatric wing, even their own chiefs!  Again not many kids but a beautiful little girl, from the States, who cracked her head open while vacationing with her parent.  Poor baby!  But overall it was a great informative, learning experience and felt blessed to give back a little bit.

Well we then decided to do a little shopping around the city after the trip since we might not have the time again.  And we did pretty well…but I can’t give away any secrets.  We cleaned up back at the ship and went out to meet up with a bunch of other SAS-ers (that’s the lingo…) at a place just off the beach to dance and hang around.  In summery: really really cool place….really really REALLY expensive!!! (don’t worry parents we didn’t spend anything!)...but still quite fun!

Day 3:
We decided to run over to an island just off the coast of Old Town called Lokrum (queue Google Images).  (whoa…boat just got shakey…we’re pushing off the dock as I type).  Anyway we caught a ferry to Lokrum and went exploring.  The island is FULL of peacocks…I mean everywhere!  It makes me miss my Peacock family ;)  It’s a really forestry place but then had tons of really sharp rocks on the edges.  We stumbled upon some cliffs that jut right out to the sea and found a spot to lay our stuff down.  We swam for a bit and jumped off some cliffs…don’t worry moms… just like 20-25 feet.  We did a little more exploring and got the ferry back to the mainland.  That night we went into town with our friends to get dinner and walked around the opening night of Croatia’s summer festival.  They even shot off fireworks just for us…ok not just for us but it was still fun.  (side note by John: Vail’s firework show wins…) [Mal: he has never been to St.L for the 4th but who is comparing ;)] But again we went in *pretty early* since we decide to schedule a scuba dive.  Sorry Mangs.

Day 4:
Mal and I had to get up early because we signed up for a spur-of-the-moment scuba dive just off the coast.  We went on a dive called “Little Africa” and went across their reef, through a canyon, in a cave and exited through a hole in the roof of the cave.  The dive was fun…different…definitely not the tropical waters we have around the states but still fun diving.  We dropped down to 30 meters and the water temperature plummeted to a chilly 10 degrees Celsius…it was freezing.  And on that note: diving in meters, liters, kilograms, and Bar is soooooo different when you’re used to the ol’ metric system.  We’ll save more of the scuba diving details for everyone who asks…we don’t want to bore our sleeping audience.  After diving we grabbed some internet and talked to Mal’s sisters, brothers-in-laws, nephews, and lonely niece.  It was nice ☺. 

And now we’re back on the ship…should be in Greece the morning of the 14th.  Then we’re off to the island of Paros for some more exploring!

As always we miss you all back in the great US of A where drinking waters is free and the public restrooms are FREE-er!  Cause they charge you for them over here…

Feel free to send us an email!  We’ll be in touch (hopefully sooner than later)!

Love always,

John and Mally

jmbooren@semesteratsea.net
mnmang@semesteratsea.net

PS – sorry we didn’t get to post pictures…Internet is a hot commodity

PSS- Oh and we are now watching the world cup on the ship… incredible it is on every room with big projection screens!!! Big party here but hopeful me-malorie- gets my speech done since I have to perform it tomorrow and john gets his paper done… will see ;)

Again thanks for reading!

Love you!

J&M

The little city on the hill....I know...poetic

Well it's been a while since I, John, have written...I blame it on carpal-tunnel syndrome since I did ALL the writing before. But Advil cures all!

Well since the Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, it feels like we haven't done much...it's tough to compare to those two. We took a couple hour drive south to the ruins of Pompeii. For those of you are historically challenged (like me) a wicked long time ago this volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, took out Pompeii and burnt it to a toasty crisp. They've excavated the ruins and found a bunch of cool stuff all around the city. But they've only got through like 30% of it so there's still plenty to go. We got back in the car and drove the curvey roads to Positano! If you don't know what it looks like picture a bunch of colorful houses stacked up a hill....b-e-a-utiful!...or just google it. We spent the evening walking around and relaxing. We woke up (side note: our hotel looks toward the houses on the hill and this mosaic church dome and the ocean in the background....ya...sorry) and took a complimentary (aka-included in the rate) boat ride down the coast to Amalfi. Again more beautiful houses, crazy hotels, and ginormous yachts! Jealous??...me too. After cleaning up our drool, Mal and I went walking around the city. Since there's only one motorized vehicle road, there were a bunch of little walkways and TONS of stairs! We returned home and got ready for a nice diner at Cino del Saraceno (tangent: we totally should have been Saracino's down here...it's crazy how far that name goes...I mean streets, restaurants, everything!!!). Dinner was followed by the usual...gillato. We keep fooling ourselves into believing it's healthier than ice-cream...pssh...not at the amounts we eat it at!

I was going to post that on July 2nd but didn't get around to it... So here's the 3rd too!

We took a boat ride over to the Italian island of Capri (CAP-ree) and did some walking around there. They had a funicular that takes you to the top of their "mountain" and we had more awesome views of the yachts and the Mediterranean. Thing is, Capri is tailored to the owners of those yachts...in other words, I couldn't afford anything more than gilatto...and even that wasn't cheap. But it was fun to walk around a drool and dream. On our way back we took a swim to cool off. During the swim, I got stung by a jellyfish, shocking I know (ok--that was lame). Nothing too serious...just a little 2-inch blister on my arm. Supposedly, urine helps cure a jellyfish sting...how i'm supposed to hit my arm though is beyond me...

Wish we could share this with you all!

Missing everyone!

John and Mally

PS- Mal got to talk to Jane and Katie (mom and sister) last night...someone's a little homesick.

Welcome to Italy!

The view of Sorento with hills and hills of houses! Love it!!! Wish everyone we know could join us!

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