may 3

wow it's hard to believe we're in to our 5th month here already...high wycombe looks incredibly different to when we first arrived...crazy.

today was the first day of summer term and all the kids came back looking tall and sun tanned and absolutely adorable in their summer uniform (dresses and boater hats for the girls, the usual shorts and tshirts for boys).

i'm really excited for this term - we have 18 more days of work before half term when i go to scotland and back to dublin for 3 days; all the sports days and exciting things happen now and we finish up for the summer in just over 2 months which is insane! georgie and i are in deep discussions about where we want to go and what we want to do.

for now though; i should catch up on the easter break.

after the last blogpost, georgie, rose and i watched (and sobbed over) romeo and juliet and we then enjoyed a lazy saturday which involved me buying a sleeping bag, mascara and toothpaste; and an early night as we had to be standing outside of godstowe at 6.30am for our taxi. we may have been a little paranoid with getting to the airport on time as we were ready and waiting when the bagdrop opened at 7.30 am and then had a nice 90 minute wait before boarding the plane to istanbul.
during the flight i watched a narnia movie and started my new book - which i am still yet to finish. when we were coming close to landing, georgie  got a little nervous as it looked like we were about to land on the sea. istanbul from the air was beautiful and i was suddenly very excited about our trip...

my excitement dispersed somewhat when we realised that getting a visa to enter the country would require queuing for close to 45 minutes but like the good english girls we are becoming, we found the queue not too stressful or long in the end. georgie and i got our visas easily, but rose had some currency trouble. eventually we found ourselves in the line for passport control (yes, another line...well done istanbul airport) and waited. and waited. and waited. we ultimately realised that the reason the passport control queue was going at snailpace was that there were roughly 300 people queuing to get through; and only one booth open. a second booth did open - but of course the line we chose to stay in was controlled by a man in a booth who clearly hated his job,  and was stopping every passenger for a 10 minute chat on the way through.
by the time we finally all got through passport control, my backpack had been taken off the carousel and was about to be whisked away to "unclaimed baggage", and we had missed our meet 'n' greet at the airport. luckily georgie had come prepared with the name of our hotel so we made separate arrangements to take a shuttle bus taxi thing to the hotel and with minimum hassle we sped through istanbul to the akgun hotel. sped being the operative word. turkish drivers are definitely up there with vietnamese drivers in terms of disregard for speed limits and all other motorists.
when we walked into the hotel we discovered that the group was halfway through their briefing. luckily, this group was on a 10 day tour and so our briefing wasn't until the next night .we still went out for "welcome" drinks and dinner and got to know them a bit before heading back up to our beautiful triple room for a blissful sleep.

on the morning of the 18th of april, we had been invited to join the 10 day tour on their walking tour of istanbul however after sleeping in we decided to take our time enjoying the delicious buffet breakfast and do some exploring of our own. turns out this was the right decision as literally 30 seconds after leaving the hotel it began to pour with rain so georgie and i ran to the corner store, bought toothpaste and ran back to our hotel room. we spent the day reading, sleeping, "dubbing" turkish soap operas and reading texts-from-last-night. we went down to the lobby in the evening for our tour briefing and then to our second round of welcome-dinner-and-drinks. we met another tour group called "fanatics" and joined them for some karaoke and drinks and then headed back to our hotel.

april 19 began with another buffet breakfast and then a walking tour of istanbul. our turkish tourguide tolga (turkish law says all tour groups must have a native guide) rubbed me up the wrong way immediately and i was proven right! by the end of the tour our entire bus - 45 people plus the topdeck guide - all hated him too. on this first tour he showed us around the blue mosque which was incredibly beautiful; the nearby hippodrome which is thousands of years old and pointed us in the direction of the grand bazaar which i loved. we spent a good 90 minutes wandering through it, admiring the jewellery and i bought a beautiful leather bound notebook. we quickly learned how to haggle and smiled politely at the verbal appreciation we recieved from every single man in the city. " hey spice girls" "australian? aussie aussie oi oi yeah?"
in the afternoon we took a river cruise and then wandered back to our hotel. some of the others took part in a traditional turkish meal with entertainment but georgie, janet and i decided to go the cheap route and scoped out a kebab shop and then bought mcflurrys and chips to smuggle up to our hotel room and eat in bed. georgie and i had planned on going to sleep pretty early but at midnight when kate returned to our room we were still wide awake.

by the morning we regretted this late night as we left the hotel at 6.30am and drove for roughly 10 hours with a few stops for toilet breaks, lunch, to buy snacks etc.
this day was pretty uneventful; we didn't reach our hotel in pammukale until after 8pm and then went straight to dinner and after taking photos with the calcium terraces which were all lit up in the darkness, we went straight to bed.