Vacation

Back in April, soon after Ava's 5th birthday, we lit out of the city and headed for southern climes. We took a 9-hr road trip to Kusadasi, an area close to the ruins of Ephesus, where we booked a reservation at an all-inclusive resort at the last minute with a low off-season price. We were desperate for a break from work and from the city itself. Life never seemed to slow down and I think we were coming off some busy, chaotic weeks before we went on vacation.

The road trip was nice as opposed to flying. It was a 9-hr trip but we were accustomed to long trips in the US anyway so 9 hours is similar to 11 or 12 going to Florida from North Carolina. It was a leisurely drive on a scenic route. It was all green hills and mountains with flocks of sheep, horse farms, and olive groves.

Sheep

There were even produce stands selling oranges on the side of the highway....just like Florida!

We stayed in an apartment that had everything. There were two bedrooms, two baths (one was a full bath and the other was a shower), a salon and dining area, a kitchen completely stocked with kitchenware and nice, modern appliances that put my ancient kitchen appliances to shame. Everything was tastefully done with current decorating fashion.

The resort (golf and spa) is perched on top of a mountain (read: windy) that overlooks a valley on one side and the sea in the distance on the other side. The views are breathtaking. All we did were look at the views and never went sightseeing. The two pictures below are from our balcony:

All that golden light was from the sunset, slightly to the right. I did no editing to the colors, only added a halo around the picture which is pretty indiscernible anyway. 

Same view during day - I edited this picture to sharpen the colors and added contrast to bring the clouds into definition 

I mentioned that the resort is a golf and spa resort. Nice arrangement for couples - the husband plays golf all day while the wife pampers herself in the spa. I didn't use the spa since I was pregnant and it was at additional cost. The golf course was beautiful and pretty difficult to play according to reviews. The resort was barely half full as it was off season but it is an enormous property with many pools throughout. It's a time-share resort, all condominiums, with an all-inclusive service that makes you feel like you're at a hotel at the same time. It caters mostly to Europeans and Europeans were all we saw. It's always interesting to vacation with a cosmopolitan body of guests.

The all-inclusive aspect is always nice but in this case, the food left a lot to be desired. We ate to sustain ourselves, not to enjoy the food. That's all I'll say about it. We stocked up on snacks when we went into town so we did enjoy some treats. The neat thing about this resort is that you can stay there without the all-inclusive option (it'd be a bit cheaper) but that meant you were going into town to eat (the town doesn't have much to speak of) or you were cooking in the condo (I'm not cooking on vacation, people!).

The weather was gorgeous, sunny with the temps in the high 60s -- warm enough for those northern Europeans to swim. Not warm enough for me, born and bred in Florida. There was a single "heated" outdoors pool that the guests swam in. I put that in quotation marks because it was still cold - it was simply warmer than the thousand other pools in the vicinity. Greg said it was bearable on sunny days when you stayed submerged but when you got out and were exposed to the winds (unavoidable when you're on a mountaintop), you froze. That was the case with Ava and it was hard to get her warmed up unless we got her into a hot bath inside. She really enjoyed swimming with the older kids, though. Darcy was content to sit with her feet dangling in the water and run around the area. Greg got in a couple of times. I was happy to lie in the sun with a book.

Other than that, all we did was a lot of nothing.  We did this:

The girls watched too much TV while we read books copiously 

We napped a lot

I forgot that we did play at a playground set onsite. There were basketball courts, tennis courts, and a outdoor chess board with pieces nearly as big as Darcy, which I've never seen before. Greg and I would've had fun playing chess like this if we didn't have two kids to chase after. He'd beat me because he was in the chess club in school -- nerd ;-) -- and I'm terribly rusty.

I think the queen and king were nearly as tall as Darcy.

I also forgot that we did manage a day of sightseeing on the way back to the city. We stopped off in Ephesus since it was on the way and it'd be a terrible oversight not to go there. We spent a few hours there and it was pretty hot. I don't think we managed to see the entire ruins before we got tired and headed back down to the car to continue on our way home. I was still in my first trimester, easy to wear out, and I carried Darcy in the Ergo on my back so that sapped my energy quickly. I won't post pictures because there are easily millions of pictures of the ruins on the internet, mostly better than mine, with a great deal of descriptions of the ruins in modern day, what it must've looked like historically, the culture of that day, the significance of it in the Bible, etc. Too much to put on this blog. I will leave you to browse pictures and read about Ephesus on the internet at your leisure but I will tell you that visiting a place like that in person is much better than reading about it. It's just really cool.

Well, that was our vacation. It was only 4 nights. We did feel much better afterward. We were energized enough to chug along in our work and complete it. So much happened after vacation (the scare with the bleeding, the up and down about whether we were going stateside this summer, etc) so that last-minute vacation before all that was a good timing.

Now, our next vacation will be stateside at the emerald waters of Destin. Can't wait!

PS: If you are still reading the girls' blog, I posted three different posts in a row. Take a look and get caught up. I still need one or two more posts there so keep an eye out.

One Month To Go

As I write this, it's 72 degrees out on a sunny June day, after two or three days of thunderstorms that caused the temperatures to plummet from 80 degrees to 65 degrees. Such strange weather for June. Ava is currently painting three pictures with watercolors while Darcy naps in her dark, cool room under a spinning ceiling fan, and Greg crashed from exhaustion on our bed three hours ago and is still sleeping. It's 2pm and I am savoring the quiet and semi-solitude. Ava just braided my hair, a new skill I taught her recently, and covered my lips neon pink (!) lip gloss that our babysitter gave her.

We just came off a busy two weeks of training two leaders from another country. They were long days, starting around 9:30 and ending around 6pm except one of us ran home around 4:30 to pick up Ava from preschool and to relieve the babysitter, rushing to cook dinner, bathe the girls, and put them to bed. Most days, it was me and I felt like a single mother with a 9-to-5 job, shifting from work mode to home/family mode. I also had to cram in a quick trip to the grocery store nearly everyday to replenish supplies for the baby-sitter and the girls' lunches and snacks, not to mention picking up ingredients for dinner that night. Somehow, laundry got done. It was a blur. Poor Greg did a lot of running to-and-fro for two weeks and that was what made him crash on the bed this afternoon.

It was a great and productive training so we hope that we will be able to see fruit from their efforts as they apply the new "tools" that we gave them. We won't see the leaders that we trained until next spring but hope to Skype with them often until then, to provide support and answers. Technology is a great boon.

Just before training started, we finally finished language study. Finally. We went straight from wrapping it up to training and training just finished yesterday so the fact that we finished language study hasn't sunken in yet.

We have one more month left until we go stateside. I'm so glad that all of our work is done and we can focus on preparations for our trip stateside. A lot of the preparations have to do with getting medical clearance, readying the apartment for a short-term student who will house-sit and work with our co-workers, preparing presentations for stateside, packing, and tying up any loose ends. Hopefully, it will be a relaxing month, instead of fraught with stress and urgency.

As our three-year term drew to a close, I reflected on our term off and on. These three years were full of new experiences, challenges, struggles, frustrations, joys, and tremendous personal/spiritual growth. I think that sums up our term nicely without me waxing long and eloquent about specifics which would surely bore you.

Now, I look ahead to resting stateside for 5-6 months. I'm a bit apprehensive because I remember what it was like to return to the States after 2 years of being away. I remember the struggle to adapt and get used to America again. It was more difficult than I'd expected but I think this time around, I won't be as surprised and may have an easier time of it. I mostly worry about the girls, what the transition will look like for them. Ava doesn't remember the U.S. and Darcy is completely unfamiliar with it.

On a more positive note, I'm looking forward to seeing family and friends, spending time with them, experiencing favorite things and places again. I look forward to fresh Florida seafood, Florida beaches, pork BBQ, shopping for several things in one store (hello, Target!), traffic that is logical and orderly, things that make sense, and some of the conveniences of America. I look forward to enjoying my kids without the pressure of work.

Most of all, I look forward to being spiritually renewed. I hope and pray for that. As we rest, I hope to remember the Father's call on our lives, to remember our vision, to be encouraged and energized. We are weary, not of living overseas, but weary in spirit. We have fed ourselves for so long and I look forward to being fed for a change.

See you all soon.