Greece!!

Well we have officially arrived in Greece and it is fantastic. Turkey was great, and as soon as I can I will have to load some pictures about the last place we stayed before heading into Greece. Part of our itinerary included going to the contemporary city of Assos, Turkey which is the closest place with hotels to the ancient city of Troy (think Trojan Horse). However, our professor, and of course none of us had ever been to Assos, so we had NO idea what to expect. This little city was AMAZING! A SMALL fishing town on the coast of the Aegean Sea, we actually arrived fairly late, so it was very dark and hard to see where we were headed. When we drove out in the morning, we were actually ok with that though because getting into that town included driving up and down very hilly and steep terrain with scary switchbacks on a tour bus! At any rate, the town is so small, and quite old, so much so that their streets are not even big enough to fit a van the size of a 15 passenger van. So needless to say our tour bus would not make it into their streets. So we left our bus a quarter mile away and walked down a cobblestone path to our hotel. The hotel staff made several trips to our bus to get all our luggage. This town was amazing, just what you would expect from a little coastal Mediterranean town. The hotel was quaint, but fantastic, with an interior atrium with plants growing up the side of the walls and a courtyard where we ate dinner with fresh fish! In the morning we woke up to the most amazing sun rise where we could finally see that we were sitting RIGHT ON THE COAST! I'm so sorry that my pictures will not be able to do this place justice! Regardless, we continued that day onto Assos (Troy) and Alexander Troas before making our way to Canakkale, still in Turkey, but where we would catch the ferry over to the European part of Turkey in order to enter Greece. We are at our hotel now, and after a wander around the city of Kavala, we are to have dinner tonight and depart early tomorrow morning for the ancient city of Philippi (Think about Paul's letter to the Philippians). While we are in Greece we also go to Corinth and then spend one day in Athens before departing on the 23rd. We have to leave at 5:30am for the airport in order to catch our plane, which means that we will be traveling from 10:30pm on the 22nd Kentucky time, until 10:30pm on the 23rd when we land in Kentucky. It will make for a long day, but it will all be worth it!

My love and prayers to you all! We are still doing very well and feel very safe here, so no worries about that! Thank you for your prayers and thoughts up until now and hope to hear from or see everyone soon!