Still alive. (Well, barely. 'Tis finals season.)

I'm still reeling from a 20-page paper and presentation I had to put together for my Istanbul Architecture class.

My topic was [please note: this is a direct quote, exactly what I had to work with, grammatical errors included]: "urban & functional development of Hippodrome Area & its environments."

To everyone who prayed me through the paper, thank you. I needed it. I didn't actually hit the 20 page mark, but after seeing that in Turkey, photos count towards your page limit (I didn't have any), I don't feel so bad. I think I covered everything I needed to.

And it's done. That's what I'm happiest about.

In fact, I'm so happy that my body rebelled and decided to get sick on Friday.

And I have more pictures! [Thank goodness for visiting family members who give you proper incentive to be a tourist.]

Except for the two painfully obvious exceptions, everything is from the Turkish & Islamic Arts Museum.

[Carpet detail]

[Lots of carpets. They have one of the world's largest collections.]

[Carpet detail]

[Selçuk tile detail]

[Detail of door from Grand Mosque of Cizre]

There are also a lot (well, that's putting it somewhat lightly) of illustrated Qu'rans. I'll put them up in their own post, probably tomorrow sometime.

m.

[Not. Counting. Days.

Not. Counting. Days.

Not. Counting. Days.]

slowing down

Remember how I said things were slowing down?

Well, I lied.

Not on purpose, of course.

We found out on Wednesday that my younger cousin got hit by a car while riding her bike, and then we found out this morning my grandfather broke his hip.

Yes, all this in only three days.

They're both in the hospital (my cousin's still in the ICU), and we don't know when they'll be out. We're flying out today (in a few hours, actually) and will be there until Tuesday.

If you could pray for them, that would be wonderful. Well, actually for all of us. There are the grandparents, the parents, and the two cousins, and then the aunt and...me.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows."

2 Corinthians 1:2-5

m.

Oh, yeah. This, I think, qualifies this as the worst 4th I have ever had.