Liza's Big Adventure: Turkey Day #6 and #7

DAY 6———————————————

Today we went to Sardis and learned about Tabitha, a woman from Sardis who is also the only women in the Old Testament that was explicitly referred to as a disciple of Christ. What did she do to gain that title? Basically she was the one that took care of all the widows. She made them clothes, which in ancient scripture is indicative of identity. (God gave Adam and Eve clothes when they left the garden of Eden to mark them as His and as Gods now that they knew the knowledge of good and evil—this is an example of the identity that comes with clothes. Another is the story of the prodigal son when the father gives his son a robe and thus gives him back his identity and status as a son.) Anyway, the one group of people who did not have any say or identity in the public is the widows. And this woman noticed these widows and loved them and acknowledged them in the society. Bu then Tabitha got sick and died, and then in Acts 9:36-42 Pater came and resurrected her from the dead. Anyway, she is a really inspiring New Testament figure that we never hear about, and she lived in the place we visited!

Then we went to the gymnasium of Sardis, which is where all the boys would do oil wrestling. It’s pretty self explanatory, especially because in Greek gymnasium literally translates to something like “place of the naked boys”. But then these boys needed some way to wash off all the oil, so they would have built in baths. This is where the “turkish bath” came from. These gymnasiums.

Me and my friend Jessica love to go skipping so we started skipping through all of the Greek ruins we went to. We call it "skipping through Greek acropoli".

Ya know, just taking a bath like an ancient Roman.

Also here we found a flock of lambs, and we got to hold them. It was a super cute baby lamb.

Later that day we got to go to a famous silk market. It is in Bursa, Turkey. This bazar was more like a non touristy bazar so it was cool seeing what the locals were shopping for. One odd thing . . . I swear every other store was a engagement ring store. Like really, it was worse than Provo. So my astute cultural analysis is that . . . a lot of people get engaged in Turkey?

DAY 7——————————

Lots of driving today. We also went to Iznik, the tile capital of the Ottoman Empire. There is so much beautiful tile there. Basically all the mosques have this gorgeous tile on the walls, and it is all made in Iznik. Speaking of mosques, we went to a smaller mosque/museum here. The city was also very non-touristy so we got to walk through the streets and little shops, and see a real Turkish city. Some of my friends got this soccer ball sized loaf of bread for 1 1/2 Turkish lyra (like 75 cents) and I got a whole huge ice cream cone for 75 cents. We walked along the dirt roads, exploring for a half hour. I loved it so much. Then we left for the airport and flew home!! We got in about midnight to a sea of cars and policemen because . . . for the next two days we are next door neighbors with the pope!!

The tile is amazing here!!