The Champs are Here

We left Friday night to a short little 12 hour jaunt down to Antalya with the Stallions for a football tournament. I am still perplexed by a football tournament but we had one. There was about 3-4 inches of snow on the ground when we left and I was looking forward to the warmer weather in the resort town where we were headed. We got on the bus and started to head out of the city. We soon heard that the road through Ankara might be closed because of all the snow. Needless to say that that didn't inspire confidence that we would get there. We ended up driving on frozen roads all night and getting to the beautiful 60 degree Antalya at about 9:30 am. We took a nap, ate and then we played our first game at 1:30. The Stallions started out slow but really cranked it up and won. We played the championship game Sunday at 1:30 and once again the Stallions pulled out a tough "W". The scenery for our games was incredible and the weather was awesome as well. We left about 9 Sunday night and got back to Istanbul about 8:30 Monday morning only to find out that it had been snowing for quite some time. It took a break Sunday but started back Sunday night and it has been snowing ever since. It is supposed to snow through Thursday and I must say it is beautiful. I love seeing all the snow and we have a good bit of it on the ground. Below are pictures from the weekend.
These first two are the snow in Sariyer, an area of Istanbul, and the third is at Koc Univ.

The first one below is the mountains on the way into Antalya and the rest are the mountains that run right up to   the Mediterranean. I couldn't believe the snow covered mountains this far south

All of those below are of the games except for the last two. The next to last one is our trophy for winning the tournament and the next to last one is our defensive coordinator holding the trophy. Notice the backdrop that we played in front of.

More of this beautiful city

We had our first practice with coaches this past Sunday. The practice went very well minus the fact that it was freezing cold. We are still missing some key people at practice but we are looking a lot better. I am really excited for this weekend. We are going to Antalya, Turkey this weekend for a tournament. This is the first football tournament I have ever heard of, but it I am excited to see the city. The pictures of Antalya I have seen are beautiful and I can't wait to see if the place lives up to the hype. The only bad thing is the 15 hour bus ride that we have. We leave Friday night and drive all night, play Saturday and Sunday, and then drive all night Sunday night to get back to Istanbul. It should be a long, interesting, and fun weekend. We practiced Tuesday night as well and we had a great time. I am hating not playing but I am really loving helping with the o-line. The guys have a pretty solid base and I think some of the little things that I can help teach them will really help. The weather was much better the other night and I am hoping it holds out for practice tomorrow night.

Yesterday we went to visit the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (The patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church). It was built a really long time ago and there is a church on the grounds that has been the patriarchal church since 1601. It was really cool and really pretty. We also saw some ruins of what used to be   the city walls. These were probably my favorite thing that I have seen so far. It was just incredible to stand next to these ancient walls that the city has just grown up around. I am led to believe that some portions of these walls date back to when Istanbul was ancient Byzantium. This means that those portions are well over 2000 years old. Many more sections of the wall date back to the Roman empire. I had an incredible sense of history looking at those walls and knowing that at one point an army once stood on the same ground, frustrated by these formidable walls that are now dwarfed by skyscrapers. It was an awesome day of history, maybe the coolest day yet.


These two pictures are from our practice field. The first is the Black Sea and the second is the University that we practice at, Koc University (pronounced "coach").

These two are two of the many pictures I took of the ruins of the city walls

The above picture is a Bulgarian Orthodox Church. It is all cast iron with a steel frame. It was built in Austria and shipped to   Istanbul. The whole church is held together with nuts, bolts, and welds.
The below pictures are both outside and inside the Church of St. George, which has been the patriarchal church for the Greek Orthodox Church since1601.

These last few pictures are views of the ground for the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In all of them you can see the Golden Horn (the body of water) in the back ground.

Practice Cancelled?

Practice was cancelled Thursday. I did not know that you could cancel football practice for anything short of severe lightning, but it happened. Most of the players are in college and they had finals this past week, plus there was still a bunch of snow on the ground and our coach is out of town so practice was cancelled. That was definitely a bummer because I really wanted to meet more of the guys and we need to practice but it lead to some positives. We have made a local friend who takes us to and from practice. He is my age and is really an awesome guy. We called him Thursday night since practice was cancelled and he took us to try some traditional Turkish food. We went to several different restaurants and tried a little bit of a bunch of things. It was all incredible! He told us that you never see a Turkish guy with abs because the food is not particularly healthy. At least I know I will fit in with the whole lack of abs. I guess I need to start taking pictures of my food. I really want to try to cook some of this for my family when I get back to the states because it is so delicious. I tried legitimate baklava for the first time and have fallen in love. Luckily I cannot afford to it too often so I will be indulging in other non-healthy, cheap, delicious snacks that can be found basically everywhere. On a separate note, I think I am having weight room withdrawals. I have only worked out like 4 times in the two weeks since I have been here and I feel lazy. I think it will get better after this week. Our coaches get back today and we will start practicing with coaches here Sunday. We will be much busier and not jut lazing around with nothing to do. Below are some random snow pictures from this past Tuesday that I thought were pretty. The top ones are random throughout the city. The bottom two are from a huge open-air mall here. I thought it was cool that that mall was open when it was snowing.

All kinds of snow

It has been snowing a ton these past couple of days. It snowed a little bit last week but Monday afternoon it started snowing about 4 and snowed the rest of the day. We got around 4 inches at our apartment. They got more on the Asian side. We had went to our first practice Tuesday evening. One of our teammates picked us up and gave us a ride to Koc (pronounced "coach") University. We practice here but we are not connected to the school at all. It is about a 30 minute ride from our apratment north of the city. It is a beautiful area and much more in the mountains than where we live. They had alot more snow than we had in the city so its was a little slippery trying to get up there. The campus itself is really nice and we have access to all the amenities even though we dont go there. That is awesome because it gives us a place to hang out and we can use the gym and pool. It was getting dark and really was not very good weather when we went up Tuesday so I did not take any pictures but I plan on taking more when the weather is better so I can share the scenery that we get to see! We practice again tomorrow and hopefully there will not be five inches of snow on the field like there was Tuesday, but since it was snowing tonight when we went to the grocery, I do not think that hope is going to come true. Below is a picture of my two roommates, myself, and one of our teammates.

The past few days we have been going over to our company office doing some orientation stuff to help our time in country. We actually have to cross over to Asia every morning (Istanbul is the only city in world that spans two continents, Asia and Europe). It is about an hour commute that consists of a 1/4 mile walk to the bus stop, a bus ride another bus stop, a metro bus across the Bosphorus Strait, and the about a 2 mile walk to our office. Yesterday was the only day it wasn't raining and today on the way home it was snowing. I can't say I am going to miss that commute at all. We start language lessons Monday and practice Tuesday night. I am really excited about both things. I really want to be able to communicate a little bit and football is always fun. Below are some random photos since I took since we went to the church.

These are from an awesome downtown coffee shop called The Cherry Bean. It was a good day to chill and enjoy each others company.

The first picture is of doners. they are delicious meat wraps. The pretzel looking thing is a simit and the others are roasted chestnuts which are not very good.

These are all random city shots that I liked. all of the spires are mosques

The first is my roommate Matt at a doner stand and the last three are snow pictures from today in the city. We also had a huge random power outage in Turkey for almost two hours.