Days 12 &13 - Akhisar to Assos to Canakale

Disclaimer: This post is pretty long. I don't think I'll try to squeeze two days into one post again.

Sorry I missed last night, internet trouble again. Instead of writing one post for yesterday and one for today I'm just going to meld the two into one.

Yesterday we saw the last city of the seven churches in Revelation, Pergamum. It was a pretty interesting place, it is the second place that we've seen that used to have one of the seven wonders of the world. The first was the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, in Pergamum the wonder was the altar of Zeus. It's not there anymore. An evangelist in the 6th century name John of Ephesus convinced the people in turkey to tear down the all the pagan temples. And then about 100 years ago the Germans convinced the Ottoman sultan to let them take all the pieces of the altar to Berlin and rebuild it there, so that's were it's at now. The altar was massive, 100 feet long and 30 feet wide. The smoke that went up from the sacrifices on the Altar would have dominated the sky.

In the letter in Revelation, it mentions that the throne of Satan is in Pergamum, it may have been in reference to the altar of Zeus (which is what Dr. Rigsby thinks.) It also may have been the Imperial cult temple. Pergamum was the first province in Asia to get an Imperial temple.

(Above, me in front of what's left of Zeus. I probably shouldn't be smiling so big in front of the throne of Satan. Below the Imperial Cult temple in Pergamum.)

Last night we slept in Assos, and today we visited the ancient port there. On his way to Jerusalem at the end of his third missionary journey he decided to walk from Alexandria Troas to Assos by himself while his travelling companions sailed. Mark, our teacher think that it was because he had heard the prophecies from the churches that the Jews would arrest him in Jerusalem if he returned and he wanted to spend that time praying with God to make sure that going to Jerusalem was really the right decision. I think that is a good hypothesis.

(Part of the Roman road from Alexandria Troas to Assos)

After Assos we went to Alexandria Troas and saw the ancient port there, the water was beautiful, but there is not much there anymore. We only saw a few pillars sticking up from the water.


After that we went to Troy, Troy was cool, there have been like 11 cities there on that same spot. The oldest one dates back to something like 2800 BC. We saw sections from every city that had been there but it was really cool to see the walls of the city that they think is Homeric Troy. It was cool to imagine Achilles chasing Hector around those walls three times (even if they probably weren't real people or if they were it didn't happen like in the Iliad.)

(A ramp that ran to one of the gates of Homeric Troy, the Trojan horse may have rolled up this gate.)

Troy was the last place where I had a chance to spend some of my Turkish Liras, so I bought a few souvenirs there. I got a little wooden Trojan horse, and I got a miniature statue of the Ataturk. Ataturk is the person who's portrait you see in every building you go into in Turkey. He was the president of Turkey for like three years in the 1920's and he completely changed the country. He was the one that transitioned the country into a democracy, he changed the national alphabet from Arabic to Turkish, he secularized the country and he did a ton of other stuff. People say that he's like the Turkish George Washington, but I think that's an understatement. It sounds like the Ataturk was Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all rolled into one. Another thing that he did was institute last names, everyone only had one name so he made everyone take a last name and he took Ataturk, which means father of the Turks.



All that said, they love Ataturk here, his face is everywhere. Every denomination of money has Ataturk on in, all the government buildings and a ton of the stores and hotels. Our hotel last night had a holographic Ataturk whose eyes followed you around the room. The funny thing about it is that the Ataturk looks like a cross between a mafia boss and Dracula, and he's always scowling. So I got a little statue of him where he's smiling and posing like the Walt Disney statue at Disneyland. It is one of the funniest things I've ever seen, I laughed for about 10 minutes straight when I saw it.


Today was a really fun day, we had some more performances at the remains of the theater in Assos. I recited/read a poem by GK Chesterton called 'A Second Childhood.' I was just planning on reading it but everyone has been so good that I tried to memorize it, I got most of it down but I still got stuck a few times, I had the book with me though so I could pick up my line where I lost it. I was nervous, but it went pretty well and it was fun. I was teasing Jin, one of my Korean friends that i was going to call her up after me on the stage to sing a song, she said that she would maybe come, but I didn't want to embarrass her so I didn't. I found later that not only was she ready to sing, but in Korea she had been part of a contemporary Christian group that recorded a cd. The more I find out about some of the Koreans that we have with us on our trip the more I am amazed at the lives they left behind in Korea to come to Talbot to study.



Another story about Jin, yesterday the hotel we stayed in was right on a little bay in Assos (it also had no hot water and some of the heaters didn't work. My conversation this morning with Jorge, one of the guys on the trip, went like this. Me: Hey Jorge, how'd you sleep last night? Jorge: Horrible man, it was freezing. Me: Yeah, those beds were pretty cold. Jorge: It wasn't just the bed, we couldn't get our heater to work. Me: Oh man, that sucks. Jorge: Yeah man, I froze my Assos off) The water in the bay was really clear, and on the rocks at the bottom we could see all sorts of sea anemones and sea urchins. Jin grew up on a little island in Korea so while we looked in the bay and saw sea urchins and anemones, she saw something different. She skipped out across the slick rocks in the bay (she is probably the most agile person I've ever seen) scooped up five or six little urchins, cracked them open with a rock, proceeded to have a late afternoon snack.



Well, I was going to try to make this a story post, where I told a few funny stories about different people on the trip and gave some impressions from my time in Turkey (we're moving on to Greece tomorrow.) But I'm sure this is longer than anyone wants to read already so I won't do that. I'll just say that after word of my upset stomach got out yesterday I ended up having acupuncture by toothpick forced upon me, and it felt like someone was trying to stab me in the had with a toothpick over and over again. Joyce (another of the Koreans) looking at my grimaces kept saying, "Make noises, Daniel, make noises, it's ok, we all know it hurts." But my stomach felt a lot better last night and it feels great today. Thanks to anyone who prayed. (another note on Joyce, we wrote little thank you notes to Mark our teacher and Mel our tour guide for Turkey, and after writing 'thank you' she drew a picture of and American flag, a Korean flag, and a Turkish flag to fill in the rest of the blank space.)



Other things that happened today, one of the guys, Phil, tried to save a baby lamb that couldn't climb up a hill to get to the rest of the sheep, only after he got the lamb up on the hill with the rest of the flock, the Shepherdess sent the whole flock of sheep running right back down the hill that the lamb was on before. Also we had another award ceremony that I emceed and (unrelated to my emceeing) this hotel has really hot water, but it's kind of brown.


Anyway, we're on to Greece in the morning. As always, thanks for reading and until tomorrow...