Arrived!

My apologies for the silence on the blog! Our last few days in Rome the girls and I spent walking around, re-visiting all our favourite things. Over the course of the last three days there we managed to see the Colosseum, Circus Maximus, Castel and Pont Sant'Angelo, Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Largo Argentina, Piazza Navona and St Peters Basilica and Cupola. We also frequented our favourite restaurants and gelato places, said goodbye to our local coffee shop staff and doorman.

We arrived in Istanbul on Saturday night and immediately dropped our bags and went out to eat. We showed the students Istiklal Caddesi and took them to Durumzade for chorba (soup) and sandwiches. It was easily 1 a.m. by the time we all hit the sack that night. We have just been adjusting to the city since then, wandering around and seeing our favourite places again.

Perhaps the most exciting thing to happen since we arrived has been seeing the ACCENT center and seeing students IN IT. As some of you may know, this has been a dream of Ozayr and Mark and Nedret Butler's for many years now, and it's been a lot of work to get to this point.

AND HERE WE ARE.

We are very grateful that we are on this trip, that students came and this program is officially up and running and the center is inhabited and ready to be loved and learned in by students in this fantastic city - the goal all along. Check out Ozayr's post and pictures on the MSP blog, here.