Update From The World Of Late-Night Jet Lag

  Well, Here we are at 5am. We are dealing with some serious jet lag. Ankara is 8 hours ahead of US central time. That made for an interesting flight experience. I foolishly stayed awake until 11pm central flying to Munich, only to realize that we would land within 3 hours and it would be early morning there. We ate dinner in Ankara around 5pm with some other new teachers, which was the best 9am dinner (stateside / my body's time) that I have ever had.

        So this is how the trip has gone so far: Tuesday night we were able to have a wonderful meal in Nashville with both sets of parents, my sisters, and Joseph and Whitney. We woke up Wednesday morning and finished some errands before heading to the airport to say final goodbyes.
      The trip got off to a bad start in Nashville. Our plane was delayed an hour and a half coming from Houston due to some mechanical troubles. We were flying to Chicago > Munich > Ankara with an hour and a half layover in Chicago and 2.5 hours in Munich. Obviously there is a problem when you only have an hour and a half layover and the plane is running that late. On the Nashville > Chicago flight the flight attendant assured us that we would be allowed off the plane first so that we could make our international connection. This is where life went completely Larry David style (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm) for an hour and a half. This plane was tiny, as in it was built for baby children. Normal carry-ons had to be stowed below the plane; so getting off the plane first didn't even matter because my bag was the second to last bag to come off the entire plane. At this point Kendall and I have 20 minutes before the plane takes off (boarding had start 30 mins before). We run to find the tram that will take us to a different concourse, which of course is just a tiny bus that drives across the tarmac while dodging giant planes. So we run out of the bus and up to a staircase that will lead us to concourse C, and obviously there is a mom and a 2 yearold there. These turtle-people managed to get up the flight of stairs slower than you could possibly imagine. Finally we get up to the main floor and over the intercom we hear "PASSENGERS WEAVER AND KNOX, LAST CALL. WEAVER AND KNOX TO MUNICH, LAST CALL FOR YOU GATE. THE FLIGHT IS LEAVING". Yep. We looked at one another and begun a sprint the length of the concourse, weaving through OHare like crazy people. But we managed - we got there just in time, and they literally closed the door to the plane behind us. We taxied onto the runway while Kendall and I put our bags in overhead storage. Crisis averted.

          Other than that things went smoothly. I was impressed by how much our plane to Munich looked like the Air Force One level on Perfect Dark N64. I was also impressed by the fact that Kendall can sleep in almost any position that she can manage to get her body into. She zonked out curled in a ball for a few hours.

       I loved the Munich airport and it made me want to go back to Germany really bad. Everything was so clean, modern, and efficient. The meal on the Lufthansa flight was delicious (evidence below) and we flew into downtown Ankara around 3pm Turkey time.

Tasty food on the plane from Munich to Ankara.

 These are pictures from the balcony of our apartment. We have a small park outside, and all these buildings you see are where our coworkers live. 

 This is our living room. To the right is the main balcony where the pictures of the city came from.

 Our entrance hall / kitchen entrance. 

 Our kitchen with a few pre-supplied food items. 

 Some views of the Cidgem neighborhood in Ankara. 

The view from our apartment at night. 

       If you click that last image and look at the big version, past the buildings you see downtown Ankara. The city is built down in a giant basin. We're up on the rim, which makes for insane views, since you can see the entire city one end to the other. We're going downtown tomorrow so hopefully we can get some more pictures up tomorrow. 

Over and out - B + K