We are here!!!

Hey everyone!

Well we have only been at the hotel/hospital for a couple of hours now, but I wanted to post so you all know we made it safe and sound.  We got here at 7 pm Turkish time.  We are 8 hours ahead of Texas and ten hours ahead of all you guys out in Cali!

Everything went great without hitch!  I didn't have any problems getting through security with all the injectable meds I was having to carry, our luggage arrived exactly as it was suppose to, and our driver was waiting right outside the airport with a sign for us and everything!  We couldn't have been more pleased.  Minus the fact that it's so cramped on the airplane that neither of us really slept on the flights, maybe an hour total.  So we are pretty much running on empty considering we have now been up for 36 hours straight or maybe more my brain is too fried to do the math!

It took us a while to get here due to layovers and so forth.  We left Dallas at 3:25 pm yesterday.  Then of course you add 8 hours to that for the time difference, so it was really like we were leaving out at 11 pm Turkish time.  We arrived in Amsterdam at 7:30 am their time, and then our flight for Istanbul didn't leave until noon.  It was a three hour flight from Amsterdam to Istanbul and we gained an hour so that put us getting here after 4:00.  Then we had to go through the visa line and pay $20 each to get a 90 day visa.  Which was a breeze, as was going through customs.  Once going through both of those, our luggage was already there. :)  After fighting off two different Turkish airport dudes that wanted to help take our bags for 5 Euros, we were able to exit the airport and there was our super sweet and nice taxi driver. He had a sign that said Staci Renee and Glen Patrick.  It cracked us up!  No last names, just middle!

The taxi ride from the airport to the hospital was over two hours long, and the hospital is like 30 miles tops from the airport!  The traffic is CRAZY!!  People don't even stay in lanes, merging is an absolute NIGHTMARE! People literally stand in the middle of the interstate between lanes selling bottled water, some pretzel looking things, and roses.  I'm surprised there aren't more fatalities! Oh, and people are whizzing by on motor bikes to add to the chaos!!!  So glad he was driving and not us.  We did get to take some pics along the way that I will add to this blog once I get the chance to upload them to the computer.

Once getting to the hotel/hospital we checked into our room, which is very compact but nice and the best part is that it looks out over the ocean and mountains!!!   I will take pics of the room and view and post those as well!  After dropping everything off, we went over to the hospital and looked around.  Because it took us so long to get here, we weren't able to talk to our main go to person, Seyhan, like was planned.  But she is suppose to call us at 8:30 in the morning and our first appointment with the doctor is at 10:30 in the morning.

Well I guess that's it for us right now.  I will update again tomorrow evening which is really around afternoon for all of you!!

Thank you all again for your support and prayers!  We can already tell this is going to a trip of a life time!!!!

It's crash time!  But at least its night here so we should be able to avoid most jet lag and wake up right on Turkish time!

Oh Yes!  One more thing.  The weather here is totally WONDERFUL!!! It is gorgeous and wonderful to feel a cool breeze and weather that is nice for a change.