Day 6 of Turkey--The Grand Bazaar

Hi everyone!

No egg update today.  I only see the doctor every other day for right now.  I will see him every day once it gets closer to egg retrieval.  When we had our first appointment, Dr Arici put our egg retrieval at probably the 13th, but since the eggs didn't grow very much last time it might be a day or two later. I'll keep you posted once I see the doctor in the morning.  Ok, so I'm beat so I'm turning this over to Glen to do the story telling for the day!!

For today’s outing, we might have been tempted to take a taxi from the hotel (their word for taxi is taksi - sounds the same), however it would probably be at least $100 (american) one-way.  So we opted for public transportation which was much more affordable.  That was a challenge in and of its self.  We paid ticket dispensers without knowing the language which was confusing.  After figuring out how to use the ticket dispenser with the right form of money and pushing the right buttons, we received tickets.  The tickets were in the form of plastic chips which looked like poker chips. We had to place these chips into a turn stile so we could enter the tram/metro station and get on our tram.  In the end, we now are familiar with how to get around town.  The biggest challenge now is getting to the point where we can use public transporation  from our hotel, since our hotel is so far away.  Seyhan has been very helpful in providing a shuttle for us to get from the hotel to the point where we can use public transportation.  We really have appreciated that because it has saved us a lot of money.

Today we went to the Grand Bazaar with the other couple. It was an amazing experience.  Seyhan, our international patient coordinator, arranged for a shuttle to take us to the sea bus port.  Istanbul is split by a river called the Bosphorus.  They call the two different sides of Istanbul the Europe and Asia side.  We are on the Asia side.  So we had to take a sea bus, which is like a big boat/ferry, to get to the European side.  Then we had to catch a tram to the Grand Bazaar.  

The Tram was really cool.  We drove through the "old" town (on the European side).  On the Tram, there were several stops and along the way, there was a lot of cool things we could see.  We saw a few mosques, and interesting looking buildings, McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, and then a bunch of their shops and banks, etc.  It was very fun and interesting to see.  Then in some parts, the tram was so close to the shops and buildings we could reach out and touch people standing there in line for the shops - and/or we could almost reach out and touch the walls also.  It was close, almost like an alley way in a few of the areas through the city.  It even went over one of the bridges over the Golden Horn (waterway).    

The Grand Bazaar is HUGE!!!  The building is many city BLOCKS wide and has tons of corridors.  It's like a maze in there!  It has at least a thousand merchants selling stuff.  Canton pales in comparison to the Grand Bazaar.  It's basically the same stuff like pottery, carpets, scarves, lamps, etc.  But it's still awesome!!  We had a good time looking around and we even bought a few things.  You definitely have to haggle to get a good price, but it was fun.  Most of the merchants were very nice and accepted  NO the very first time, except we saw one merchant chasing a blonde tourist because she didn’t buy something from him.  He was following her quite a while.  I have yet to know where (if ever), he stopped following her.  LOL. 

Oh yes, there was one experience, we must not omit.  Just shortly after we entered the Grand Bazaar, a merchant was standing in the middle of the aisle-way posing as a shopper.  He proceeded to guess where we were from, asking us in English – “Are you from Texas”. With a completely baffled look on our faces we answered, Yes, we are!   We later thought, it must have just been a lucky guess because nothing on us said Texas and I wasn't wearing my cowboy boots. LOL We figure that when he sees an American he probably guesses them to be from one of three states, California, Texas, New York. These are the most populated and the odds are high that someone would be from one of these states.   He got lucky when he guessed right for us.  After his introduction, he then tried to get us to go visit his shop which was way off the beaten path.  There were four of us, so I knew he was potentially trying to scam us in some way, so I proceeded with caution – however the other 2 in our group were kind of leading the way so Staci and I followed.  So it took a while to get to his stall, but along the way we saw many other merchants and what they had to offer so it was not a wasted journey.  He was a pretty funny guy, very humorous.  Of course, he said “you must buy something” – at least one thing from me.  Then he said, after you buy something from me, I will then show you the best place to eat “in the Grand Bazaar”.  He claimed to say that even George Bush and Michael Jackson had been in the Grand Bazaar to shop and he had seen it for himself.  LOL.  It was entertaining.  He actually asked us “would you like to see some tiles?”   Tiles, we later found out was his ceramic shop of bowls, and coasters and stuff like that, all allegedly hand-painted.  There was lots of competition for him in the Grand Bazaar, so of course if didn't take us long to figure out, why he wanted to steal customers right away before they saw the competition since he was way off in the boon docks of the Bazaar.  We didn’t buy anything from him, and we didn’t eat where he wanted us to eat.  LOL.  He was very persistent.  Said we should have bought something because of his comedy.  LOL.  He made fun of us because we were “window shoppers”.   Hey at that point, we had just gotten there and we had already told him we were "just looking."  Later in our shopping, we actually ran into that same guy a few more times!!  Which is crazy because this place is HUGE!!!  Each time we saw him coming, we would duck behind some carpets to avoid him seeing us.  LOL. One time we accidentally ducked into a store selling the exact same "tiles" as him.  We were like, Oh, crap!  What if he see's us in this other persons place and thinks we are buying from him instead!!!!  But thankfully we avoided him after that point and there were no further incidents. He just provided us with some real entertainment.

After the Grand Bazaar, we got on the tram to go back to the place where we arrived (in the morning from the ferry) - in the town Kabatas.  From the tram stop, we would need to go another mile or so to a hotel called The Marma, where Seyhan had gratefully arranged for someone to pick us up at 9pm.  So we took the tram back up to Kabatash, then we got on a metro/subway to take us north west (a mile), to complete the last jaunt to be in the place of pickup at 9pm.  Then we spent the evening in Taxim.  Some of the pictures will show some of the sights while we were there.  While we waited to be picked up, we looked at a few shops and had dinner.  There was also a nice park that we saw and there was an outdoor concert which we heard while we walked around.  

In Taxim, we also bought dinner there.  They have meat on a stick (or Kabob) - which they call Doner.  There is a picture of that.  They seemed to have a choice of chicken or beef.  The meat is stacked up on the metal skewers.  They have a choice of how the food is packaged.  For lunch we had it just sliced up on a plate with rice, etc.  At dinner, we opted for the burrito-style where they wrap it up with vegetables and a tortilla.  They oiled up the tortilla after they wrapped it all up and place it near a flame, long enough to char the tortilla.  Oh yea, we asked for the "spicy" version - which was supposed to have chiles with the vegetables.  It was very tasty, but definitely not spicy.  I don't think they really have spicy food here.  I prefer the burrito-style packaging of the meat - it tasted better than the other.  

Because we liked this experience so much, we will probably go back to the Grand Bazaar and Taxim again.  When we go back we will take a new couple we met. The new couple got here around the same time we did but they haven't had a chance to see any of the sights yet. Their names are Ebenezer and Vida, and he informed immediately that he was no Scrooge!  LOL They live in New York, but are originally from Ghana. They seem like a really nice couple and we look forward to getting to know them better. Tomorrow, all the couples are going on a boat ride together along with Seyhan down the Bosphorus River.  This should be SO awesome and we should get some really good pictures!!

I bet y'all are wanting some pictures of the Grand Bazaar.  So here ya go!!!

On the ferry, we passed the "Prince Islands" - they are 3 small islands.  This a picture of one:

On the ferry, these are some pictures of the European side of Istanbul. You will notice there are some mosques:

Bridge Over the Bosphorous River:

A random mosque right after getting off the seabus at Kabatash:

Then these are a collection of pictures taken at the Grand Bazaar.  They all show different merchants and the products they were selling.   The architecture of the building was interesting to, so pictures may only show that as well:

(above - lights / lanterns)

(above - this is a funny one).  Does anyone know what this merchant is pointing at?  if you can't figure it out - scroll down for the answer

Then we have some pictures in Taxim (in the evening)

(above - these were some soaps in the shape of fruit, etc.)

(park in Taxim - near the shops and concert)

(above - this was interesting - in front of concert.  Concert stage not shown.  The vendor was selling popcorn and cotton candy.  Not sure what the purpose of this architecture is for.)

(above - this is how they sell their meat - "Doner" in shops on the side of the road.  This is what we ate for lunch and dinner today)  There are several of these adjacent to each other.  There were 4 of these shops literally next to each other and then Burger King on the end (in Taxim).   Near the Grand Bazaar they had 2 or 3 next to each other as well.

Right before 9, immediately before we were being picked up - we went on a scavenger hunt to find Turkish ice cream, which is stringy like taffy.  The other couple said they knew where to look, so we started walking down a street.  This is a picture.  There were lots of people:

Their ice cream was interesting.  It was good, but interesting.  We had 3 flavors - chocolate, vanilla, and lemon.  They were pretty good.   Remind us to post about the ice cream experience it's getting really late and we have spent over two hours on this blog. LOL  It takes a long time to up load all the photos one at a time to the blog!

Oh, and the answer to what he is pointing at.  Staci was taking most of these pictures with her iphone today. In most places it was ok to take pictures, but I guess at this place it was not. Because when she brought the camera down she noticed that he was pointing at a picture of a camera with a big red X over it!  So  she accidently took a picture of a guy telling her not to take a picture!  LMAO

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

Glen & Staci

Day 5 of Turkey---OMG we have sperm!!!!

Hello Everyone!

So as you can probably read from our title, everyone’s prayers have paid off and a miracle has happened! We found out today that they were able to find sperm in Glen’s samples, so he doesn’t have to do the sperm aspiration!!!!  They froze it so we can use it here in a week when they do the egg retrieval.  The doctor even said Glen could try again on the day of egg retrieval to see if we can get any fresh ones, but if not then we have the frozen sample from the other day!  We are so thrilled.  This doesn’t mean that we would ever be able to conceive on our own, because they found only 80,000 and most were not even swimming, but it’s plenty to do IVF.  So we went the right route regardless.  To conceive naturally you need at least 20 MILLION with more than 50% swimming!!   We are over the moon happy and we are very glad we came here because they definitely know what they are doing.  Sorry if too much info but such is that when you are dealing with infertility. On the day Glen had to do the analysis they gave him two cups, which he was completely puzzled by.  He asked them about why the two cups and not just the usual one. They said two different samples were needed because sometimes there will be no sperm in the first, and then some on the second.  We had NEVER had any doctor ask or do this before.  You would think after getting our zero analysis, our vasectomy reversal doctor would suggest doing this, but oh well!  We don’t know if it was the first, second, or both, but regardless they found some sperm and that is all that matters!!!!  No more needles or incisions down there for Glen!  Yipeee!!!!  Ok so Glen is blushing bad now, as if he wasn’t already! LOL  He’s such a trooper!  Thank you baby! I better move on to the next topic, THE EGGS!!!

As for the eggs, we have around 15-17, which is great, but they haven’t really grown much, so he upped my dose to 300 IU. So all is well they just need a little more fuel! ;)  I think they didn’t grow much, because when I took my first dose Friday night I didn’t know you were to suppose to prime the gonal-f injection pen before using it, so I think the first dose wasn’t the full 225 ius, but oh well!  With the increased dosage, it will make us for the small first dose!

Today was a nice day.  The weather was cool and over cast.  Not cool enough for a jacket, but just right for short sleeves and jeans.  We went with the other couple, Susan and Paul, to the mall where there is a supermarket, so we all could buy some groceries.  We bought a huge 10 liter jug of water and some snacks.  The kitchen here is WAY too small to cook in.  Besides, there are no pots and pans even though we have a stove!  LOL  I think we have to ask the front desk for some pots.  Tonight was a first for dinner. The past few times we have eaten downstairs in the hotel restaurant, which is kind of pricey and not very good.  Tonight we ate in the hospital cafeteria.  Susan and Paul were the ones who pointed us in that direction, so we had dinner with them.  We had seen the cafeteria, and had even stopped in there a couple of times to have dinner, but it was always too late and there wasn’t any food left.  But tonight, we made it on time and the food was actually better and cheaper than at the hotel.  So a win, win situation! Well at least tonight’s selection.  LOL  Could be a different story tomorrow night.  It’s nice that breakfast is included, because it doesn’t take long for meals to start adding up in cost!!

I'm going to wrap this up. Glen and I are going to try and plan what we would like to do for the rest of the week and try and make it work with the shuttle schedule that they have here at the hospital for going out into the city.  We hope you all are doing well!  Thank you for reading our blog and supporting us with your comments, thoughts, and prayers!  We really appreciate them! Keep them coming because they are so paying off!  We feel so blessed!!!

PICTURE TIME

Below are some pictures of our little apartment/condo and another pic from our open window. No balcony just  big doors that open up. It’s wonderful!!!

From the Window 

View of the room from the entry

View of the room from the far corner

This is the huge glass window that is part of the shower.  If you don't keep the blinds closed it could be quite the peep show/shower!  LOL

Our tiny kitchen

The shower

Vanity and toilet 

Full view of the room

Day 4 of Turkey--Back to Istanbul

Hey everyone!

Well we made it back to Istanbul safe and sound!  We spent the morning in the pool having fun and goofing around.  Then at noon we had to go back to the room, shower, and then get our bags to be checked out of our room at one.  Then we ate lunch and hung out until our shuttle arrived at 3 to take us to the airport.

We had a great time and we are very glad we did the trip to the beach.  It was so relaxing and definitely made it feel like a vacation. Not saying the whole trip isn't like a vacation, but our hotel in Antalya was a resort with huge pools, nightly entertainment, and right on the beach.  Where our hotel here is off the beaten path, not close enough to the beach to just walk down to, and there is definitely no resort like atmosphere at all.  We don't even have a pool.

No signs with our names messed up to report because.... the shuttle service that was suppose to pick us up from the airport to take us back here was a no show!!!  After waiting 45 minutes, we got a cab. We gave the taxi driver a hospital business card with the address on it and he was able to know where to take us.  The taxis at the airport are actually really nice.  They are all new little compact cars. So that was nice not to be in a stinky dirty old car.  The cab driver did a great job of getting us home quick. He was hauling!  When we arrived at the hotel, we had a phone call. It was the shuttle company saying that they were still at the airport looking for us and had been there since 5:30 but that was a lie!  At this airport there is only one place where you can exit, and this is where everyone is picked up.  Glen and I stood right there for 45 minutes, and lets just say we wouldn't be hard to spot. Granted there were A LOT of people standing around that exit, but it was VERY obvious we were Americans, standing there in our shorts with our pale white legs and sneakers. LOL  Also we were probably the ONLY Americans that came out those doors during the whole time we were standing there.  Oh, well!  I was proud of us, neither of us got worked up about being left.  Well....maybe I should re-phrase and say, I didn't get worked up like I normally would.  I'm sure just by that sentence you know who is typing this, yes, it's Staci!  LOL  I admit, I have my uptight moments especially when in new situations and typically I would have been majorly stressed considering I'm in a foreign country, with no cell phone, don't know a soul and hardly anyone speaks English! But nope, I stayed calm, cool, and collected!  LOL  Even under the influence of hormones!!

So we met another American couple from the states that are here to do IVF as well.  They have been here for a week and they are scheduled to do their egg retrieval on Wednesday, but they don't leave until  the day before we do.  Their names are Susan and Paul.  They are from South Dakota.  They are a very nice couple and we are really looking forward to hanging out with them and getting to know them better.

Well I better wrap this up!  It's midnight here and we have to be at our appointment at 9:00 am in the morning!

I'll post again tomorrow with an update on how the eggs are growing!  Grow girls, grow! I call them girls because technically they are girls since all eggs are X's and it isn't until the sperm comes along that either confirms it's a girl by adding another X or makes it boy by adding a Y! I hope you enjoyed your reproduction 101 course for today!  LOL

Until we meet again!

Much love,

Staci & Glen

As promised here are some pictures thus far:

Crossing the Bosphorus during our first day in Istanbul

A two in one shot!  A picture of our shuttle driver and the crazy traffic where no one can pick a lane and stay in it!! 
 

Our Resort, The Titanic, in Antayla

And a picture of the ocean from the window of our home away from home in Istanbul

Day 3 of Turkey!!!

Hey everyone!

We are checking in for our daily blog.  Today was a good day. We spent it in the pool just relaxing.  The weather here was a little cooler than yesterday with a nice breeze and sunny.  We went off the resort to a pharmacy to buy some sunscreen for 25 lira, which in the gift shop here they wanted 25 euro.  A euro is way more expensive than a lira.  One dollar US is equal to 1.50 Turkish Lira.  But One dollar US is equal to only .75 euro.  So basically $1.25 of our money to equal one dollar of the Euro!  Most places in Turkey use the Lira, but there are places that use the Euro to jack up the price.  We skipped buying the toothpaste and deodorant, to save money.  We will just stink! LOL We figured the sunscreen was more important.  We have been brushing our teeth with water and then eating parsley or mint at meals.  They have a ton of herbs and so forth on their salad bar here.  It’s buffet style for all meals.  Very different food than what we have in the states, but there is always French fries on the buffet.  LOL  We never eat them though.  The food has been interesting, some of it good, some of it not so good.  The desserts all seem to come in mold/gelatin form.  It’s very different and it keeps us from eating too many sweets, since we’re not real fond of thick molded desserts.  The food hasn’t made us “sick”, but our stomachs can definitely tell we aren’t in America anymore!  LOL

 So can you say hard as a ROCK!!  Our beds at both the hotel in Istanbul and here are SO hard. Man, I don’t think they know how to make mattresses here or what the meaning of the word soft is!!! It feels like they have put a blanket or two over some box springs. I’m not exaggerating at all!  Both the hotels are part of a chain called Titanic and boy do they not know how to pick out a mattress!  We were hoping that maybe it was just going to be the hotel in Istanbul that had the bad beds, but nope it’s here as well.  So needless to say we have not slept good the last couple of nights.  We complained to the front desk today, and they brought up some extra like comforters to put under our sheets, but there is just no helping this bed.  It does make it a little more bearable but not by much!  We miss our bed, BADLY!!!  When we get back to Istanbul tomorrow night, we are going to talk to the front desk there and see what they can do for us.  If they can’t do much, then we will talk to our go to person, Seyhan, and see what she can do.  If worst comes to worst, we will just ask her if there is somewhere she can direct us to buy a blow up mattress or some kind of padded mattress.  Our bodies just can’t keep doing this.  Thankfully my back has been holding up pretty well considering the bed situation. I have been taking Tylenol to help prevent any more pain/inflammation in my back, since it is the only pain killer I can take during my treatments.

I took my first injection last night at 9:00 pm.  I have to do it every night at that time.  It doesn’t really hurt. It’s a very fine needle that I just stink into the fleshy part of my lower stomach and then inject the medication.  All the shots during the first half of the IVF process are basically painless. It’s the second half where I get into the painful butt shots!  Yikes!  Not looking forward to those, but it will be well worth it if the end result is a beautiful baby or two!  J

We fly back tomorrow evening around 6 and then we will be staying in Istanbul for the rest of our trip.  We will see the doctor Monday morning, and we will know how the meds are working on getting my eggs to grow.  Hopefully quite a few of them will have started to grow, we want a lot, but not too many or else there could be complications, but I’m not worried.  I trust and know our doctor is the best and knows exactly what he is doing!  We will also find out if Glen will have to do the sperm aspiration or not.  He had to give a sample, in fact TWO, on Friday to see if they couldn’t at least find a few sperm. If they did find some, then they said they would freeze them for us. So… cross your fingers and pray that some got through!  We aren’t holding our breath, but we are hopeful.  If none are found, then we will proceed with sperm aspiration. Thankfully, this procedure will be NO WHERE as painful as the vasectomy reversals! Amen!  Poor Glen!  He has been such a trooper and a wonderful husband through this whole process!  I’m so thankful to have such a great guy! 

We hope you are all doing well!  We miss you all!  It’s amazing how much we take for granted during our normal everyday lives, until we are taken out of them and put into a completely different country and situation.  We are very blessed to have family, friends, and the life that we do in America!

Until we meet again…much love!

Staci and Glen

PS  Pictures are coming once we get to free untimed Wi-fi!  Yipee!!

Day 2 of Turkey!!!

Hey everyone, we had a great 2nd day.  We saw the doctor for the 1st time.  As we thought, we really like him. He mentioned with humor that he had talked a lot with Staci before.  She had talked over the phone in person with him on a few occasions and he answered several emails.  It is very uncommon for a doctor to willingly spend that much direct communication with a patient, at least from our prior experience.  So meeting him in person was just as enjoyable.  We were glad we chose him to be our doctor.

We met with him in his office and he had a big stack of paperwork.  He said "Look at this".  He said, I know you have your labwork somewhere in here.  This is huge, he thumbed through it like you do with those paper animations you draw when you are a kid with a stack of papers.  Definitely broke the ice.  That paperwork was all the history of paperwork from the past attempts at having a child.  So a lot of our questions were already answered, but we had the chance to sit down with him and get a schedule and plan together.    So we will be seeing him every 2 or 3 days starting Monday at 9.  It looks like we will tentatively have the eggs retrieved somewhere around the 13th.    Then usually four or five days after that we will have the embryo transfer.

So we went into another room and through the ultrasound, Dr. Arici, showed us on each ovary 7 or 8 follacles on one side and 6 or 7 on the other one.  He then suggested a dosage of medication that we are going to use based on the paperwork he had read and how many follacles he saw.  The dosage he perscribed was 225 IU's - once daily in the evening.

Just a note about elevators.  The buttons for floors (on lower levels) are actually numbers instead of letters buttons like we have in the states.  So for example, the ground floor is "0", the basement is "-1" and then the other floors are like "1", "2", etc.  Kind of cool.  Sure gets around the language block.

Also, we had an intern do some translating.  I guess from what we knew, we expected a little more people understanding English.  Not that I can blame them.  We are in a different country, they should speak their language.  I just expected a little more english.  So it is sometimes interesting trying to explain simple things to people to get around the language barrier.  The intern, named Sunny, was sweet and helped us explain things to some of the hospital staff.  The doctor speaks very good english so there was no problem with him.  But some of his staff, it was difficult to explain things.  His nurse was questioning us about medication that was going to be perscribed and the intern was very helpful at mediating and translating for both of us.  And then the staff at our hotel sometimes is challenging.

We found out our schedule from the doctor, and we at the spur of the moment decided to go on an excursion  because this would be the only opportunity for a break.  The remainder of the time we will be focused on the doctor appointments and everything else.  So we had a woman, Seyhan book a plane ticket and hotel for us in Antalya and a driver to provide transportation to and from the airport.  It is an all-inclusive resort on the beach on the south side of Turkey.   It was a 1 hour flight.  As, like last time, there was a driver to pick us up.  But this time, the sign he held up for us to recognize him said "Mr. S. Renee Youngblood".  Maybe next time, they will get it right.  So we arrived here, at the hotel.  It actually is all meals included (breakfast, lunch, dinner).  This hotel is named the Titanic and the shape of the building actually looks like the Titanic.  Kind of cool.  The pools are large, most of them connected.  Then if you continue walking, you will arrive at a sandy beach.  It is like a resort though, where activities are provided.  We were expecting a little cool weather, but it was on the hot side.  If I were to guess it is probably 85.  Still better than Texas, but not as cool as we hoped.  Hopefully in an hour or so it will be cooler.

Since the airport restrictions are the same universally, we were not able to bring our toothpaste, deoderant or sunscreen so we might be stinky and fried!!  LOL.  We will probably end up paying an astronomical amount downstairs to buy travel size of these things, because we had to leave them at our normal hotel in Istanbul.   FYI - this brings up an interesting topic.  It seems that the Turkish people here do not use deoderant.  Staci and I were standing in line and smelt ourselves to see if we stunk.  It turned out that the strange stench was just the guy next to us.  It was really bad.  We weren't close to them either.  It might be the women too, but who knows.  For now we will say it's only the guys.  It was not only on one occasion that we noticed this.

We are actually charged by the hour for wi-fi because we are in a different hotel tonight.  We are in Antalya right now and will be until Sunday night.  So we promise we will post pictures when we get back to our normal hotel where there is free wi-fi.

We hope you are all doing well.  We will post again tomorrow.  Signing off for now Glen and Staci.  I'm sure you will recognize that this isn't as nicely written and therefore you now know that it's me, Glen.  You will have to wait until tomorrow to see who the next author will be.  LOL

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.

Blast off!!! I can't believe it's finally here!!!

Don't know how this blog will turn out I'm messaging it from our phone. So....its 1:45 and we are waiting in the airport to board our flight which takes off at 3:25 pm. We made it through security without a hitch which I'm so thankful for, considering I'm traveling with a huge cooler purse filled with injectable medication. Yipeee!! So now we are sitting here with butterflies in our tummies and lots of excited feelings. The next time I will be posting we will be in Istanbul. We will be 7-8 hours ahead of you guys So my post will probably show up tomorrow afternoon y'alls time.

Thank you all for your prayers and support. We will definitely keep you all up to date and will post lots of pictures!!!