Islamic creation science is down for the count

After a year of being blocked from WordPress I finally have access once again! It appears that our Islamic creation science friend (who had nasty posts written about him on wordpress and decided to do the civil thing by obtaining a court order and blocking access to the site for everyone in Turkey) has eaten his just desserts and access has been restored to everyone in the country. 

So what has been going on with me in the last year? Here are the main bullet points, and I will include more detailed information in the future

1) I started grad school in Ottoman History (it’s hard but enjoyable)

2) I began dating a lovely young woman named Melissa, who is a graduate student in TESOL (teaching english as a second language) and has a best friend who married one of my long-time roommates, which is how we go to know each other. We’ve been doing the long-distance relationship for the last year and logged on hundreds of hours on our Vonage phone. When I decided to take things to the next level I included Skype video chat in our relationship, which made things far more e-mantic. She is living here this summer and working as an EFL teacher so you’ll be hearing more about her.

3) I still attend my same church, but I go to a different service that is mostly Turkish in structure. All of the hymns and most of the preaching is in Turkish. The congregation is an eclectic mix of Turks, Koreans, Iranians and a few Westerners. It’s a small congregation but those who attend are committed and faithful.

4) I’m basically reading all the time. Not so much for enjoyment, but for digging into my master’s thesis. I read, read, and then read some more. I’m also having to learn Ottoman Turkish, which is is very difficult to learn for a non-Turk. And since it is a dead language it has a small payoff since the only thing it can be used for is reading old documents.

 

So that’s all for now. I’ll try to fill in the gaps of major events in the last year. I just got back from a trip to American to see my family (and Melissa, while she was there), and we went to this awesome conference called the Acton institute. I’ll touch on that one more later.