Home Sweet Home...or at least Turkey.

After a month of traveling, both Mike and I were ready to be home.  We were mentally and physically exhausted.  We were tired and our bodies physically ached from so much walking and so little sleep.  Mentally, we were also worn out.  We acknowledge that this is a total first world problem, but the thought of getting up and doing more sightseeing was losing it's appeal.  There are but so many churches one can see before they start looking veryyyyyy similar.

All of this being said, we had a BLAST on our month long trip.  We went places most people only dream of going and got to see things I didn't even know existed! There are no words to describe how incredible the month of travel was.   Not only did we get to see and do all of these amazing things, most of the time, we were doing them with wonderful friends. Even though we were tired by the end of our month, we wouldn't trade it for anything.

I don't like to post where we'll be traveling ahead of time (you never know what creepers are out there), so all I could do was elude to the fact that there was a huge trip in our future.  All I really wanted to do was post a rundown of our trip like this one.

• Three days in Milan/Lake Como/Parma
• Three days in Venice
• Seven days in Israel
• Three days in Barcelona
• Five days in Morocco
• Three days in Rome
• Four days in the Italian countryside and Florence

Coming back to Turkey was filled with mixed emotions.  When I was describing this to my friend Sara, she reassured me that the term "post-vacation blues" was an actual thing.  We were SO happy to have a day or two to lounge around and do a lot of nothing, but we were also sad to be back.  We both dreaded going to class and that little pest known as homesickness made itself known throughout our first days back. The fact that neither of us are in love with the city of Izmir definitely didn't help.  That being said, words cannot explain how happy I was to sleep in our own bed and watch endless amounts of television the weekend we returned. So. Freaking. Happy.

Both Mike and I are data people.  We like numbers and math and all of that good stuff, so I figured I'd wrap up our month long trip with a few little statistics.

• 28 days of traveling
• 4 different countries
• 19 different cities
• a collective 10 lbs gained (don't worry, we've already lost  most  of them)
• 508,466 steps taken
• 205.58 miles walked
• 51 nun sightings
• 2 very happy Hogans

Our month long trip around Europe was truly amazing.  We laughed almost every day because we were just so amazed at what we were doing.  I don't think in my wildest dreams I would have ever thought that I would get to travel to so many countries and historical places.  I got to visit the place Jesus was born, drink wine in Italy, shop in the Old Medina in Morocco, and take in the culture of Barcelona.  Not many people can say they got to do one of those things and we are lucky enough to say we got to do all of them.  We are so grateful for this opportunity and, even though it came with some post-vacation blues, we wouldn't have traded it for the world (isn't that what we got anyways?).