Beautiful day today. Very hot but great for a swim!

Cultural night tonight. Students from Israel, Greece, Turkey, Germany and Australia all performing on stage!

Should be an amazing night!

Met astronaut Richard Linnehan yesterday. Very cool guy!

A fantastic day – so sunny with a little breeze blowing.

I met Mary Tuncer (the owner of Space Camp Turkey) and spoke with her at length today about many things. She is such an inspiration to women around the world. I feel so lucky to have met and talked with her!

Richard Linnehan (NASA astronaut) is here visiting and I spent some time having a chat with him and invited him to Australia. He has his SCUBA ticket so I told him he has to come and swim with sharks (as a joke) but it turns out that this is on his bucket list!

Very busy but productive day!

Finally arrived in Space Camp Turkey. So glad to be here and looking forward to learning!

I was getting the lift back up to the 8th floor when I looked out and saw:

After a skype call at about 6 am I went for a walk in the local area.

We are very near a train station so I walked over the tracks and found some shops.

Needless to say everyone was looking at the ‘stranger’ in the neighbourhood but they were very friendly and seemed happy that someone new was around.

In a small dusty shop I purchased some snacks for the students on the bus – I hope they taste OK – I don’t really know what the package says but they were in the snack food section….

This place reminds me of Egypt and great memories of my visits there.

A breeze blowing here so I hope it stays around for our trip to Ephesus. 30 plus degree temperatures and drinking lots of water.

We had a big day today. We headed for our first stop – the city of Troy. 9 times the city has been build upon.

Then we went to a village and ate with local people. We were greeted by the Mayor.

After eating far too much food, we went to Pergamon and walked in the ruins of the site of the first civilisation.

We are now stationed in Izmir for the next three days, getting ready for Space Camp and more site seeing.

Today was a wonderful day – we took all the students to Gallipoli and spent the day at various cemeteries and points of interest regarding ANZAC Cove and the commemoration of ANZAC Day. Seeing the girls acting out scenes in the trenches and some brought to tears with the realisation of what had happened made the whole trip worthwhile. We recorded enough footage to make a mini documentary and look forward to publishing the end results. A lovely lunch beside the Dardenelles and ferry ride across have topped off a wonderful day.

After driving for many hours, we have arrived at the Kum Hotel. We are only about 10 minutes from ANZAC Cove.

This is the view:

Today we went to the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar and also the Galata Tower. An amazing day of ancient history and many, many new facts from our wonderful tour guide.

He explained so many things – from the Obelisk from Egypt to the melting of 6th century Persian weapons into a three headed snake, marathon running and modern shipping issues around the Bosphorus.

The pictures below will show you some of the places: