In one sense, the good news is that I didn't wake up to my 02:30 alarm. Instead I woke up a couple times throughout the night, checking my clock to make sure I hadn't somehow slept through my alarm. Finally, I woke up at 2am

I woke up this morning at precisely 6am (it's strange how that keeps happening). I got to work packing. It feels a bit premature, but I'll likely have no time to pack between this little bit of quiet time in the morning, until after our team

I'm counting down the days until I "get" to spend twenty-six hours traveling door-to-door: just three more work days, including eating out for two team dinners. It feels very daunting. Sleeping on the couch last night worked out okay. I actually got a bit chilly at

The most exciting surprise for today is that our checkout time from our hotel is 10am, and our shuttle to the airport arrives around 4pm. Six hours of bright, cloudless, hot, summer weather to endure. In hindsight, we should have rented one of the rooms for an extra day, and

I pictured at most maybe a few hot air balloons. Cappadocia had hundreds. Ours alone held thirty people across nine compartments, and by mid morning the sky over a single field was so crowded with balloons it hardly looked real. Somehow the highlight of the day was a lady making a carpet.

A dryer with a water trap you have to empty by hand, a coastline I kept hunting for in a town that has none, a hotel room carved out of solid rock, and a four a.m. wake up call. European appliances and landlocked Cappadocia both had lessons for me this weekend. You learn something new every day.

How little sleep can a person actually function on? I managed two hours in the first forty, three in the first forty-eight, and a knock at the door every time I closed my eyes. When I skipped the Turkish bath to rest, I earned a lecture on powering through. Eight more days of this to go.