two trips to Uludağ

This past weekend, I made two trips to Uludağ, the mountain next to Bursa. On Saturday I went with the program. Taking a bus up towards the top, we hiked for nearly six hours through the forest and alpine meadows. My host family had a guest come into town Sunday, so I went with them again to Uludağ, this time for a shorter period of time. While the drive was uncomfortable, 6 of us in a sub-compact car for which 4 would be unformtable, we had fun up top, taking the ski lift, to a different area of the mountain. The two trips combineed should be enough nature for at least couple weeks.

Here I am the first day, snacking on the greatest invention ever, Ketchup flavored chips.

değerlendirebilmeleridir

Language learning is a hard and slow process. I'm happy with my progress so far in learning Turkish, despite the moments when I feel like a fool after I fail to comprehend a simple sentence said to me three times. Yet it takes moments like one this morning to remind me my mistakes aren't always my fault. You see, one of the difficulties in learning Turkish is that the language likes to construct really, really long words. If you think about it, the words we use most often in English, really aren't that long. You can say a pretty complicated sentence with only a single multi-syllable wor (for example: "I was late to lunch because my car broke down by the old mill"). Unlike English, Turkish likes the combine all the information in a sentence down into a few words. A sentence that would take 10 words in English, takes 3 in Turkish. For example, toplantıya katılması gerekiyormuş means something like "I've heard that he had/has to go to the meeting". While we were struggling through a text in our book on workaholicism this morning (işkoliklik in Turkish if you're wondering), we came upon just the kind of word that could only occur in Turkish: değerlendirebilmeleridir. The word literally means something like "their being able to make something have a worth" or less literally "their able to evaluate", with a hard to translate suffix "dir", serving as the copula in the sentence tacked on at the end. There are, as I count, 24 letters and 10 syllables. As I said earlier, sometimes I realize that all my problems really aren't my fault.

learning new words every day!

Constant reference to a dictionary has been necessary so far on this trip. Accompanying me every day at school and on every trip has been a not quite pocket sized English-Turkish dictionary I bought here, called the Redhouse Elsözlüğü (literally "hand dictionary"). While the dictionary has served my purposes well and usually comes up with an adequate, if not great definition, stray glances have found some very interesting words on the Turkish side. Maybe someday I'll find out why the dictionary thought them so essential that they were to be included in what I assume to be an abridged dictionary. In the meantime I'll share a few with you.

yarga - one year old chicken

efe - swashbuckling village dandy

zatülcenp - pleurisy (according to Wikipedia, "an inflammation of the pleura, the lining of the pleural cavity surrounding the lungs.")

Trip to Çanakkale and Assos

Last weekend we went as a group on an overnight trip to Çanakkale and Assos, which are west from Bursa near the Aegean sea.

We met at the language school at 5:30 in the morning and travelled across the Turkish countryside for hours. The ride, passing farms and small towns, was quite scenic.




Our path often ran parallel to the Sea of Marmara.




After about 5 hours, we took a ferry boat across the sea, taking us back to the European side of Turkey. This was taken from the boat.



Our first stop was Gallipoli, the site of a protracted battle during WWI. We visited a small museum and then both Australian and Turkish cemeteries. The first of these was taken at a Turkish graveyard; the second is a statue of Ataturk at the site of one of his early victories during the battle.





We then went south to the entrance from the Aegean to the Dardanelles, where a giant monument and even more graves and memorials now stand. Here's sea traffic entering the straits.



We crossed back over to Asian side and visited the ruins of what they have decided is the historic Troy. Apparently, a number of cities were built on the same site, dating back thousands of years and archaeologists have uncovered traces from distinct Hittite, Greek and Roman phases. Unfortunately the site itself is pretty unimpressive, marred even further by an attempt to tie it in to the Troy of myth (including a giant wooden horse near the entrance). It doesn't get much more interesting than what you get in this picture, which has a sign with the name of the city during first Greek, then Hittite times in the foreground. I found the surrounding countryside much more beautiful and alluring.




We spent the night in the town of Çanakkale, and after a visit to a Naval Museum there, we continued on the next day to Assos, another city dating to ancient Greek times. The Aegean countryside was quite beautiful and those of you in California will be pleased to know that the climate and landscape sort of resembled the Golden State.



The city of Assos, the site of an academy run by Aristotle and also visted by St. Paul, is built on a hill that has spectacular views of both the surrounding country side and the Aegean. While much of the city is old, dating probably to Ottoman times, the Acropolis at the top is the oldest, featuring the site of an old temple and also the best views.





After Assos, we spent a few hours at an Aegean beach, dropped in at a museum devoted to olive oil and visited an ancient hilltop altar to Zeus (now almost all gone), which featured like most of the area amazing views. We then returned home after quite the exhausting weekend.

trip to a Turkish Bath

Today I went with a couple of friends from class to a Turkish Bath. Called in Turkish a "hamam", these are traditional parts of Turkish culture and old bath houses can be found dotting Turkish cities. Hamams are divided by sex; a couple of female students had gone a few weeks ago and had since raved about their experience, which seemed to consist of a lot of chatting in a sauna. The experience for us men was a bit different.

The hamam we went to was in a traditional building. It was 30 TL for what we were told at the door was "everything": "sauna, shower, massage". We first changed in private rooms in the entry room, a carpeted and wood paneled room, where the bath attendants sat watching an old Turkish movie. From there we were led into bath area, consisting of several marble rooms, which must have been several hundred years old. We started with about 7 minutes in the sauna, which, if the thermometer was correct, was 110 degrees celsius. The rest of the bath complex consisted of three or four showers and and a whole bunch of sink/basin things lining the wall with an uncertain purpose. Unsure of what to do next, we took showers and went back into the main room. The next step soon revealed itself when two bath attendants entered, dressed in Hamam garb--shirtless with a towel wrapped around the waist and legs--and carrying pillows and towels. Quickly we found out what the massage consisted of. Lying down on a raised area in the center of the room, the bath attendants first scraped the dead skin off our bodies with gloves, that had a sort of emery-board like palm. After another round of showers, they gave us a very vigorous massage and then soaped us down. The bath attendants poured water over us as we sat at the basins that lined the walls.

All in all it was quite the interesting experience. While I felt afterwards very clean and relaxed, hopefully I'll never have another shirtless Turkish man tell me to lie down on my back in a gruff voice.

US civic knowledge is lacking among citizens of the Republic of Turkey

last night, after showing my host family pictures of my road trip from California to New York, I got into a conversation about the number of stars on the US flag with my host family. As I told them, ever child in America learns that there are 50 stars on the flag for 50 states. My host father however insisted there were 48. I said this was impossible and then my host father went into the computer room to have my host sister (at the computer) count the number of stars. She came up with 47. Fearing that perhaps I and everyone else in the US had been lied to our entire lives, I preceded to pull up a list of the US states and a picture of the US flag on my computer and count them with my host brother. Don't worry, there are in fact 50 states and 50 stars.

July 4th

Sunday is our day off and while bereft of the company of any other Americans I was able to have a relaxing and enjoyable July 4th. Waking up at about 10:30, I found that the rest of the household was getting an even later start so I decided to go out for a walk. As Bursa is situated on the slope of Mount Uludag, the option to head uphill exists for almost anywhere I've been. The area farther up on Uludag also seem to be by my reckoning older (sometimes going back five centuries or more) and generally nicer. I hadn't really explored the area around the apartment much, so I decided to begin by heading in the more appealing direction.

The neighborhood is called Cekirge, I think. This appears to be a very nice spa at a thermal spring, built around an old Hamam (Turkish Bath).



The view from up there was quite nice.



In between the ubiquitous appartment buildings, there were also some old structures, probably dating to before the urbanization of the area.



After returning from my walk, I had a nice lunch with my host family and their neighbor. After lounging around the apartment for a bit, my host brother and I headed out to get Starbucks Frappucinos, which at 7 or 8 TL are more expensive than a meal in a restaurant here, and then to the Sukay Aquatic Park, the first closed-course cable wake-boarding park in Turkey, as I learned from the t-shirts all the staff members wore. I decided to forgo trying to wakeboard until a later date, as participating in extreme sports explicitly voids the State Department health insurance plan and it seemed like a good idea to wait until my Turkish was good enough that I could understand any emergency directions that staff might yell. I had a good time, however, watching my host brother and just lounging in the shade by the side of the course.

Here's my host brother.




And myself.




After a couple hours at the park, we returned to the apartment for dinner and, as is a rule in this household, the after-dinner Turkish Coffee.

like I said we're famous

local newspapers seem to like to carry articles about our group


"American students conquer their hearts"


"American students at Korupark"

unfortunately I'm not in the picture in the second one. I was upstairs waiting for the kid in the white shirt in the front. We had been walking back to the group when he ran off into a store. Another girl and I waited for him, but he went out another exit and got back in time for the picture.

apparently stories about our group have been carried on at least 8 newspaper.