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.