tech support

As promised, I will update the blog and post photos from my last weekend's trip this weekend. In the meantime check this out. I was cracking up, and I don't think you need to be a tech geek or a man to appreciate it.

"To everyone out there who's a little different
I say damn a magazine, these is god's fingerprints."
-- Brother Ali

Right on cue, tonight we will meet at Pirinçhan for the first of the goodbye's this week. A farewell for Marina, one of our long timers from Russia. She's been in Bursa well over a year now, though I'm not sure if anyone knows just how long. Tomorrow we'll continue with the goodbye's, but let's take it one step at a time.

On a lighter note, I have recently (as always) been trying to avoid the bread and meat paradise that is Bursa, so for lunch today I bought a banana and found a nice warm spot on a concrete flowerbed as far away from the sights and smells of all simit vendors in the vicinity. As is often the case, I was almost immediately approached (for conversation, to buy something, for money, etc... pick one). I used to get surprised, then annoyed, now mostly I am accustomed to it. I could immediately tell this wasn't one of those times where I could squeak by with my very limited Turkish, so just responded with the classic, "Türkçe bilmiyorum" ("I don't know Turkish.") The woman thankfully seemed to understand and accept this fact, which is quite rarely the case as this statement is normally followed with a ten minute conversation of turkish spoken at time warp speed by the native, and my broken record "Türkçe bilmiyorum" response. So it turned out quite nice and aside from the lack of conversation, we had a pleasant encounter and I shared my banana with the two gypsy villager women after they refused me insisting they just take the whole thing and split it between them.

Well, I'm back from Erdek. It was quite a lazy weekend as there is not much to do in this small, somewhat touristy spot on the Marmara Sea aside from lounge on the beach. As one of only three trainees that went, there was a lot of lounging and waving from the sand at the pouty-faced Aiesecers who were stuck inside the hotel having congress sessions. In the evening it seemed to be a choice between two bars- the Cowboy Bar, ironically littered completely in Native American decore including a framed poster of the "Indian Ten Commandments", or the Papağan Bar, which I actually only walked by one night, and let's just say I was happy to be walking by and not in.

Yes, the hotel we stayed at was called Hotel Akita, and no there weren't numerous dogs roaming all around crotch-sniffing. There were three large dogs, chained up thereby confined to an area, and one cute, fluffy puppy. In my opinion it was okay, but if I see a place with a sit down toilet, no matter how dirty or janky it is, it almost always automatically scores in the "average/okay" range. It did look like the toilet had seen a couple of mean bouts with more than a couple people's hindparts and somehow lived to bare the battlewounds. Every room seemed to have minor complications. Ours, aside from the bathroom window hanging from its hinges, was the mosquito room.

The second night laying in bed, lights off, drifting through those final thoughts on the edge of sleep...
bzzzzzzz
What?! Well, it's either sleep under the blanket or get up and hunt the little bloodsucker down. We unanimously vote to hunt, but I am so on a mission from God that I jump up, flip the light on, put a lock on the no good so and so, and slap! on the wall even before Lee can get out of his bed. Flick the light off, lie down, ahhh, I'm glad that's over...
bzzzzzzz
What?! No question about it. Get em! Whoosh the covers fly off. Flick! Target acquired! Jump, Smack! Yesss! That'll teach em. A quick round to make sure all windows and doors are tightly sealed, and back to the white sheeted sanctuary. I'll sleep good now..
bzzz bzzzzz
Are you ?*@%!^& kidding me?!
Now we both get up in a flash. Lee beats me to the punch on this one, goes to the bathroom to wash the blood and guts off his hand, and returns to my shocked beckoning, "Hey, hey! Get back in here!" I have spotted two more on the ceiling. Bloody hell! At this point I am standing on the bed giving them the look of death to try and hold them in place until the Aussie can use his height as an advantage over their high strategic position over the bed, just far enough away from the edge of it where it is a risky move for me to try and jump smack them. If I miss and they flee, we would have to re-lock the target. Lee comes and Slap! Smack! Both of us are standing on the bed now in search and destroy mode. It seems we've won the war! We take a moment to appreciate it all, as now there isn't a surface in the room that's not spotted black and red-a work of art, really. One blood spot even looks like a little heart. Back to the bathroom to wash our hands of it all, and back to bed fully keen to enjoy our well-deserved night of...
bzzz bzz bz
Great bloody buzzards, batman! This one sounds a little more hesitant than the first 8 billion (I think he's runnin' scared), but it's unmistakable. The war is not over. With one last heave I drag my body up to the light switch. Flick. Acquiring target. I don't believe it. This little bastard has the nerve to be staring back at me from a spot on the wall right above my pillow! No doubt he's the cruel sort that would probably give you one of those so-big-I-might-as-well-have-an-extra-head mosquito bites right between the eyes. I make sure to give him an extra hard smack to send him careening back to hell where he and his posse no doubt escaped from.
It wasn't until the next morning that I heard from Lee, there was another demon from the hellfire lurking about. He must have made sure to stay a good distance away from my extra-sensitive ear.

But overall, an uneventful weekend. I did a bit of swimming, though there were more than quite a few jellyfish floating aimlessly around so I even tended to stay out of the water more than I wanted. We did go for a ride on one of those ginormous, six person, banana boat things like in the movie Jaws. Really more fun than you can imagine, unless of course, you are the person on the back. While everyone else is bouncing up and down shouting and hooting, happy happy joy joy, you're white-knuckling the rope handle making peace with God. The best was when we turned a bit Lord of the Flies and all turned on the frontman forcing him to switch with the back one after he retaliated to cries of "Ohhh!! Please! Please don't jump! Don't bounce!" with extra high, no handed for more air, super bounces, sending the backman flying off on more than one occasion.

Sadly, this week will be again filled with many goodbyes. Tonight and tomorrow should be packed with farewell tea's at Pirinçhan. I feel the Last Samurai will soon be re-born before too long.

I believe Erdek was just a warm-up for this weekend's festivities at Olympos. It's something I've really been looking forward to, and can't believe I'm actually going! Though I would like to spend a good two weeks hiking the Lykia Yolu (Lycian Way), spending a couple of days here is surely a great way to get a small taste of the experience.

1st Birthday in the House

I know that it is actually tomorrow, Sept. 10th, but I am leaving this evening for a weekend trip, and I wanted to make sure I was able to wish my FIRST nephew a happy FIRST birthday!!! Right now the whole kit n' kaboodle is down there in the muggy Florida weather, probably swimming in the pool. I'm pretty proud of a little something I managed to pick up last weekend that I want to send in the mail. A birthday present, if you will, but surely one that will arrive in no less than a month. Heh.

This weekend at an attempt to enjoy the fleeting days of summer, some of us will take a trip to Erdek on the Marmara Sea. We will stay at a hotel called Akita, named after the dog, and appropriately enough, is said to have these dogs roaming the premises. Pretty interesting, eh? Kind of like the Hemingway house and his cats, only it's a hotel.. in Turkey.. with dogs.. that have a normal number of toes.. hmmm, maybe not at all similar.

Ulucami minarets during sunset

Took this photo earlier this week, I think Monday or Tuesday. The sky was really amazing.

beep beep, back the truck up.. to last weekend!

I just realized I forgot to post about last weekend. Whoops.

I got Saturday off because we had plans to go hiking to two of the hidden lakes on Uludağ, but our plan unfortunately didn't coincide with Mother Nature's; it was rainy and cloudy so it would have been miserable and hard to see the way. We decided instead to have a little bbq together later in the afternoon. At about 3pm I went to the latinos for lots of yummy food. Then we watched this relatively new and very popular Turkish comedy called Gora. After that Lee and I split as we were more keen to watch the Turkey/Denmark football match instead of more movies.

On Sunday, those who were not deterred from Saturday morning's nasty weather (the afternoon and rest of the day turned out to be quite nice), decided to go to Cumalıkızık for brunch. The small, historic Ottoman village is just that, a village. No disco's or crazy tourist traps, just a village where you can enjoy some gözleme at its best with a cup of tea on some cushions. Take a stroll around the narrow, winding, totally illogical streets (as their main and only purpose is to be a way from house to house) and digest, pick up some preserves or trinkets from one of the villagers on the side of the road, and head back home after a relaxing day. A great way to spend some time out of Bursa.

Once back in town the group branched-some people wanted to shop, others to go watch a movie at the Latinos, and Lee and I decided to go to the cinema. When we were riding the metro, though, we were busy talking and missed our stop! Thankfully only by one stop so we just walked instead of hopping on another metro, because it's not so far. It's funny, though, because that was the second time it happened to me that day. Earlier that morning when I was taking the metro to meet everyone, I did the same thing, missed my stop by one stop. D'oh! Anyway, we went to Carrefour, a big shopping mall place, to check out the movie situation and all the movies started around 4.30 or 5, and it was only about 3. Isn't that always the way? Sheesh. We walked around a bit and sat on bench to try and figure out what we should do. We ended up playing pool in the mall until movie time, because there is a bowling/billiard area. I wiped the floor with the poor Lee man. Just kidding. I lost every single game. Not that he's that good (haha), I just really suck super deeee duperly.

We went and saw Fantastic Four, which was alright. You know, it's your classic what you'd expect to be comic book entertainment. If you think you'd like it, you probably will, if not, don't go and expect to be wowed.

Güle güle hermano

Yesterday evening we had a farewell tea with our latino brothers, Enrique and Tiago.

	Whatcha lookin' at?
	What, picture?!
	Brasilian shifty-eyed mafia face.

Holllly cow! The Rhythm Project performance was quite a success, and in fact, the whole Peace Concert went off without a hitch. We performed our rhythms flawlessly and the sound of the crowd clapping in unison was a sure sign we were doing something right. Afterwards, we stuck around for the two following acts. An older guy that looked a bit like Einstein and his band, with traditional Turkish instruments and flute/sax player. Don't be fooled though, he was rockin'! After that a small group of hand drummers played to disco type music. I think the group was called Harim or something. It was pretty cool... but we sounded better on our jars, jugs, pots, and trash cans. :P Just kidding, they rocked, too. It was an extremely invigorating and uplifting end to the day and beginning of the night time festivities.

After the concert our large group piled into various cars to head into the city center to go to a local bar for one last bruhaha with two very lovely and dear friends from the Ukraine. As I write this they are probably in Istanbul, having already begun their journey home. We sang and danced and drank and were so numerous we took up about half of the bar. Unbelievably I'm holding out quite well at work, even though I didn't walk in my door until after 4:15 and with all that excitement I couldn't very well fall asleep right away. I'm still not sure what time it was when I dozed off, but I don't remember hearing the first prayer, so my guess is sometime before dawn at least.

The trainees/foreigners involved in the project from left to right (I'll have to try and find one with everyone who was involved in it sometime):

Pay-yo (Taiwan), Lee (Australia), Me, Cecilia & Jula (Germany), Esteban (Costa Rica), Hajir (Tunisia), Olena (Ukraine) in front