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.