[It may also have a few really good photos I don't have right now added to it at some point.]
I would like to open with a quick trivia question:
What word is used in Turkish to refer to 'six-pack abs?'
Hint: It is a food...
You'll get the answer at the same point when I learned it. Part-way through the week this post covers...
So, let's ask a different question.
How is my home life?
A picture is worth a thousand words, apparently.
Here's a picture.
Tuçe on the left, Ece on the right, and it only took me this long to remember which one is which.
Okay, now it's click to read more time, because there will be a lot more pictures.
Yoruldum ("I'm tired out!")
Both this weekend and last weekend I've stayed in Bursa. Mostly because I'm a bit tired out from the week, and I've also not bothered to figure out any decent travel plans for myself, which is ok since I assure you more of that will be happening!
Instead, last weekend I went swimming in my pool, and wandered around Bursa's famous Kültür Park where I got to see some completely non-terrifying stuff.
Flying clowns are WAAYYY better than flying elephants.
*Ahem.*
Kedi Fareyle Oynuyor. ("The cat plays with the mouse.")
Monday started the week off with a bang, because I followed class up with a parade, and a badass concert. I also believe I had my first Sarma Beyti of the trip. Thank goodness!
The parade marked the beginning of Bursa's folk (song & dance) festival, and featured people in traditional garb doing traditional dances and playing traditional music for some value of 'traditional.' There was also confetti, which seems to have actually been cut up water-bottle labels, but whatevskys.
Ireland is represented.
Emily, Hacer, and I are enjoying the proceedings.
Wee!
After the parade, me and my newly bought ukulele were supposed to be jammin with CLS Bursa's local violinist and accordian-player, but for a variety of reasons that was not to be. Instead, I ditched my bags at Tömer, and me and Alyssa (pronounced with an [i] for the 'y') walked around for a bit before going to a concert.
In Merinos park before the concert, we had some çay and were listening to a (Smaller) band playin their jams at the çay place in the park. They ended up inviting us to sit with them, and we had a nice chat, and Alyssa got to show off her violin skills.
SKILLS!!!
Tuesday's class ended with a game of "let's see how many words we can add to this sentence."
It ended as:
Arelyn dün Sara'nın "yapma" denesine rağmen kör beyaz kedisinin ayran içip yenmek istemeyen waffle yiyerek titreyen fareyle oynadığına inanmadığı söyledi.
(Literally word for word:
Arelyn yesterday Sarah's "Stop" to-said although blind white her-cat ayran drink-and to-be-eaten not-wanting waffle while/manner-of-eating quivering mouse to-playing could-not-believe said)
Yesterday Arelyn said she could not believe that although Sarah said "stop," her blind white cat was playing with the trembling mouse while drinking ayran and eating waffles that did not want to be eaten.
As you can see, putting together Turkish sentences and doing math problems/scrambling up stuff are similar. Like match the bits that correspond in both translations.
Anyway, after that fun nonsense, we had our cooking class.
We learned how to make some sort of fancy looking lamb with eggplant and such, pilaf, that soup that's got cucumbers and yogurt, and gülaç, as well as how to write stuff with some yellow pattern. Class was a bit long, but it was fun, and was a somewhat more legit class than last year's cooking class in Ankara.
İmar Hükük - ("Zoning Laws")
Wednesday's coolest feature of the day was another of the optional activities that Mesut is (quite rightfully so!) proud of and very happy to arrange. Us foreigners got to meet with the mayor of Nilüfer, the man in charge of 1/3 of the city of Bursa. And, unlike the cliched mayor figures in the US, he does legit work, and wields legit power. He's also the 1/3 of the mayors in Bursa to belong to the CHP and not the AKP. Naturally I had a pen explode on me right before I met him.
Anyway, a lot of his answers went a little over my head, but the gist is this. He's a busy man, and he does a lot of stuff. He loves Bursa. Nilüfer is great. They have youth and sports. There's a university. There's bike trails. So the youth can do sports. ;)
Naturally since my sister is a law student doing zoning law stuff, and zoning laws seem pretty different here, and since there are a lot of random empty patches of land around where I live in Nilüfer, I asked him about this stuff.
Then we got some swag, took some pics, and then I went home....
Keşke Şarkı ("The Keşke Song")
Thursday was a pretty exciting day because I wrote and recorded a song in class in order to provide some examples of the use of the "keşke" form of if-statements in Turkish, which is used to talk about wishes that are not possible, or regrets. In this case, I wrote a song about how I wished my ex-girlfriend hadn't broken up with me. Truely, my overly wordy lyrics came from the bottom of my heart.
I embed for you here, the audio of me playing it in class. It is the only catchy song I have ever written. (Probably.)
If you're not interested in the chords and lyrics scroll down a ways.
The chords are C-Gm-Bb-F in various orders for the verses, with Bbm/Bb for the "Keşkeee" bit and Bb/Dm for the other bit.
Here are the lyrics:
Keşke senden ayrılmasaydım...
şimdi mutlu olurdum.
Keşke kavga etmeseydik...
şimdi öpüşürdük.
Keşke. Keşkeee.
Keşke wafflesi pişirdiğin yemeğe tercih etmeseydim
belki evine akşam yemeği için gelebilirdim.
Keşke az alkol içseydim
kıyafetlerine kusmazdım
Keşke. Keşkeee.
Keşke senin hakkında dedikodu yapmasaydım
Keşke diğer kızlara bakmasadım
Keşke baban benden nefret etmeseydi
evinde rahatsızlanmazdım.
Kazara iftar için ailenin evine gitmeyip Kahire'ye gitmeseydim
ailenle şimdi sütlaçlaşabilirdik*!
Keşke. Keşkee
Her gittiğim yerde
Her yediğim yemekle
Seni özledim!
Keşke dindar teyzene Türkçe çevirilen Ke$ha şarkılarını söylemeseydim
Benden nefret etmezdi.
Her içtiğim içecekle
her oturduğum sandalyede
canım ağrıyor
keşke söylüyor
Keşke seni aldatmasaydım
Benimle çıkardın.
Keşke maydonoz olmasaydın
hiç öğrenmezin o zaman
----------------------------
(*Sütlaçlaşmak gerçekten kelime değil ama sınıfta büyük bir şakadır)
----------------------------
And in English...
If only I never parted from you
I would be happy now.
If only we didn't fight
we'd be kissing now.
If only. If only.
If only I didn't prefer waffles to your home-cooked food
I probably would have been able to come to your house for dinner.
If only I drank less alcohol
I wouldn't have vomited on your clothes.
If only. If only.
If only I didn't gossip about you.
If only I wasn't looking at other girls.
If only your father didn't hate me.
I wouldn't have felt uncomfortable in your house.
If only I didn't accidentally go to Cairo instead of your family's house for iftar
I your family and I would be offering each other rice pudding right now.
If only. If only.
At every place I go
with every food I eat
I miss you!
If only I didn't sing Ke$ha songs (translated into Turkish) for your religious aunt
she wouldn't have hated me.
With every drink I drink
in every seat where I sit
my soul hurts
saying "if only..."
If only I didn't cheat on you
you'd probably still be going out with me.
If only you weren't so nosy (like parsley, always in every food and everyone's business)
you never would have learned any of this.
--------------
I really like our teacher in class because he's chill with pretty much whatever random schenangians I want to do, including that song. He's also cool with me sitting on the windowsill, and occasionally making really inane comments. More on this later...
Anyway, after class on thursday I had the best clueless yabancı day ever! First, Türkcell gave me a free hat in such a manner that I almost was unsure if it was a gift or if I had stolen it. It was, however, the former. Turkcell, for those who are unaware, has a child wearing a yellow baseball cap with two yellow antennas as its mascot. The average distance between Turkcells in any Turkish city is less than the average distance between Dunkin Donuts in Massachusetts. That is saying something. They generally do not have their hats availible.
After that, I had some time to kill before meeting up with conversation partners for schenanigans, so I went to some random part of the city (actually I think it was a bit outside Bursa), had a Turkish man shave my neck, and then hopped the most comfortable and (magically free) dolmuş which got me where I wanted to be much faster than Bursa's official transportation network without driving unsafely; writing in Turkish has made me think run-on sentences are acceptable.
Me and Uğur, accompanied Joanna (there is no 'h', and I've only been mispelling it for an extended period) and Merve to the Yeşil Türbe (green tomb) where there was gözleme, international folk dancing, and history. Usually there's just the third one. And the first one. But the second one is more unusual.
The tomb itself is super cool, so I'll let the photographs I sloppily took speak for themselves.
Oh, and what food is Turkish for six-pack abs? Baklava.
Baklava yerimde ("I got six pack abs")
Friday was also the bomb. Class was cool. I guess when we got back after the 10:50 break, our teacher was sittin talkin to some folk on the left side o' the room, leavin' his seat vacant. So I sat in it. Halil bey is a wonderful man who is completely fine when I do ridiculous stuff. He told me there was no reason for me to have to move, and then we exchanged places, and I more or less taught the class for him for an hour. Seeing as the topic at the moment was the -'ken' suffix, which is most often used to mean, "during this past period of time," I more or less knew my stuff. Halil bey is also a funny guy, so I took the opportunity to parody/imitate him in appropriate ways, like setting my cellphone to go off, and then complaining that people are calling me. (He does this about twice a day.)
After that, me and some conversation buddies took the telafere ('ropeway') up Uludağ ('Great Mountain'). This begs the question, how terrifying was it?
The answer:
Not terrifying at all, just took a bit of getting used to.
Also, holy crap the view was good.
At the top, we hiked around a bit, talked a bit, and had some water.
After that, I ate a particular food in Bursa for the first time.
I might be over the Turkish waffle now.
It looks like a rainbow vomited on it.
Then we walked around the old city gates of Bursa, and saw a very nice sunset from the park up there.
And after that, I headed to Nilüfer, and talked to two guys with small accordians reppin' one of the Turkic ethnicities in Russia. Most of what they wanted to say is "People (in the US) think Turkey is like an Arab country, when we're really different. We have a much more free, open, and comfortable society. You are allowed to be any nationality you want, or practice any religion." There are caveats that could be made about various assumptions here (take for instance prevailing negative images of Kurdish people, the simplified idea of what an "Arab" country is like when there are quite a lot of them), but I figured I'd share what they'd want shared. Turkey is indeed comfortable, most of the time.
Anyway, at Nilüfer I met up with Alyssa and her entire host family, who are fantastic people. I assured them that Turkish girls are the most attractive in the world. People like it when you say that.
The reason we were all together was to see a concert. The band was Mercan Dedi and his ensemble. Alyssa described it as "Sufi trance music." There was a drum solo that probably went on for 15-17 minutes. It was not even remotely boring. (Iron Butterfly, eat your heart out!) The set-up was really cool. We had a saz, ney (or other flute), clarinet (son of the guy at the previous concert.), the bowed string-instruement whose name I do not recall, and a DJ who is the band's leader who would change filters on the instruments sound and provide bass and electronic drums. Lots of repeated beats which exploded from ambience into virtuoso solos from all of the musicians. Really cool!
Naturally after the concert the thing to do was to attempt to get photos with all the musicians.
With Burak Malcok, Ney player.
With the drummer, Mert Elmas, who is merely 17 years old.
He can do a killer solo for that many minutes.
With Mercan Dede himself!
Since then, I've taken advantage of my free weekend as a time when I can...
play with three-year-olds
and (primarily) try to work on the project I'm going to use for my presentation in class
which I may also try to use as my honors thesis.
And to end,
How would you have liked to have this attached to your living room ceiling during your childhood?
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