What’s in Bursa?
With week four coming to a close, the students’ lives in Bursa have begun to feel a bit routine. Just like at home, they wake up early to make their way to school, spend the first part of the day in class, and then head home to do homework, eat dinner, and maybe watch a little tv or read before going to bed. Of course, the ordinariness of their time here is still punctuated by the extraordinary: a visit to a 600 year old mosque, a trip to the stunning Marmara coast an hour from town, a special homemade meal they’ve never tried before…
We are creatures of habit, prone to creating comfortable patterns in our lives. What may have felt new on first arriving in Turkey – the open air markets, the regular call to prayer, the Ottoman architecture dotting the city – begins to take on a feeling of familiarity. You can forget that you have traveled half way around the world, except perhaps when your nascent language skills land you in awkward situations. One of our students recently tried to order the second item on a fast food restaurant menu and ended up with two meals!
With only a short time remaining, I challenged students this week to try to find the extraordinary in the ordinary here in Bursa. You can see some of their responses in the gallery. Stopping to appreciate the little things in our every day lives is a good practice for us all!
