Sept 26--Oct 2 HEY YOU!!!!!

I was spending some time exploring my new home this week near Kızılay known as küçükesat (pronounced like kew-chew-ke-saat). So I was walking around and visiting stores and what not. While I was walking around, I heard the voice of the century cry out. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I heard the voice say, "HEY! YOU! YOU SPEAK ENGLISH!" This guy yelled at me from about 50 meters away, I recieved a lot of attention to say the least. I was also little freaked out and honestly had no idea that I stuck out that much. Anyways he didn't stop there. He then ran over to me and said, "Hello. We will be friends. Come with me and we will drink chai." It was definately a weird situation, but I went with it. So I followed him over to a bench and this guy was just excited out of his mind. He told me to sit down and then the next thing I know he has 3 cups of chai. I was wondering who the third chai was for. He gave it to the guy next to us. He had no idea who this guy was but it was an act of Turkish hospitality that I did not want to leave out. Anyways once he sits down he introduces himself as Ömer. He then pulls out several books such as Romeo and Juliet, Frankentstein, and some others. He then tells me to read to him. He didnt really know too much english but he was eager to learn. I had a pretty good time with this guy. After a while other people started to crowd around me as I read. Some where laughing and some where just listening. I would say that there were atleast 6 other people listening. I met a lot of people through this event. After reading several pages and helping him critique his english it began to get late. We exchanged phone numbers and parted ways.

Later on that week I was exploring again. So I went into a kitap evi (book store) at one point and had a chance to talk to the store owner for a little while. I asked him if he had any çocukların kitapları (childrens books). He got a good laugh out of my question but he did happen to have some books. So I ended up buyıng a book called, "Rita ve Adsız. This book is about a very bratty girl and her birthday. I picked it up soley on the drawings of the girl. It looked really funny and I figured that it would be great practice. Well to be honest I got the idea from Ömer.