Buddy = En iyi arkadaş

I've realized over the last 24 hours just the impact I'm subtly making in the IT department. Although the project I want to work on is taking a time to begin, I'm spending a good 45 minutes - 1 hour with a different employee everyday "teaching" them English. When it comes down to it, I just ask them questions about their background and their tasks at the company.

I got put with the beginners first, so it has been very hard to communicate, and about a half hour before our "lesson" I get pretty nervous wondering whether we will be able to talk about anything at all. It's funny though what the human spirit can do for communication.

Serkan, who I mentioned earlier, is officially my "buddy". I said it one day off hand and he looked a little puzzled, thinking he had heard "body". This guy loves the word buddy and uses it all day, and when another employee used it today he got mad and said, "No, andaru ees buddy mine!" Haha, regardless I talked to them about the concept of a buddy, so now everyone in the office calls themselves "Hey buddy."

A really touching thing today was after a long conversation with one of the begginers, I noticed that his English had improved just in the first 45 minutes. I explained this to him, and he told me that he was very nervous for 2 weeks before I arrived, knowing that he would have to speak English. He told me, however, that in just one day he felt very comfortable with me and is not afraid at all to speak English with me. He actually referred to me today as "best friend" in Turkish. As I spend each day with a different employee, I'm beginning to build strong relationships with them, all the while learning a ton about database administration, system management, oracle, HTML, etc.