I went to my first Euroleague game this Wednesday and saw Efes Pilsen score a sweet victory over Milano Armani Jeans (that's right, JEANS - most of the teams in Europe have corporate sponsors - Efes is a beer company). Anyway, my friend and I had really good seats right behind goal and enjoyed the experience quite a bit - as I scribbled down notes for a story on the game, a Turkish youth (actually an U-16 junior Efes player) sitting right next to me kept staring at my chicken scratch and trying to decipher what I had written - the WHOLE game he made these attempts, at the expense of seeing the action. No matter what I wrote - it is truly amazing how eager some Turks are to learn English. But when you consider how important the language is for their future prospects, it is not sooo amazing...

Here are some excerpts from the story I wrote, as published on Julien's extremely well-updated ballineurope.com website.