Dear Adil

Summary
Arthur gets a new Turkish pen pal, Adil. Imagining Adil riding a camel to school and eating exotic foods, he worries that his letters about life in Elwood City will be really boring by comparison.

Plot
In Murat Pasha Street of Istanbul, Mr. Akyuz looks at his watch. He calls for Adil and says, "It's time for school" in Turkish. Adil replies to him, saying "We woke up, dad. We'll be downstairs in a minute" in Turkish as well. He observes the audience and talks in English. In his room, there is a cat kid named Onder rolling up a sleeping bag. We find out that Onder is Adil's best friend. They talk about school and their teacher, Mr. Yuksel, that he could throw Onder into the Sea of Marmara. Adil's sister, Ayse, walks into the room and shouts at Adil to come downstairs, as his father wants him. She walks out, and closes the door.

Adil logs on to his computer, explaining that when he is annoyed by Ayse, there is only one thing he wants to do:talk to other kids online. Onder asks Adil if Arthur can ask the Brain to give answers to his math homework; however, he mistakenly refers to the Brain as "the Head". Adil points this out, and corrects Onder. His computer makes beeping sounds, and the intertitle shows.

Dear Adil

Arthur, D.W., and Dad are in the garage, looking for his olive de-pitter, the one Arthur bought for him for Christmas. It must help him a lot, because the recipe he is going to cook would take hours without one.

While looking for it, Arthur finds a stack of letters. He blows the dust off them, and shows them to Dad. When D.W. asks “Who are they from? Arthur’s real parents?” Dad replies that they are from Tatsuya Matsumoto, an old Japanese pen-pal that Dad was buddies when he was in the seventh grade. Then, Dad gets struck by the pit of an olive; D.W. found the olive pitter.

Arthur is enjoying reading the letters — even laughing at them. By the time he wakes up, the letters are all over his bed.

At school, Mr. Ratburn is clapping erasers. Arthur asks if he understands how to get a pen pal. Mr. Ratburn recently found a "webspot" for teachers about pen-pals. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Ratburn doesn't understand how to turn on the computer, so Arthur turns it on for him. Mr. Ratburn prints out a list of names and addresses.

Here is the list of mentioned names, their ages and their respective addresses.
 * Jose Maura - 8 - 1290 San Miguel, Santa Cruz, Antigua
 * Alex Tankushev - 9 - 104 Lemin Str.Ap.12, Sofia, Bulgaria
 * Adil Akyuz  - 8 - Murat Paşa Cad #3 Istanbul, Turkey
 * Kim Heong Han - 10 - 71-6 Munjeong-dong Songpa-gu, Seoul, South Korea
 * Mindoro Fernandez - (...) - 26-O. Quisnet, San José, Costa Rica
 * Johan (...)

It turns out that Arthur is reading the list at Buster's Condo. Arthur sees the name "Adil Akyuz" and asks Buster if he knows anything about Turkey. Buster replies that he does. According to him...

"There's honey-glazed turkey, smoked turkey, and Buster's favorite, roast turkey."

He takes a bone from his food cabinet, which was apparently from his first Thanksgiving. Arthur corrects Buster, saying that he is talking about the country, not the animal. Buster replies that he understands some objects about Turkey, too. It is where Illinois Jack and the Caravan of Horrors takes place. The comic contains various cultural stereotypes. Buster encourages Arthur to write to Adil; maybe he will be exciting like the comic book.

Arthur writes his first letter to Adil. Adil and Onder are reading it in Adil's bedroom, and they do not know what "pepperoni pizza" or a "mall" is.

At the Read residence, Arthur is excited to discuss Adil to his family. According to Arthur, Adil works at his father's grocery store, which sells spices and lamb's eyes. Dad is surprised that the Akyuz family eats lamb's eyes. Arthur thinks that because he saw it in Illinois Jack it was true. D.W. said that Arthur is going to get Adil to get his sister to send him a Mary Moo Cow CD in Turkish. Arthur thinks that his letter was boring compared to Adil's.

While writing another letter to Adil, Arthur imagines that Adil, his father and Onder fall asleep because his letter is so boring. Arthur says the letter is even putting him to sleep, so he goes to bed. He hopes that something exciting for him to happen tomorrow.

The next day, it is raining outside the Sugar Bowl. Arthur and Buster are sitting at their booth playing a game. Buster has eaten twenty-seven cherries, which is his record. Buster suggests answering Adil's questions, but Arthur has already done that. His definitions of "mall" and "pepperoni" are boring, according to Arthur. Buster then suggests that maybe Arthur should ask more questions about Turkey. He pulls out an Illinois Jack comic book, and gives it to Arthur for "inspiration".

In the next letter Arthur writes to Adil, Arthur wonders how he gets to school. He wonders if he rides a camel there, like a character in Illinois Jack. Adil receives the letter, asking him if his camel has its own room or if it sleeps in his. Adil finds this question weird. Arthur then asks Adil his favorite food; maybe it is lamb's eyes. Adil finds this question disgusting, and doesn't understand what he will write back.

At Arthur's house, the mail comes. None of it is from Adil. The next day, no mail for Arthur. And the next day there is still no mail addressed to him. Alberto sees Arthur's Illinois Jack comic book. He thinks they are funny, much to Arthur's surprise. When Arthur says he thought the comic was accurate, Alberto disagrees, saying they always get everything wrong. He mentions that they are like those American TV shows that he used to watch as a kid back in Ecuador; they made it seem like Americans went surfing after school, went home to their skyscraper and put ketchup on all of their food. "Yep, you'd sure have a weird impression of a place if all you knew of it came from TV and comics."

Arthur finally figures out that Adil hasn’t written back because he is stereotyping, and tells his father as such before adding, “Maybe I should just get an American pen pal.” Dad suggests that he write back to him and explain what happened. Arthur admits he’s kind of embarrassed; Dad replies that he give it one more shot: “It’s not always easy making friends in other cultures. But trust me, it’s worth it.”

Arthur then looks at the piece of paper that Mr. Ratburn gave him, and he finds out that Adil has an e-mail address.

Arthur plans to e-mail Adil.


 * Arthur: Dear Adil. Just wondering if you got my letters. P.S. I didn't know you had e-mail. How do you plug your computer in?


 * Adil: Dear Arthur, I plug my computer into the wall of OUR APARTMENT. I don't live in a tent.


 * Arthur: Oh, sorry. I read this comic and it gave me some weird ideas about how you lived. Is that why you didn't write back?


 * Adil: Yes, I was going to correct you but I thought you would take forever. And then you didn't answer my questions.
 * Arthur: That's because my answers sounded boring. I mean, a mall is just one really big store with lots of little stores in it.
 * Adil: We have lots of those in Istanbul. The biggest and oldest is the Kapali Carsi. That's the covered bazaar in English.
 * Adil: Arthur, are you still there?
 * Arthur: Sorry Adil. My pesky little sister just interrupted me.
 * Adil: Ayse is always doing that and it's always when I really don't want to be disturbed. How does she know?
 * Arthur: Adil, I think we have a lot more in common than we ever imagined.

Back at Adil's apartment, Adil is online, but he can't talk to Arthur now because it is late at night in Elwood City. Arthur is irritated at Adil because Ayse found the Turkish Mary Moo Cow CD. D.W. sings it at the Reads' house, despite it being after hours.

Arthur tells D.W. to go to sleep.

She sings:

"Seni seviyorum, evet çok çok seviyorum. O kadar tatlı, o kadar güzelsin ki. Seni (...) seviyor, evet seviyor, evet seviyor."

Characters

 * Adil Akyuz
 * Arthur Read
 * D.W. Read
 * Buster Baxter
 * Nigel Ratburn
 * David Read
 * Alberto Molina
 * The Brain
 * Onder
 * Mahmut Akyuz
 * Ayse Akyuz
 * Alberto Molina
 * Tatsuya Matsumoto (mentioned)
 * Pal
 * Jane Read
 * Kate Read
 * Mr. Higgins
 * Teenage boy

Trivia

 * This episode and the next episode premiered on the same day as the Season 8 premiere of another PBS Kids show, Barney & Friends.
 * In 2022, Turkey officially changed the spelling of its English name from "Turkey" to "Türkiye" (which is its name in Turkish). Since this episode is from 2004, however, the older English spelling is used.
 * When D.W. is singing along to the Mary Moo Cow CD, she sings: "Seni seviyorum, evet çok çok seviyorum. O kadar tatlı, o kadar güzelsin ki. Seni (...) seviyor, evet seviyor, evet seviyor." ("I love you, yes I love you very much. You are so sweet, so beautiful.  She loves you (...) yes she does, yes she does.")
 * Timeline: David Read's Christmas present from Arthur's Perfect Christmas is featured at the beginning of the episode.
 * 4th Wall Break: One of the kids on the pen-pal list has the last name Tankushev, the same last name as the storyboard artist of this episode. Also, that same kid is from Sofia, Bulgaria (which is misspelled as "Sophia") on the list.

Episode connections

 * Adil Akyuz is briefly seen exiting Virtual Goose, first seen in "Sue Ellen Gets Her Goose Cooked," when he receives Arthur's email.
 * The dress Ayse wears in the episode's intro barely a striking resemblance to the dress Francine wears in "Francine's Bad Hair Day," but with longer sleeves.
 * D.W. references the game Virtual Goose 5.0 by saying "The answer is D, 'do the hokey-pokey!'" -- except the hokey-pokey was always answer C in "Best of the Nest."

Errors

 * The word "Matematik" is misspelled as "Matamatik," in Onder's math book.
 * The map of Turkey contains a few mistakes. There for instance doesn't appear to be a Ukrainian-Russian border, and the Danube is misspelled as "Dunabe."
 * The printed pen-pal list has typos in Korean romanization. Kim Heong Han misspelled as "Kim Houng Han." Munjeong-dong misspelled as "Munjung-dong." "Dong" accidentally combined with "song," which made it seem to be "Dongsong." Also, "ku" is a wrong way to use, rather than "gu" in the romanizations of the district suffixes.
 * The lamb that Ayse holds is white for most of the cold open, but changes to brown in another shot.

Production notes

 * This is the first episode in which Marie-Pierre Lacombe is the assistant dialogue editor.

Cultural references

 * Illinois Jack is a reference to Indiana Jones.
 * The mailman is whistling "Ode to Joy," the final movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony.
 * Arthur's imagination of what Adil dresses like is reminiscent of characters from Disney's Aladdin.