Editorial

I felt totally helpless and confused when Prof. Percy Mashaire announced during the first course,in October, that we were going to create a webmagazine by ourselves. "What are we going to write about?". "It' s your magazine,you can write whatever you feel!" the answer came back. We didn't know from where to start, we had so many things to do! We first had to define the name of the course: "Creating a Multicultural Web Magazine". As far as creating was concerned, it was already clear that we had to give life to something, to start from zero and develop. And the thing that would be created-whatever that would be- would be ours; totally ours. It would be a Web Magazine, space in the cyber world. This means that everyone will have access to it, it will be alive and moving and changing. It will be open and free for people to see our work; with a click anyone could just jump in our magazine and take a look in what we have been doing. We realised the importance of that and the rights and limits that this offers. Defining the word 'multicultura'l was our first problem. Multicultural is everything! The class was multicultural,our thoughts, our traditions,our lives, we ourselves were multicultural! We split in groups and discussed what we thought a multicultural magazine could include. By presenting our ideas, we realised that we all had some common thoughts about the magazine. We agreed that we had to write about us; about our lives in our countries, our cultures, our experience. We would talk about cultural clashes, how differrent cultures look like a traffic jam and keep moving and touching each other. Small hints and points of our habbits, how we behave towards others, how we have things done. It was time to form teams and delegate duties so that the work would start. On my way home i was trying to figure out how we would cooperate, and work all together, with people that were totally unknown to each other and huge cultural divides were splitting us apart.

In our second meeting,one week later, Prof.Percy told us that the dates of the presentation of our magazine had changed and we had to do it earlier. We were seeing time flying away and we didn't even have a name for our magazine. Many people dropped out of the course and the team shrunk. The truth is that it took us sometime to organise ourselves since we were still confused from where to start and put our ideas in function. We decided that the creation of a blog was a good idea so that we keep track of the procedure and keep in contact with each other. Problems, thoughts, worries were posted in the blog and kept our magazine alive!

Articles started to be gathered, photos, drawings, new ideas, changes of deadlines. One more day, one more article, one thought... People worked,wrote,searched and here we are with our ' Windows to the World' so that everyone can see that finally, the cultural divides do nothing more than connecting people! I would like to thank everyone for his participation in the creation of our webmagazine. Journalists, technical team, photographer, everyone's work was precious and ireplacable. We hope that you get a small taste of our multicultural backgrounds and our work.

Best regards

Kypriotaki Alexandra-Odette

Editor of 'Windows to the World'

Marianne Järveläinen

Coordinator of international affairs and international students

IT contact person

Administrative officer of CRC

Marianne during all this time was the person, who helped us, foreign students, and tried to make our academic life here in the university of Helsinki as easy and enjoyable as possible. She was this magic individual after meeting whom all our problems and confusions seem to vanish. There was no chance not to interview her and not to ask her some questions about us.

1. For how long are you working in this office?

I have been working in the university since 2001 but here at the department since August 2005.

2. Was it difficult to arrange the program for foreign students this year?

Well, no, not really. It has already been arranged before me, by the person who held this position. Also as I said I have already held a similar office, so this work is sufficiently familiar to me.

3. Have you confronted any inconveniences organizing Argonaut program?

It has not always been easy to find a teacher, who would be willing to give lectures in English for international students and who would be interested in international communications, but mainly the problem is the language. For example, this year one course was cancelled and I found it very difficult to replace this teacher by someone else, who is also interested in the same field of studies. So I suppose this course will be a little bit shorter.

4. What do you plan for the next year? What courses do you have in mind?

One teacher from Brussil, Belgium, wants to lecture a course on "International Communication" at our department next year, but it is still not certain. Then Katri Vallaste, who is now lecturing the course "Agencies in Technically Mediated Society", wishes to keep on teaching here. Also one PhD student from Turkey, Itir Akdogan, plans to have a course next year.

5. Are you satisfied with the term and are there something you would like to improve in the program or in future students?

I am pretty satisfied but I would love to have more courses in English, more courses of advanced level in English for our MA students and I also want them to be suitable for BA students. And certainly we would appreciate it to have more students with good English.

6. You work with foreign students as well as with Finns. Do you see any differences between them?

Yes, sure, actually there are many. Especially in the kinds of questions they ask. Finnish students are more used to the Internet; they know how to find any kind of information. Usually they only come to ask about studies and courses, when international students ask questions about everything, for example, how to get here and there, etc. International students are more open: they ask more questions, contact me more frequently.

7. Have you ever faced any difficulties with exchange students?

Well sure, we had had some tough moments. The thing is that some students decide to come over to solve their personal problems, for instance, they have troubles at home and they think that if they get away, those troubles will disappear straight away. But as you know, it never happens and the problems get only worse. Also a few exchange students have some difficulties with their universities, because usually it is them, who put pressure on students, not us.

Ekatherina Mikhaylova and Selcuk Vural