I remember quite well the first day I have arrived Helsinki and that day, I told myself that I would have brilliant friends and I would learn many things from them concerning to "others". Two and a half months have passed since that day and when I look at the past, I can say that the world is so small and human being is human being in everywhere. Our habits, the patterns of behaviors, our thoughts and even the way of falling in love each other are almost same except small details.
The third day, I have meet my future colleagues at the small meeting for the Erasmus students and I have observed that there are many funny people among them and it was time to meet them. As you guess, one of them is Alexandra, the Greekgirl with her beautiful face and wavy hair. The first time I saw her at the meeting, I supposed that she is from Turkey but then I learnt from her that she is not. It was not too late to meet with her and we have meet at the end of the meeting. Our patterns of meeting with a person were similar to each other even though the countries we came from are thought as enemies each other. We embraced each other in the patterns of our countries when we learnt that we came from these countries. It was a good proof to think that the concept of hostility is a grand narrative created throughout history for different reasons by politicians.
Then, we, Aleksandra and me, went to the City Library to check out our mail boxes together but the official of the library told us that we could not check out our mail boxes unless we have a member card. Thus, we decided to have one and passed our passport to the official. By the way, we were chatting, joking and smiling each other. Suddenly, the official looked at us and asked surprisingly that "you are from Turkey and Greece and how can both of you get on well with each other?" Sandra looked at me by smiling and I turned my face to the official and said to her that "we are brothers".
Why I feel to write these days down is that one of the aims of Erasmus Exchange Student Programme is to teach us how to tolerate "others" and we, as future journalists, have been chosen as Erasmus students to teach "others" how to tolerate "others".
By the way, I hope to the events in France come to an end and hope to host all my future colleagues in Istanbul whenever they want...