10.08.05
Excitement, anxiety, questions about what will happen. Lots of constructed idead of stereotypes from different nationalities are on my mind and these are hard to unlearn. My greatest hope is, while meeting and having fun with my friends from Armenia, that I will overcome my predujices and preassumptions. Briefly, I want to unlearn and I began to unlearn. During the trip, we talked to and sang in English together. Britney Spears is one of the shared values : )
Besides, taking lectures from such successful and known academicians is a great chance that I’m looking forward to. I want to be an academician in the future and listening to them makes me happy and satisfied, I think.
Knowing new people and new culture is a benign experience that makes my perspective larger and expands my worldview. Human rights is an issue that I worked on a little bit and that I want to be interested in the future. I believe that overcoming conflicts, especially about the security dilemma of nation-states, can be resolved mostly by communication, as in this project. Thanks for efforts that Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly makes.

12.08.05
Yesterday, I learned lots of Armenian words. It’s very funny to learn the language and to teach language at the same time.
I learned political system of Armenia and the problems about diaspora and Armenians. I think that there is a problem in the history about constructing nation-states. Armenian friends understand our feelings, I think and I understand their problems and their resistence to make Turkey accept genocide. But as Sevan Nisanyan said it is hard to deconstruct history at once as a psychological issue.
What I know is I’m entertaining while learning their history, knowing them. Lots of foods/dishes that we, Turks think that they’re special to us are the same in Armenia. “Dolma” is their traditional meal as ours. They call it “dolma” and when they learned that “imam bayildi” is something like “the priest fainted” they laughed very much.
This experience is becoming very different and listening St. Pierre’s importance from Isabella is one of the greatest. It’s like a pilgrim for them and I felt that this place is special. There are lots of things that I’m curious about Armenian and Armenians’ daily life. Thanks to hCa!

13.08.05
Yesterday we had a very full day. It is tiring but very entertaining and very shocking. After group work, we had a nationalism lecture. Nazan Maksudyan told us the –isms. “Ottomanism” and then “Turkism”. To remind our history lessons from a different perspective is very well for us. Ferhat Kentel talked about their mutual perception project in TESEV and nationalism in general. I have a constructivist idea about nationalism so I didn’t have so much difficulty while listening to him, but at lunch I saw that some of my friends, mostly from Armenia, are primordialists and they thought nation is by birth.
We talked about diaspora, we learned much about Armenia now, their military service we talked about in the group work and besides to my surprise, because Turkey is a muslim country, most of Armenians thought that a man can marry four women. When we told them that it is a crime, they became very surprised.
Sevan Nisanyan told us about Armenian history beside Turkish history. It’s very interesting. All the history we learned, fell in front of my eyes.
At night, we went to LUNAPARK, it is a great fun. We got on crushing cars and some of them got on GONDOL (I don’t like it). Then we went to jumping place and JUMP, JUMP, JUMP! It’s something crazy. We became friends, we entertained much together. Thanks to hCa again.

15.08.05
At the weekend, we went to Vakiflikoy and I watched the religious ceremony about the grapes. It was interesting and I think this event is mostly important for that all the Armenians from different countries come together. There were some of our Armenian friends who cried, I felt very sensitive when I saw them crying.
Last night, we enjoyed ourselves very much. Isabella, who is the birthday girl of today, taught us a song about “Badircan, bibar and etc.” :) When we learned the meaning of the song, we laughed very much. We sang LORKE in three languages (Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian), that was real peace (khağağutyan :))
When we came to the hotel after eating a delicious Künefe, there was a wedding and we joined to it with our own efforts. We danced very much with Turkish & English & Arabic songs. But it didn’t satisfy us and we went to the pub of the hotel to continue to dance but I felt asleep and I slept at the sofa of the pub a little, then I decided to go to my room. thanks to hCa :)