This is when we begin to enlighten, and help the people around us enlighten with us. Here, we start questioning the way we live, the way we act, and most importantly; the way we think. We see a writing shouting on the wall of Externat Notre Dame: Borders are in our minds!

Last year, our Comenius project with Externat Notre Dame, a school in France, started with hopes in our teachers and our minds. We hoped to change some misunderstandings and prejudices in people's minds about us and, if any, change our prejudices. Here comes the question of whythe EC (European Commission) is giving funds for us to go to France and Externat Notre Dame to come to Istanbul. Why would they "waste" their money for us? I, personally don't think they have wasted the money because we have gotten more than what we have expected from the project. I also think that the EC should spend more on education than it does on issues like agriculture.

When we had first gotten to the school, we saw that even the first glances had changed some prejudices. We heard people saying that we look like "French people". We found out later that they had expected us to wear "djellabas", but we replied saying that we didn't even know what it was. We also interviewed many people about their views of Turkey and the EU, and the result was encouraging. We found out that many people thought that even though there are some disadvantages of having Turkey in the EU, there are more advantages of it.
When we entered the school Externat Notre Dame, we saw the wall that had the writings " La Liberte, L'Egalité, La Fraternité" on it. We recognized these words, of course, from the French Revolution and started thinking about them and understood the meaning our project to the French students and ourselves.
They were all astonished when they got to see Istanbul and see that we don't ride camels to school after all. On our second trip to Grenoble, we were surprised by the increased interest that the students had, partly because we were a smaller group. There were, of course some people that were frightened to speak to us, but we succeeded in starting conversations with most people, even though we couldn't speak French fluently. Sometimes it was easier just to use the international language of music. We played guitars and sang songs together and there was no need for any other language. Even so, we were surprised how much French we could talk when we really needed to. The environment of "French" gave us the motivation and need to learn French.

By the ending of our second trip I could feel the difference we had made in everyone's minds, including ours. I knew that our efforts hadn't gone to waste. We had defined the undefined and elucidated the vague. We showed that we need to learn how to live in peace with other people of different cultures. Because life is too short to have prejudices and hatred against other people.

Think again now: Can the EC afford doing a project like this? The real question is; Can the EC afford not paying for projects like these?