“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world"

As Socrates stated long time ago in Ancient Greece, the University of Maine students have proved themselves to be similar citizens. The first week of November is the spot in time when the International Office at University of Maine gets the privilege of putting the whole world in one room. UMaine's annual celebration of countries and cultures, also known as Culturefest, took place on Saturday, November 6th. Guests were able to enjoy food from all over the world, listen to various music from different countries and also see the traditional clothing from different continents.

Among others, countries featured in this festival were France, India, Canada, Indonesia, Germany, Poland, China, Ghana and Nigeria. For that one day, Memorial Gym at University of Maine smelled like home for a lot of people. Walking from one side to another, a visitor could easily smell the mixture of all of them together and maybe get a glimpse of feeling how would home smell like to Socrates’s citizen of the world.


Sugandha Shankar, international student from India said, “Our food stall has a long menu. We prepared specialties from different zones of our country; a south Indian platter, a north Indian platter and appetizers of a few different kinds.” The table with Indian food was one of the busiest and most popular. Sugandha added, “I think Culturefest gives Americans a chance to have a closer and authentic look at the lifestyle of people from other cultures, as it encompasses everything from food to display of traditional items.”

Chao Liu, a graduate student from China who is majoring in psychology was working at a Chinese stand where he sat for more than 3 hours writing people’s names in Chinese.” My stand was very popular and I'm proud of it,” Chao said and added “An old man asked me to write welcome home, Linda and Sam in Chinese, which really moved me.”

Dan Hales, one of the guests at festival, was amazed with what Chao was doing,”Having your name written in different languages was really cool, like Nepal or Chinese.”

The African table was also very active all day. Fuoad Saliou-Sulley from Ghana and Tega Dibie from Nigeria had variety of handmade African products on display. One of them was a pair of shoes made from goat’s skin and another one was a belt made out of non processed iguana skin. “It has the claws and all. If it were alive and decided to scratch your skin, it could quite easily cut your veins,” Fuoad said. When people interested in African culture asked about how it was made, he just made a disgusted face and added: “Trust me, you don’t want to know. It’s nasty business.”

Each and every country’s table was always busy. People were coming and going, asking questions and giving answers; you could hear groups talking different languages, but one thing is for sure- they all laughed the same. “We all have our own histories and cultures, but on the other hand, we are all one big harmonic family,” said Chao while dipping his brush in ink, ready to write yet another name.

Marco Kiewat, the German exchange student who is studying mechanical engineering, woke up early that day to cook German noodles along with lentils. He didn't even imagine that there would be that much response from American people towards all the traditional German food. "I think this event leads to a huge cultural exchange,” Marco said, “Everyone has a chance to try different food and get informed about traditions in countries far away.” He was surprised by how many people were interested in his culture, “People were coming up to me and asking me how to say at least one word in German, while buying a plate of the Linsa mit Spätzla or the famous Blackforest cake."

If you do come to Culturefest once and you see and learn what other cultures are about, there is no doubt that international and exchange students at University of Maine will make you feel like you are at their home. And, who knows; maybe tomorrow you will be waking up somewhere in France ready to share your own culture with other people from all over the world.

“Our world is actually really colorful,” Chao Liu has mentioned. The question is: How many colors do you see? Every year at Culturefest, like after the rain, you can see a rainbow of cultures. That is why this event is getting more and more popular and a ”wanna-be-at” place.
The event ended with the so-called Styleshow, where international students walked on stage dressed in their traditional clothing while the music from their country was playing. Tega and Fuoad had whole performance going on, representing Africa to the fullest.


Chao Liu was packing his ink and closing his stand when he said, “Overall, I think Culturefest is great; it’s a window for people from all over the world to show their own cultures.”
After her presentation, a girl from Indonesia was standing in front of a room full of people clapping their hands in astonishment. Most elegantly, she took a bow and with the biggest smile on her face officially closed UMaine Culturefest 2010; until next year, when international students will open the windows of their cultures and world will become borderless once again.

There’s no place like home

Around 5.000 miles away from his home, Fuoad Saliou-Sulley was studying for his exam in a cozy little coffee house in Fogler library at University of Maine. Already experienced life in America 2 years ago, he knew this was the place he wanted to come back for college.

“I miss my family the most. At the beginning it was really hard, but you have to consider what is best for your child. Apparently, this was the best for me; they just had to let go.”

As a pre-medicine student, Fuoad is an undergraduate at UMaine, but is planning on going to graduate school here, also. “School is structured differently back home; you study a lot of everything. Here, it’s more narrowed down, more specific.”

He was talking about two major things which took the most getting used to: climate and food. Weather here is much colder than weather in Ghana, “I just wasn’t used to it.” For someone who hasn’t seen much of snow in his life, Fuoad loved every activity that included snow: “We don’t have snow in Ghana. My favorite activities while being here are almost all related to snow, like snowmobiling, for example.” He pointed out the difference in food, and how food from back home was much spicier than American food. “At first, Mac and Cheese was my favorite American meal, but I think now I’d rather settle for lasagna; it’s basically the same thing, just with more stuff in it.” His favorite food from Ghana is a rice and beans meal called “waakye.”

For Fuoad, while being home, it wasn’t hard to imagine life in America considering the fact that media is pretty much ruling the world nowadays. The first time he came to Maine he was expecting big cities and bright lights everywhere. “And then I got here- no bright lights, no skyscrapers…” Fuoad laughs and adds “I was thinking…Am I in the right place?”

As an exchange student he did a lot of presentations to American students about his home country. Fuoad is also going to show up as a participant in Culture Fest, going on at the University of Maine on November 6th this year. “If I were to cook something, I’d have to practice first, and I’m not sure I would have time. But I will definitely be a part of the style show; I will model in my traditional clothing from Ghana, background music included. ”

The longest pause followed the question “If you could live here, would you?” It was raining outside and Moon lighted up the big green Mall towards which Fuoad’s eyes wondered, while he was playing with beads on his handmade African bracelet. Finally, he sighted and said “I might have considered it a couple of times...But, you know…There’s no place like home.”

“Your job, as the feature writer, is to make editor’s job easier.”

These are the words of Henry Garfield, a novelist and contributing editor for Bangor Metro and Maine Ahead magazines. He said these words while speaking to a class of 20 University of Maine students on one of the topics he is most familiar with‒ feature stories and how to write them.

Garfield talked for forty minutes; he spoke about his early days in journalism and the basic structure of magazines, but he spent the majority of his time talking about tips for writing a good feature story. There are four significant elements of writing a feature story: choosing a topic, focusing and narrowing it, and paying special attention to the lead.

When choosing a topic for a feature story, one must consider only topics of general interest that have a long shelf-life. The first question the writer has to ask before even beginning to write the story is: How do you want to approach the feature story? In order to respond to this question, Garfield said that a writer must organize their topic and see the ways in which he or she can make the story most appealing to a potential reader. Also, the writer must consider the audience they are writing for.

The writer of the feature story needs to be specific; “Narrow it down. By limiting the story, I also focused the story”, said Garfield. He added that he never really liked outlines, but every feature story needs to have some kind of information skeleton.

One of the most important parts of the feature story is the lead. “I spend as much time on my lead as I spend on the rest of the article. Once I have the lead that I like, it is much easier to write the rest of the story, “Garfield said.

He also added that when you are done with your story, it is best not to send it to the editor right away. He advised the students to leave it for the night, then wake up, read it over, correct it and then send it in.

What Garfield likes best about writing feature stories is the fact that every story is like a mini-education. A writer needs to do a lot of research to be familiar with the subject they are writing about; in Garfield's opinion, this is the best way of broadening writer's knowledge.

Garfield finished his speech with an advice for all the future journalists sitting in the room: “Never be afraid of asking a stupid question. When it's still during the interview, it's OK. What you don't want is to misunderstand what the person you are interviewing meant and print it wrong. So, I repeat, never ever be afraid of asking a stupid question.”

(why) do I want to be a journalist?

I am not sure.
Undecided, you could say.
2 years ago when it was time to choose major (in Serbia you can't switch majors), I chose journalism. And I loved it since. But is it something I want to do for the rest of my life?
I don't know.
What I do know is that journalism is something it that allows me to express myself in ways I can best, writing and photographing. I actually do believe that photography is the best form of journalism. See, one photo is worth a thousand words. And if you know how to speak photography language, your photo could be worth a whole novel.