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papersandkeyboards · 24 days

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6/26-27: the night before and the day of

JUN 26, 2016 (NIGHT) – JUN 27, 2016.

Only heavens know when I will be back here again, so might as well breathe in as much American air as possible while I still had the chance.

The email came three weeks prior. A cordial paragraph as a formality, then a Word document detailing all the information needed for the departure. June 26, Seattle University dorms by 7.30PM, which was just a few blocks from home. We had to stay the night there because the bus taking us to the airport was going to be very, very early in the morning. Not that all flights for all these students of different origin countries would leave in the morning, but this was just for ease; accommodating the earliest flight in the group, packing them all together in a dorm the night before, on a bus the next day, and in a conference hall in the airport where the students would leave group by group, throughout the entire day.

My flight was June 27, 17.35 Seattle time. Not the last batch, as far as I can remember, but pretty late nonetheless. I got my portion of witnessing people leave, bit by bit, person per person; the conference hall gradually shifted from eager crowd buzz in the morning, to relatively quiet in the afternoon.

Despite it being a literal five-minute walk from home to Seattle U, we took the car anyway, because luggage.

When we got there, several students and their host families were already there. Not only the kids from my chapter, but from other chapters that I’ve met before.

So we set our luggage, sort things out with Brian Quinn, our coordinator, and chatted with everyone for a bit.

Until the host families were told to leave.

Man, that was hard.

Correction, I didn’t know how hard it was.

Because, like, everyone was so chirpy and everything up until that point. The coordinator sort of ruined the party for everybody, but he was not to blame after all.

So there we were, every exchange student on the premises hugged their host families, exchanging last words, all stages of crying.

Eric—my host dad—and I weren’t the sappy type of people ourselves, so I didn’t know how I would come out of this until I hugged Eric and Karen both, them sandwiching me.

I never realized how hard it was to simply mutter the words, “Thanks a lot, guys,” and that was when my voice broke.

I could’ve had an entire chapter, pages and pages on how grateful I was to be with them, to be showered with all the fun and kindness, to have unprompted and unexpected life lessons throughout our daily activities, to experience their strengths and flaws and for them to experience all of mine,

but I was neither strong nor eloquent enough to do that. Instead, I had those four words that, to me, carried all those hypothetical chapters, and I could only hope that they understood.

Not taking the sadness for granted, but since it was basically a venue filled with teenagers, furthermore teenagers that had had their fun together several times throughout the year, we didn’t stay in the somber mood for so long after our host families had left. But maybe, in the back of our minds, we knew that this was not the night to be spent in sadness, but rather to have as much fun as we possibly could while we still had the chance.

So there we were. Chugging down snacks and hot chocolate (and the whipped cream), exchanging gifts—Taryn had two wood carving of the continent of Africa which she passed around for everyone to sign—carrying flags for no apparent reason, hanging out on the picnic table outside despite the darkness, reminiscing everything we could reminisce about under the rainless Seattle summer sky.

We even did this: I forgot who suggested it, but someone pitched an idea to make a table with our bodies—so four people (but it could be done with more than four) would start in a sitting position, then they would lean back to rest their heads on the next person’s thigh, then another person would remove the chairs we were sitting on—and we were intrigued with the possibility that we could link our bodies together and we would not fall off even after the chairs were removed. (which I tried for the first time and was seriously shocked that it worked)

(see if you can spot all of us freaking out and I tried to hide my freaking out face)

Just a fun little superficial thing that was irrelevant but fun nonetheless. The screams that ensued before this picture was taken, as someone else pulled the chairs off our butts.

Then we binge-watched High School Musical movies in one of the dorm rooms. It was a night everybody swore off sleeping, but I think we dozed off in the middle of the movie marathon.

Didn’t matter. We had to get ready by 4am anyway. So maybe that was, like, one or two hours of blissful shut-eye.

To think about it, I can still remember Kira saying “I’m so tired”, not only on this day but in general, since I heard it in school every ten minutes for those eight hours anyway like it’s a constant prayer that got us through each day. Kira’s especially because of the German accent that always loomed from behind every time she said it.

We were no longer in partying mood. It was obvious that everyone was tired.

(but not for long)

The bus took us to Sea-Tac Airport and we spilled out of the bus and beelined to the conference room—actually it might have been two connected large conference rooms—AFS had booked for us for the whole day. In the rooms were several round tables and chairs not enough for everybody (and most ended up sprawled sitting and hanging out on the floor anyway) and tables of assortments of snacks and tea and coffee.

We entertained ourselves with bread and chips and cookies and tea and coffee and whatever, then we quickly settled in our own territories for the whole day (or, at least, until our respective boarding times)—I settled under a table with Gretar and Kira (don’t even ask me how we ended up there).

First things first after getting food—I pulled out my laptop to watch something, then pulled out my phone to call one of my relatives to wish them a happy birthday (despite it wasn’t their birthday yet at home, but I would’ve been on the plane already when their actual birthday came).

Needless to say, it was an uneventful Monday. Sure, we all chatted with each other and everything, but in the end, we were not going to chat for the entire day, so we were left to our own devices—napping, scrolling, watching movies.

And I guess the bit that made the day not exactly a jubilant one was the part where every couple hours or so, an AFS volunteer announced that it was the boarding time for a certain group of people from certain countries. Like, let’s say, the volunteer would call that it was time for the Thailand batch to leave, and then the Thai kids would get up, and they would say goodbye and hug their dearest friends and cry, and the rest would empathically say goodbye from the distance, and they would wave goodbye to the general audience, then they would leave the room, and the door would click shut, and the emotions would linger for a few minutes, and then we would get back to where we were before, except with fewer people.

That’s how it went, repeatedly, in cycles.

And finally, it was my time, as the only Indonesian in the batch, along with some other people from other countries with similar boarding times and neighboring gates.

No, we were not ugly crying. It was sad (who am I kidding?) but somehow these Seattle chapter kids had always gotten a positive energy when together, and all we had been doing this past year was having fun anyways, so when we looked at each other, we only thought of the happy memories we made together. At least that’s how I see it.

All the 30-minute-long bus rides to and from school gave me nothing but time to think. Closer toward the end of the year, I started thinking about the end and what it means to live here and, eventually, leave here. It made me think about the friendships I have formed, as little and faint as they might be, and at the time, my emotional self thought that life wouldn’t be so good without these people anymore, and more so, I’d have to go back to my old life, where everyone has expected my old unchanging self, and be voided of all these wondrous things—sights, sounds, smells, taste, feels, emotions—that these past 9 months have offered to me on a silver platter.

The next couple of hours went in a blur. After I said my goodbye, I walked out of the conference room with a bunch of other students—some to different gates, some shared a flight with me to Dubai and we would part from there to our own respective home countries. My gate, if I recall correctly, was at the end of the long hallways of gates (which was not very big in retrospect, concerning Sea-Tac as an international airport). I sat and waited, I ate snacks, and as the speaker called for my flight, I rose up from my seat and made a beeline with everybody else to board the flight.

After the lights on the plane were turned off, leaving dim emergency lights, and we were thousands of feet into the air, I started crying.

Oh, yeah, I cried. Hard. Why wouldn’t I?

I read the card that Jenny and Seth and their kids Cosmo and Harper had given me, a card of goodbye wishes that everybody in the family had signed, and then I read the letters Karen and Eric had written separately. It was one of the hardest letter-reading I’ve ever experienced, maybe, because it was dark and I had to fight through the blurs of my tears to make out the words. Then I took out the photobook Karen and Eric had printed for me, which had photos of us on our road trip and other random moments at home, then I cried some more.

Lastly, I took out a small notebook I got during Rainier Beach Bloc Party, in which I had written random things ranging from notes during a BLOC party lecture, motivational quotes I’ve gotten in random places, and a live description of a really boring Advisory class. I wrote, under the most minimal light, a love letter—the things I’ve felt and things I wanted to say but couldn’t because, no matter how many times I had thought about it, in the end, they ended up sinking, stone-cold at the back of my throat.

So I wrote it, a love letter that would never be delivered.

Then I put everything away and cried some more.

I was grateful for two things: that the two consecutive seats next to me were empty (I sat in the row of four in the middle of the plane and I got the aisle seat on the left), and that if anybody had heard me trying to sob as silently as I possibly could, they had left me alone.

When I finally landed in Dubai, once again in the same airport after nine months, I waited for my Indonesian friend Obit to arrive at the gate of our next flight to Indonesia (which would be in a few hours), and when I saw her running, we hugged so tight, so good to be speaking Indonesian again, this time no more feeling self-conscious toward the people around us.

It was the busiest airport after all. Hence: nobody cared.

But still, it was Dubai. And by this, I mean that when Obit and I were walking through the busy halls and walkways with no particular destination in mind, I heard the sound of azan blasting through the speakers, everywhere, all at once, and it was music to my ears.

(also a little funny moment when Obit grumbled because a janitor by the prayer room was either giving her a judging side-eye or confirming to her that this room was a prayer room—“what, just because I’m wearing shorts, I’m not allowed to pray?”)

So, uh, yeah. The seven-hour flight back to Jakarta—and then from Jakarta to Surabaya just because we were coincidentally headed to the same city—was filled with catching up. Getting used to this mother tongue again. Just like when we walked aimlessly around Stanford a couple months back.

Surabaya, as we all know, is known for its three suns. Despite the dark night and the three suns were nowhere to be seen, it was hard to ignore the humid hotness slapping our Americanized-for-the-last-nine-months physiology.

But who cares about that when you’ve got your family, the dearest ones you’ve left thousands of miles away for almost a year, waiting at the gate for you.

So… there we were. We were farewelled by our families in the land of the free, only to be welcomed by the other one in this exquisite archipelago we came from. (dare I say, our home country. But now we have two home countries, so maybe that term is now up for debate.)

Sad of letting go? Of course. But exciting times ahead? Sure. Twelfth grade and all that, and most importantly, readjusting to the lifestyle we were used to for the first 17 years of our lives that we have not practiced for the last year.

But we can take baby steps for that. For now, Obit and I need to sleep off the jetlag.

Thanks for reading. I'll see you later.

-NS

#langkahanakbangsa #afs friends

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papersandkeyboards · 6 months

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I have one entry left.

I’ve written most of it, but what I’m scared of is ending it.

And not just it as in the entry, but the entire series.

(well—maybe one last entry of the last day in the States and then an epilogue post, or maybe another one about re-orientation, but, y’know.)

What I had imagined as a real-time update of my adventure turned out to be eight-freaking-years of work in progress. Over those last seven years, I kept thinking I have to finish the series I have to finish it I have to finish it and when it does, unexpectedly almost a decade later, I’m scared of finishing it.

There’s nothing to be scared of, though, to be quite honest. Attachment issues? Maybe. But what I’m thinking of is what to make of this blog when the series ends. After all, the series is what I dedicated my blog for. A preferable method of archiving. The one to be there to remind me of what happened when I’ve already forgotten about the details of it.

I suck at writing endings. I always think every piece has to go with a bang, an imaginative mic drop. As time goes and as I’m dragging myself through the mud writing, I realized I sucked at it so bad, but I really wanted to finish this promise that I just didn’t care.

I don’t finish >60% of my life entries, probably. All because I didn’t know how to end it. If I do finish this one, it’d be a personal achievement.

And so, what should I do with papersandkeyboards.tumblr.com when I’m done with recapping the roller-coaster year of 2015-2016?

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papersandkeyboards · 8 months

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6/20-26: finding Pride in many things (cooking for friends, hosting a farewell party, and witnessing naked cyclists, among others)

39th WEEK, JUN 20-26, 2016.

(a.k.a the very very last one.)

Wow. Okay.

Need to breathe it in for a sec.

Alright. The last week of 9 months.

A lot has happened, because of course I willed myself to have a lot happening.

Monday, June 20:

I took this day to do a last good tour of downtown. Did some last-minute shopping, took a fair amount of photographs (which I lost along due to the broken hard drive), and overall feasted my eyes with the wonder of downtown Seattle with its high-rises and hills and valleys and blooming trees lining the wide curb and the pigeons by Westlake Center and the innocence of Pike Place Market and the breeze along the waterfront and the Gum Wall and the hustle and the bustle and everything else in between.

(you know what I will not miss? The weed smell. It’s so Seattle, but at the same time, I can live in a version of downtown Seattle with no marijuana scent constantly hanging in the atmosphere of alleyways and city buses)

Maybe in the future I could be living in another big city or some other beautiful places, but I always know that nothing beats downtown Seattle in all its grandiosity and color. Nada.

Tuesday, June 21:

Part of the downtown tour agenda was shopping at Chinatown for ingredients for what I was about to do on Tuesday. Some of my friends from Rainier Beach (Mary, Rebecca, Emily, Kira) were coming to visit after school (they were juniors and so they still had school), and I planned to make some Indo food! The choice fell to the classics ketoprak (for its ease) and martabak manis (as my propaganda to promote chocolate-and-cheese combo to foreigners—don’t @ me).

I think I initially planned to make gado-gado but some veggies required in gado-gado were scarcely available even in Seattle’s Chinatown, so I settled down for something which ingredients are more readily available: ketoprak. As for martabak manis, I found a quick mix for that thing in the Asian market HAHAHA all I needed to do was wet the drys, pour them into the pan, and wait.

It turned out great—for an impossible-to-screw-up recipe, but I’m still proud of myself. As long as the guests were happy.

I’d see these girls again the next day on Wednesday, June 22, when we had a sleepover at Rebecca’s. Talk about sleeping over on a school night. But it was worth every second of it. I remembered we took a trip ‘round the city doing stuff, and we got back late at night, all of us piled into Rebecca’s bed straight away, too tired to think or do anything else.

Thursday and Friday I went to school to take care of some stuff. Friday, June 24, was the last day of school for the year at Rainier Beach HS (and for me, ever), and at the evening I had my own goodbye party hosted at home. I invited everyone from dear friends at AFS Seattle chapter and at school, former host families, to the adults I’ve gotten to know along the way, like Laura and Imad and other people.

Here's the funny thing: I couldn’t even eat for most of my own goodbye party. The party started at around 6 or 7 I reckoned, and sunset/iftar was not until 9. So what I had been doing—and Eric had been assisting me in doing—was once in a while grabbing a snack I wanted to eat and just sort of store them in a corner in case they ran out before 9.

Imagine roasting marshmallows and making s’mores but not being able to eat them straight away.

It was a fun one rather than a sad one, though, to be honest. Maybe because we weren’t yet registering the fact that a farewell is truly coming, and plus I still have one last chance for good-bye with my fellow exchange students.

Like a normal person trying to squeeze out as many agendas as she can in her last days of living, after the goodbye party I went to Hinaho’s for a sleep over with fellow AFSers. I had been to Hinaho’s before, and I love her house and her neighborhood and her host family is just the nicest people, so I was excited to be back and we had a great time. We all camped in her living room and watched movies (one I remembered was The Divergent Series: Allegiant Part 1) until all of us just dozed off and the TV was left on.

(another personal, trivial moment I remembered was me waking up at the wee hours of the night in my sleeping bag, being reminded that it was time for suhoor, so I lazily grabbed one or two energy bars from my pack.)

(not that it’s a good advice to give, but during this time of the year I realized I could survive a fasting day without suhoor, as I almost never miss one my entire life until this year—and an 18-hour fasting day at that. So I figured, at least these energy bars would be enough rather than nothing at all.)

(and I don’t know, maybe being occupied in activities that make the time fly by also helps with fasting because you’re too busy doing these things you’re not reminded of hunger and thirst—as long as it is not a physically-demanding activity. It was pretty much like you’re too focused on doing something that you just forget to eat and accidentally skip meals. Another thing is that Seattle—even maybe the US in general—just did not have that Ramadan vibes, and that’s okay, because in Indo, I am always reminded of Ramadan because almost everyone is fasting and Ramadan being the festivity season that companies take so much advantage of as their marketing strategies. Sure, the lack of Ramadan vibes was saddening—in a way that I was just living my days without eating and drinking and getting angry without the semi-obligatory crowded late afternoon markets full of scrumptious snacks and gluttonous congregation, and nightly two-hour long prayers with noises of kids running around playing cat-and-mouse in the mosque yard—but that’s okay too, because I already knew these things when I jumped in. All I was worried about was surviving 18-hour fasting days and turned out it was the least of my worries.)

Saturday, June 25, Karen took me for a walk around Capitol Hill and Volunteer Park.

I couldn’t believe it was my second-to-last day and I was still discovering new things—Volunteer Park, especially, being so close to our house and I couldn’t believe I never went there before.

The park, like most Seattle parks, was a beautiful one. It was vast, with a greenhouse and a lake and even a museum (Seattle Asian Art Museum, which we didn’t have the time to visit). Karen took me up the water tower, which had an observation deck that provided a view of the park and a portion of Seattle beyond it. By the lake was a sculpture that the park was famous for—originally titled “Black Sun” by Isamu Noguchi, and colloquially referred to as “The Doughnut” (reminds you a lot of the same case with Chicago’s “Cloud Gate”, huh?). From The Doughnut’s hole, you can spot the Space Needle with the lake in the foreground, as though the Needle rose from the waters.

The water tower (volunteerparktrust.org)

The "Black Sun" aka "The Doughnut" (volunteerparktrust.org)

Sunday, June 26: best day in Seattle ever.

No, not it being the last day in Seattle—that part was depressing. But at least I was ecstatic that I got to end the journey with a bang, by watching Seattle Pride Parade.

Add that to the list of things I would never ever ever get the chance to do in a million years had I not decided to jump into the exchange student bandwagon.

I forgot where I had heard of the Pride Parade from. Maybe Patricia and Amber. Maybe Karen, knowing my giddiness for festivals and public events to witness. At any rate, it was such luck that Pride Parade fell on that day, because if it were one day later, I wouldn’t have been able to attend and I would have missed one of the best experiences in my life.

So much coming from a mere spectator. But it truly was a thrilling experience.

Karen end Eric had stuff to do, so I hopped on to the bus downtown by myself (what else is new?) at around mid-morning, when the parade had just started. I was told that Patricia and Amber (along with Vera) would be there too (of course), so I planned on meeting up with them later on.

How was the parade?

Simply put, there were a lot of things.

There were of course big companies and brands with their employees dancing around carrying balloons with their brand on it, there were floats from big and local businesses, there were marching bands, there were local communities marching while carrying a long banner or letter balloons. Many floats have half-naked men dancing and having fun with themselves (from gay bars, mostly). There were people in just about any type of clothing and accessories dancing along the blasting music and giving free high-fives or even hugs to the spectators.

It truly was a day where people get to be free and themselves when 364 other days they don’t get to.

There were drag queens walking along with their stellar outfit and makeup, which amazed me the most because I had never seen such dedicated drag queens before. The image I have of drag queens are the ones available back in the home country—you slap a wig and dress and chest stuffing and you’re good to go to, either for busking around street food stalls for change or for other nightly services. Not saying that Indo drag queens are bad, but objectively the drag queen culture there is not as dedicated as it is in the US, with the addition that the US drag culture is well-facilitated, what with the bars and shows and RuPaul’s Drag Race and overall interest from the audience.

Suffice it to say, the drag queen industry was a flourish. And I was there to only experience the gist of it in the parade.

If I had posted this sooner, I would still have the chance to post the pictures, but since most of them are gone with the hard drive, here are some I vetted from my Instagram:

I met Patricia, Amber, and Vera in Seattle Center area, by the Space Needle. I hung out with them as they had lunch, me enjoying my last moments of playing with sweet little Vera while she still knew me in her toddler life.

After lunch, we went back to the streets. Vera looked excited at seeing these many things the parade had to offer (I remembered she was particularly excited when a group of people wearing leather and dog-like accessories—I later learned from Patricia that it was a community for enthusiasts of sub-dom puppy play and the sorts (CMIIW for the description)—and she went “pups!” so cute and blissful of her).

After a while, Vera no longer looked excited, which means she’s all drained. Patricia and Amber said goodbye while I stayed in the streets, still full of energy and not wanting to miss any of the event I would most likely get only once in this lifetime.

I walked along the streets from Seattle Center back to downtown, trying to find a good viewing spot. The floats were still floating, the dancers dancing, even the mayor was there too. At some point, I saw a group of people in the distance that I thought I had missed and would not see in this parade, but then again, on second thought, it totally should be in the parade.

Men and women and all the genders in between, cheering and cycling through the streets with their biggest smiles and hands waving.

They were in on it so good, I didn’t even notice until they got closer that all that was on them was body paint.

Naked cyclists!

My remorse of missing out on the Summer Solstice Parade instantly evaporated. Apparently I’m just that easy lol.

Not long after the cyclists, the parade slowed down to a close, the last show was people carrying a big-ass pride flag as wide as the street itself, facing the sky. The sun shining through the flag turned the asphalt below it into wonderful shades of rainbow colors.

(southseattleemerald.com)

Again, to say that this was an exciting experience was an understatement. This was the thing I had been looking forward to, though I came in with no expectations. Personally admitting, the conservative corner of me was astonished upon seeing what the parade had to offer me, but as the day went by, I ended up enjoying every second of it. I was basking in overstimulation—the clear sky, the hot weather, the bright pride colors, the big floats, the loud music, a new thing to witness every 5 minutes, the sea of excitement radiating from both the spectators and the contributors, and most importantly, the overwhelming amount of happiness, freedom, and, well,

pride.

It may not be my freedom and pride, but seeing them celebrating it made me as jubilant as they were. Happiness is truly infectious.

The other thing I’m most grateful about from this experience is to be able to witness first-hand what the word ‘pride’ in this context really means. Sure, in this era, we can still educate ourselves on the matter—there are thousands of sources and internet friends you can find that can give you all the information you need—but honestly, the Internet can only do so much, especially if the surroundings you’re in do not support or facilitate the issue. I feel like if I hadn’t gotten out, I wouldn’t have been able to empathize this much. I did understand the existence of the issue and that there are struggles on it, but being in Downtown Seattle on June 26, 2016 was what really woke me up.

After all, it kind of boils down to one simple matter: if any goals you have in this life, whatever they are, lead to you being happy and living in a world that is also happy, then why can’t you let other people do the same?

-NS

#langkahanakbangsa #afs friends #rbhs #seattle pride #pride 2016

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papersandkeyboards · 8 months

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6/13-19: The Hunt for Quite Everything: Comicbooks, High School Diploma, and The Last Moments in Friendships

38th WEEK, JUNE 13-19, 2016.

If you know me well enough or you don’t but you’ve been reading this very tumblr page, I’m not surprised if you find yourself being bored listening to my likeness towards American comic books.

Wait, I’ll rephrase that, because I don’t think I even deserve that status. I like some American comic books, often Marvel over DC, and often only certain issues of certain characters, i.e. Black Widow, Deadpool, Hawkeye, and Ms. Marvel. These comic books were the second thing that popped into my mind when the plane I was in on September 2015 hit the American sky (the first thing being “oh shit, it’s getting real”).

This is my second-to-last week being in the Emerald City, being in the country where I can access these comic books I love dearly for only $2 a piece (in Indo they were like $10-15 AND they don’t even come in full volumes), and this raised an urgency to do what I had decided to do:

a comic book hunt.

But first, I’ll just write the summary of other parts of the week as the following.

Monday, June 13:

The Oceanography class (more specifically, the Salish Sea trip students) went to UW to present the project we’ve been working on since the trip. We finally reunited with the Salish Sea people that we had gotten to know for the 3 days of the trip, and it was nice seeing them again. And who am I kidding, any school trip is always fun, and UW never failed to amuse me with its classy architecture.

Tuesday, June 14:

The school held this thing called Senior Breakfast (I know right, they have so many events for the seniors and it had been fun!) and they held it in Rainier Beach Community Center just across the street from school. The event was pretty self-explanatory: you came earlier in the day before school starts, you could invite your family member, you sat on one of the non-assigned round tables, and you could help yourself to the breakfast buffet in the room. There were speeches and such, but mostly it was the fun of getting free food and hanging out, skipping a wee bit of school hours.

The agenda of the school itself was Senior Checkout Day, where you went to your classes just to get the teachers’ signatures on a form that basically stated you’re a senior and you’ve passed your classes and you were very much welcome to get out of the school (in an honorable way—that is graduation). There were also yearbooks given (for those who bought them) and I had those signed around and I signed some yearbooks myself. I made use of this opportunity not only to take pictures with my dear teachers (and other school staff I wanted to take pictures with), but also to give them little Indo trinkets and some little thank-you cards I wrote for them. Same thing I did with my professors back in Seattle Central.

[let’s pretend I put here the pics with DJ, Ms. Shaw, Señor Cadenas, Ms. Harris, Coach Beavers, Ms. Yip, Ms. Wong, Jurdy, and Mr. Henderson because yours truly had lost 90% of her exchange experience pics gone from damaging her hard drive for good]

(…but here’s the thing! I was lucky to be able to have these pics of me and Ms. Street and Pierce and Tomchick preserved)

So the pose with Pierce was because he told us during one of our classes that he had always had the same pose for the yearbooks (and it was true—he showed us the yearbooks from before). And the pic with Tomchick because this guy was the one who inspired me to get those pair of The Scream socks. Tomchick had been the guy who wears wacky socks all the time—he would show us his socks every now and then—and I kid you not, I never again take socks for granted.

(of course, before this day, I made him wear The Scream socks for Senior Checkout Day so he would match mine and we could make this photo happen)

Wednesday, June 15:

Another thing that this week being the second-to-last week of my presence in Seattle and its everlasting glory of beautiful things, I, of course, had to take some time to shop (despite running out of luggage space). Among other things, I remember vividly buying two things: two shower curtains with printed illustration of a big world map and periodic tables (a request by my mom) from Bed Bath and Beyond, and a silicon ice cube tray in the shape of the US states (my utter hedonism) from Nordstrom Rack. I also hunted the waterfront and their antique shops for (more) wacky socks or simply looking around. In the evening, I took Karen and Eric watched Now You See Me 2 because I was a total groupie of the first movie. (Karen ended up giving bad reviews for the second one, and I agreed that the second one was a bit too much but I still loved it nonetheless ehehehehe)

Thursday, June 16: Comic Book Hunt Day 1 (of 2)

You see, what I had been doing with the way I acquire comic books was that I walked into the store, I looked around, saw anything I like and available, and bought them. Most of times the issues I bought weren’t in order because a) I was too late that they didn’t sell the early issues anymore, or b) the next issues hadn’t come yet. So, by the end of the exchange year, I have found myself with many comic books in the same series but with some issues missing here and there. However, I have found some issues bundled into volumes of 4-6 issues which had better paper quality altogether, though on the other hand it seemed like a bit of a waste because in some cases I already had 2, 3, even 4 issues on the volume. Buying a whole volume of 6 issues would fill me in with the 2 issues I hadn’t gotten, but that would also mean I used my money on 4 issues I’ve already had.

The days before today, in these last weeks of no more waiting, I’ve sorted all the Ms. Marvels that I owned then I listed the issues I haven’t had. Then, I’ve started on calling one comic bookstore I know, listing the issues I was looking for. This comic bookstore I called didn’t have all that I need, which led me to calling for another, and then another, and that was how I basically had several booked issues of Ms. Marvel comic books in different comic book stores all over the city.

Before I embarked on my first store to hunt, I stopped by Elliott Bay Bookstore, hanging out by myself. Elliott Bay Bookstore is the nearest bookstore from home, and it was the second-best bookstore I’ve ever visited (the first being downtown Seattle Barnes & Noble). However, what makes Elliott Bay Bookstore different from B&N was the homy feeling to it. The floors, shelves, and railings were of wood and you can see the vast first floor from the loft-ish second floor balcony. Under the second floor was a little café, and that was where I spent a few hours writing earlier entries of this blog.

(pics from the good and gracious interwebs)

Books and café. Such an ideal place.

After noon I went. My first target would be Phoenix Comics and Games by Seattle Central College, but, if I was not mistaken, they didn’t have any of the issues I was looking for. The next on the list was this store downtown that I’ve forgotten the name of (what I do remember is that it was the store from which Antonio gave me a $10 gift certificate for my birthday). It was pretty easy: I came in, told the shopkeeper I was the one on the phone and asked for a certain issue of Ms. Marvel, they went to the back room and came back with the item of quest, I paid, and I left (well, after some minutes of looking around because why not). Not much time to waste anyway, because I had planned to go to the zoo, now that the day was warm and sunny (compared to my first visit to the zoo when it was winter cold and most of the exhibits were closed anyway).

1 comic bookstore done, 2 more to go!

Friday, June 17: Comic Book Hunt Day 2 (of 2) and, well, Graduation

Ah, right.

I got too excited in telling you about my comic book hunt I almost forgot about graduation.

So we had the graduation ceremony this day in Memorial Stadium in Seattle Center Area. It was not until after lunch-ish so I still got time on my hands. I went to comic book store #2 and #3, respectively Golden Age Collectibles by the waterfront (this was the most complete comic book store by far. Complete as in it also had a whole lot of other geek stuff, like action figures—from regular-sized to life-sized—, really old comic books, and trading cards. All in mint condition) and, after looking around the store for a while, wasted no time and caught the bus straight to Wallingford area to Comics Dungeon.

I did my best, but at last I have satisfied my thirst for American comic books!

I didn’t spend a lot in there as I have other travel plans (squeezing as much agenda as I can in this short time I had left), so I caught the bus and went straight back south to the waterfront for the tourist attraction I haven’t had the chance to visit despite people going there all the time:

Yep. The infamous Seattle Gum Wall.

It was so amazing to the point it didn’t even look disgusting to me. The solo traveling situation got me in a bit of a difficulty taking pictures of myself, so I got a stranger to do it (and then the picture was gone anyway so what’s the point).

/looks at watch/ time to go back home, dress pretty, and off we went to Memorial Stadium to graduate!

You see, I would LOVE to brag to everyone how I graduated high school twice (one from RBHS and one from my original high school in Indo), but unfortunately, that was not the case.

Gretar and I weren’t given (rented?) togas. We also didn’t get any diploma. So all we would do in the event was to do what everyone else was doing, except for the toga-wearing and diploma-receiving part. All the seniors gather sporadically around the entrance of the stadium, all of them wearing togas. I did my best to dress nicely since I was not going to be wearing one. We did get some tassels and colorful necklaces, although I didn’t really know what they were for. The tassels were from the school, and I suppose they symbolize something like the class color or honor students or something—everyone had one but some had more than the others.

Oh another cool thing was that, as a celebration, some people got customized long necklaces from friends and/or family. Some were of flowers, but many of them—and I assume it’s the tradition around here—were of candies. I vaguely remember that people can buy them ready-made for this purpose, that’s why so many people had candy necklaces. Honestly, those are cooler than the flower ones since this one I can actually put to use after wearing them.

I didn’t have any graduation attribute aside from the tassels and necklaces, so I borrowed Jake’s grad cap just for a pic (that I lost). I do remember they were all like “you’re so cute!” with a grad cap without the robe, but I’m pretty sure that’s just me looking 5 years younger than all of RB seniors present.

We all filed in this one long single line from the tribunes and walked outside towards the field where all the chairs and the stage are. Later we found out we would be sitting on the stage, behind the podium and along with the faculties, and the other seniors would sit on chairs provided to them facing the stage. Families were seated on the bleachers of the stadium.

It wasn’t like it was a spotlight, because we were in the back of the stage anyway, and everyone was paying attention to whoever was speaking at the podium. Jurdy, teachers, et cetera. Ceremonially, we received the… case (?) for the diplomas, but of course with no diploma inside. Doesn’t matter. Still cool.

After graduation, I tagged along Gretar’s host family to Cheesecake factory for some big fat cake slices.

Saturday, June 18:

It was a beautiful chill Saturday. It was supposed to be the day of Summer Solstice Parade—which I had been dying to go to—but I had to give that a pass for a couple agendas: one, a visit to Jenny and Seth’s house, and two, Jake’s graduation party.

(a little spoiler of why I had wanted to go to the Solstice Parade: because people said it was hella fun, and a rare annual sighting of cyclists with 100% body paint and 0% clothing. I reckoned people might be a little bit taken aback had they known I was eager to go to the Solstice Parade for—imagine me saying this in my enthusiastic, 18-year-old self—“naked cyclists!” but at this point of time in the exchange year, who am I to care anymore)

It was basically a day of clashing agendas. Supposedly, after spending the time hanging out and watching Pitch Perfect 2 with Harper at Jenny and Seth’s, I could have gone to either of these three agendas: Jake’s grad party, Gretar’s grad party, or the Solstice Parade. Given that I will see Gretar at my own farewell party in the upcoming weekend, and I valued my formed friendships with people at Rainier Beach High School more than some naked strangers, I decided to go to Jake’s grad party at their house.

The party was a lot of fun. It wasn’t like a party party—we chilled in their backyard, having drinks and snacks, we played bocce, we played Cards Against Humanity (my first time ever playing it and boy I was hooked. Then I came back home to Indo to never play it again because it wasn’t sold here and if it did, it was hella expensive). The Seattle sky was gray and cloudy—what else is new?—but the cold and light drizzle was never in the way to stop us from having fun.

On the way home and afterwards, I look back at the friendships I’ve had at Rainier Beach—truthfully may not be a forever and well-maintained one, what with the distance and everyone’s doing their own thing after high school and me being bad at maintaining relationships in general—and I thought,

I obviously was not as outgoing as everyone else, and my other exchange student friends may have better experience, but hey, this was something worth being grateful for.

(besides, if I was not grateful, I would have nothing to hold on to anymore)

At least they had etched a good memory in my short 9 months, and the brief fun I had during that time will be something I’ll cherish forever. Not only for the exchange year in general, but also for my own character development. I was sure as hell that I would have a hard time finding friends—and I might have, at the start, but in the end I wasn’t that much miserable. In fact, I wasn’t miserable at all.

Anyway.

The last day of the week (June 19), the city of rain decided to be a little bit nicer this time. The sky was bright blue, splotches of white clouds here and there, all in all an exquisite day to take a ferry out to Bainbridge Island with Karen and her friend Jen. Not a lot of touristy places in Bainbridge Island—at one point I remembered us going to a cute little craft shop—and we’re back home by afternoon, in which I continued my way to Kira’s place for her good-bye party. Another fun evening party, hanging out with friends and family, wholesome conversations, photos taken, heartfelt hugs exchanged.

Like what a proper good-bye party would be like.

(also, it’s a little strange solely due to the fact that I will be having my own good-bye party the following week, during which I will see many of the same people in Kira’s, so more heartfelt content on my end can wait until then)

So, uh, hooray for the second-to-last week in the US, and therefore, second-to-last entry for this blog (excluding epilogue), I guess?

See you around.

Nabila Safitri

#langkahanakbangsa #school #rbhs #afs friends #fangirling life

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papersandkeyboards · 2 years

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I just logged back in after so so long and I am astonished to see Teh Izzati, my childhood idol, the actual person who inspired me to make a writing-based Tumblr account (and make it a journal for my exchange year like she did), still here. After all these years.

Sehat-sehat terus Teh, it’s nice to see you around.

Twenty-six was something borrowed.

She went by in a flash, yet she was also in slow motion. It didn’t feel like she was mine, as much as she was, and although everything about it was indeed mine, in a lot of ways it also wasn’t. 26 was her own analogy with her own language, who kept correcting—iterating—herself vigorously, so she wouldn’t be recorded entirely as a flaw, a bug, a glitch, or a hideous mess.

Just recently I saw this Instagram Reel of a potter smashing and breaking her flawed products to turn them back into clay and recycle them into new pieces. While I do not dare to say that 26—I—was a flawed product myself, 26 was the year when a lot of things got really, really messy.

A couple of (messy) examples: First of all, I thought I could write. Four semesters, ten unfinished drafts, maybe thirty-thousand words later, I realized writing is about both starting and finishing and all this time I’ve been only floating in the middle. Second, I thought I was smart and brave, especially being one of the few international ESL students, and also one of the only two Indonesians in the program, until I started taking classes with students who have spoken—and written—English their whole lives, who bring novel manuscripts and 30-page brilliant short stories to workshops, some of which have already been published here there everywhere, who win competitions and receive fellowships, who have taught in at least three different continents, who by default I deemed superior. With that, Smart and Brave silently exited the room. Dumb and Scared took their place instead. Lastly, I thought I knew what I wanted, had life half-figured and sort of planned out. Turns out I have only been half-living this whole time, with absolutely no idea what I’m doing and where I’m going, and meeting different people with different backgrounds and their different languages with their different, super supreme YouTube-podcast-book-meme references and their elaborate, sorted-out 10-year life plans, Notion-powered, Forbes30Under30-driven; made me grimace at my own life (obviously unsorted, unNotioned, unForbes), made me unwant what I had and want some things even harder. My dreams shape-shift. Some self-destruct, some become even more stubborn and pronounced. Either way, it ended up being too much. Too loud and too lonely. I ended up becoming one of those clay pots the potter smashed in her video. I broke. Too many times, at that.

Amidst all that fire in the house, as I am heavily self-trained to always find light in the darkness no matter how irrelevant and cringe such light can be, at 2:00 am as I cried myself to sleep I thought, what better place to be broken than New York, right? Wrong. Well at least I am in New York, right? Right, but also wrong. Despite only living here for two years-ish, I felt New York was too grand a stage for broken things. For battles I was bound to lose. For wars I wasn't prepared for. It’s too grand a stage for adult growing pains, which are basically aches everywhere in our body due to intense adulting activities (mostly the mental ones), where joy is something we pay in installments, yet horror and sadness are practically freebies. The real secret in @secretnyc Instagram page isn’t in what they tell us (10 tHiNGs yOu DoN’T wAnNa MiSs tHiS wEeKeNd), it’s in what they don’t: People bend in this city, but most of the times they break too.

That being said, for the past seven, eight months, it has really taken a village for a day to start and to not suck, for the hours to go by without too much crying in between. In the first few months there wasn’t even a “village” to begin with, for I was alone, lonely, busy succumbing. My world was shaken up and for a lot of different reasons. New York, once a jewelry box, became a death trap. I was floating but more like a sad balloon—airless and crinkled, certainly not the majestic, colorful, and dreamy-looking hot-air kind—sadly sticking to her day-to-day routine: write in the mornings, class til noon, study until dinner, naps in between.

But as much as I tried, my normal routine alone didn’t even cut it—it felt unsafe and temporary. Some days I was lucky to make it to places, some others I would be walking out of my apartment just to straight up u-turn and run back home. My naps became longer (when my normal ones already last for two hours, minimum) and turned to something I dreaded, but at the same time everything else was a lot worse. Whatever good, normal day I pulled a muscle to have, it wore off as soon as I showered and crawled back to bed. At nights, rest was impossible, but when I finally did fall asleep, I slept with a large hole in my chest, which became a perfect site for a festival of bad dreams.

So I resorted to sticking my routine to other people’s. That is how my life became something desperately borrowed: the long library hours, the brisk walks to the boba place, study sessions, the Friday getaways to Yale, last minute lunch and dinner dates, weekend hangouts, half-priced ballet and Broadway shows, ice skating. Surprise pastries that saved my lifeless, bedridden, five-kg-less ass because I couldn’t, wouldn’t, stomach anything else; shoulders on which I helplessly smeared snot all over; ears worn off from having to hear me scream and cry during phone calls or during long conversations over my dining table; iftars and suhoors turned into sleepovers. I borrowed distractions from these people, who willingly shared pieces of their lives with me, which I used to fill the large hole in my chest, hoping they could help rid it of the nightmares, however momentary. I owe so much to so many.

And what did this tiny, little piece of self do? Other than succumbing? Skipping classes, missing her meals? Seeing the days go by from her bedroom window? Hating people on Instagram who seemed contained and composed, happy and unbothered? And back to hating herself even more? Well, it woke up, and at some point, it got up from bed. Two times, it showed up to her pilates sessions. It also sought therapy. If anything, it lived and held me. And it wrote to you, eventually.

And so, writing this, putting it here, containing this internal fiasco in a language and a shape is my attempt at making a peace offering to all sorts of life’s shenanigans that I have yet to face—an effort to upcycle life just like she does, Lady Pottery. That’s 26 to me. Still a quarter life crisis, just a remix. I remember the times where I prayed so hard—Ramadan 2019, for example, which perhaps was my peak shalihah moment, excuse this shameless self-claim, because I wanted grad school so bad—for the things I do have now. These days I’d call Ibu and we’d both cry on the phone (unsure who’s soothing who?), “Bapak and I prayed for all these things for you—your scholarship and your school—and these granted prayers come with tests for our patience and perseverance…” So there you go.

I once asked my older sister how many more times she cried like a monster after 26, because I was exhausted. She said only a couple more times, because afterwards, the cry is silent. I guess if I asked Lady Pottery how many more times she still has to do recycling, the smashing and the breaking, the answer would be about the same.

So. Twenty-seven. Let’s go for a spin.

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papersandkeyboards · 2 years

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so anyways i came back here because i saw on my inbox that somebody had asked a question in october, and i found two asks instead. this ask i just answered, as it turns out, was NOT one from october but from TWO THOUSAND FREAKING SEVENTEEN.

yeah im a horrible human being

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papersandkeyboards · 2 years

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Kak gimana caranya biar jago bahasa inggris?

INI KAPAN YA MASUK MESSAGENYA. I AM SO SORRY.

hello! maaf bgt kayaknya karena udah saking lamanya ini kalau aku post ga bakal dibaca lagi ya AHAHAH MAAF BGTTTTTT ketauan ini blog nya udah lama gak keurus.

Anyway, aku berutang jawaban. Kalau kamu pernah nanya ini ke orang2 lain, sebenernya jawaban mereka bener semua eheheh. Terekspos dengan konten berbahasa inggris, kayak lagu, film, TV shows, buku, emang hiburan itu media paling jago untuk internalisasi bahasa deh. Seenggaknya untuk listening dan reading, ya. Kalau untuk speaking, paling efektif emang belajar ngomong sama orang. Nyari temen buat ngomong bahasa inggris bareng, gitu. Aku juga baru nyadar spoken english ku cetek banget sampe pergi exchange, jadinya aku pergi ke sana tuh bisa dibilang, yah, belajar bahasa inggris juga wkwkwkw. Kalau misalkan tips n trick yang lebih mutakhir, aku percaya banyak youtuber indonesian yang ngepos hal ginian, apalagi yang kuliah di luar negeri. Cari aja.

Sayang banget yg nanya anonim jadi agak ngawang gitu aku jawabinnya :( if you happen to read this, reach me out! and also i'm so sorry once again :c

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papersandkeyboards · 4 years

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6/6-12 (2): The Weekend I Met Vladimir Lenin and The Neighborhood Troll (Among Other Things)

TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 2016.

The alarm on my phone went off. I woke up, turned off the alarm, and gathered all the meager amount of willpower I had to not go back to sleep. It was 2am. I never skipped suhoor before. Never ever. And I certainly did not fancy the idea of skipping suhoor on the very first day of 18-hour fasting experience.

Remember when I said a part of what we do while fasting is refraining from food and drink from dawn until dusk? Suhoor is a pre-dawn meal we ate before dawn strikes. I usually give myself around an hour before dawn to eat and drink. Back in my home country, in the town where I lived, dawn strikes at around 5am or 10-15 mins to 5am, and the whole family ritually wakes up at 4. This, however, in this graceful city of Seattle in the graceful Northern Hemisphere during the graceful season of summer, dawn strikes at 3am, hence the 2am alarm.

Wow, my family and friends back home should be going nuts if I tell them I survived 3 weeks of Ramadan without rice for suhoor. You see, I don’t know about other people, but I used to think that if I don’t eat a lot for suhoor, I will starve for the rest of the day. Ramadan this year, however, proved me wrong. I ate things like pasta or noodles or bread and I survived just fine and dandy.

(also, my first and second experience of skipping suhoor due to oversleeping, also happened this year. That, embarrassingly, I admit because my mom always woke me up during suhoor at home and that’s why I never skipped suhoor before.)

My ritual since the first day of fasting was eating while watching “Friends” on the laptop. Then, as I believe many other Muslims do, when the clock approaches dawn time, I stuffed myself with water, taking big gulps and stopped when the time was up. Ding. The fast began. I did my dawn prayer, then went to sleep. Back in Indo, they say it was the wisest not to go back to sleep after suhoor, rather to fill the time with prayers before the sun really rises up and comes the time to go to work or school.

But here, since I left home for school at 7, there’s no way I would stay up from 3. Excuse me but I’m sleeping.

You know, even they say people who live real up north like in Europe or Alaska would just stay up all night after they break their fast at night, occasionally eating until dawn comes (which is also in the very early hours of the day), and sleep after dawn. People just adjust themselves during what season Ramadan is in, I guess.

---

In the afternoon, I went to the library where the softball banquet was held. What happened there was basically a buffet and a little awarding for everyone in the softball team. Two girls—whom I forgot the names of—didn’t come because they were observing Ramadan, Tomchick said. So was I, which was why Kira was confused because I avoided whenever she tried to shove me food. It was an event to close the softball season, and the main event was awarding, in which every member of the softball team got an award made by Tomchick and Beavers, aside from the legit school-published certificate of participation in the softball team.

The awards were not something like the MVP or something. They were things like “Most Improved”, “Most Goofy”, those kind of thing. So, uh, for the award, I got what Tomchick wrote as “Smiles for Miles”. There was this one time I was fielding and I was on the way to catch a ground ball, but the ball bounces all the way on the ground and I was in the wrong position to stand and the ball bounced up to my face. It didn’t hurt, at all. If anything, I cussed and then laughed. That’s all. But Tomchick was like she-always-smiles-even-when-she-got-a-ball-to-her-face. I was sure it was because he was running out of ideas, having to give an award to each and every one of us. But thanks, Coach Tomchick and Beavers!

After that I went with Laura and Dave, Kira’s hostparents, to the auditorium to watch a music concert by the music class, because Kira was performing with her violin.

---

That was not the only time I went to the auditorium for the week, because the next day I went there again for this.

So this awarding night was for students based on their GPA, and they got bronze or silver or gold kind of award for a certain range of GPA. I forgot details about it, but I remembered Gretar and Kira and I were within the same range, unless Kira was in the juniors cluster, and Gretar and I were in seniors.

On Thursday, we had Brian over for Oceanography class. One time we were talking about the Pacific quake in class, and I told Mrs. Wong I knew someone who was an absolute expert on this thing—my former hostdad, Brian Atwater, from USGS. He came to our 8-people class with a whole powerpoint and a few objects we could get our hands on, and he talked the whole period. It was amazing how he knows almost absolutely anything about this, even the things I didn’t think of, but maybe that was just me being dumb.

---

On Friday, June 10, we had what was called Viking Day. Approaching the end of the semester, we held an assembly in the gym, then at the end of the assembly the seniors were gathered by the principal for some sort of instructions regarding check out day on the upcoming Tuesday and graduation and last remarks and all that. At the end of the day people were free to do whatever they wanted to do and there were games in the football field too.

I, of course, took pictures with people.

On Saturday, I tagged along with Nancy to help her with AFS Greater Puget Sound Chapter for their pre-departure orientation. There were several students from around the Puget Sound region who were going to go on an exchange with AFS. I went to help with Cece, Taryn, and Hinaho.

---

On Sunday, I did what I had been meaning to do: to explore the neighborhood of Fremont!

[pic creds: gonorthwest.com]

Fremont is a neighborhood full of art installations. They got statues here and there, sculpture in random places, and not to mention—aside from art installations—cool places like Theo Chocolate Factory (of which I did a tour with Antonio earlier in the year) and Fremont Cut (a canal that connects Puget Sound with Lake Washington).

Karen wasn’t available for Sunday, so Eric covered and that’s basically what we did: a tour around Fremont. We stopped by Eric’s son Aiden’s place, parked somewhere around the Fremont Bridge, then walked by foot around the neighborhood to check out the sculptures and of course take pictures with them. I even got a poster displaying all attractions in Fremont.

Here are the quirks and landmarks all over Fremont, taken in no particular order:

This, my friends, is the Fremont Troll (and behind her is a casual under-the-bridge statue minding its business). You exactly see that right, it literally is a troll under the bridge. Not only this guy lives under a bridge, but also grips a Volkswagen Beetle in its hand.

This huge man me is Vladimir Lenin. (yes, that Russian guy Lenin you might have heard of in History) Quoting the article I read in Curbed Seattle,

“With an intentional depiction of Lenin as a 'violent revolutionary' instead of a benevolent leader, the statue was brought over to Seattle by the American Lewis Carpenter, who found it lying on the ground after it was nearly destroyed in a 1989 revolution.”

Apparently this Carpenter person was so determined on having this statue shipped across the continent he spent a lot of money into it. Not that the neighborhood of Fremont where this statue stands provides some kind of political stance whatsoever—I think now people just see it as a quirky big statue in the middle of the intersection, which is what Fremont basically is about.

Aaand this is a rocket and its neighbor Saturn. It’s just sort of there.

This sign-post is no doubt the alleged Center of the Universe. See signs sticking up the pole pointing all over the place.

One of the most famous Indonesian traditional Minangese folklore is called “Malin Kundang”, which tells a story of a man named Malin Kundang who lived in poverty with his widowed mother and had the ambition to travel and make money to help their living. He then grew up and ended up rich, married, and travelling all over the country. However, when he stopped by his home town for work, his estranged old mother came—still living in poverty—to him, being separated for so long, but Malin was embarrassed of his poor mother, and so, he pretended he didn’t know her. His mother, of course, was extremely sad and humiliated, and no matter what she did, he wouldn’t budge to admit her as his mother. Being heartbroken, she then did a last resort as Malin left the harbor: she prayed to turn Malin to a rock.

And so he did turn into a rock. His ship was wrecked by the waves, he realized what he did wrong at the last minute, profusely begged for forgiveness, but the damage was done, and he was left deserted by the beach in prostrating position (a ‘sujood’ position, to be exact), hard as a rock... literally.

That’s a long introduction. These rock people standing by the bus station are NOT evidence of their disobedient lives to their mothers, but instead a sculpture entitled “Waiting for the Interurban”. Along with those people was also a statue of a dog. However, take a look at the dog’s face.

[pic creds: The Holy Grail Press]

I didn’t even know why the sculpture just out of the blue decided to sculpt a human face for a dog’s. According to Wikipedia, though,

“The face of the dog was sculpted to resemble Fremont political leader and the city's "godfather of recycling" Armen "Napoleon" Stephanian, with whom Beyer (the sculpture -red) had public disagreements in the 1970s.”

Simply saying, this Napoleon man, according to the sculpture, was a dog.

(which was kind of relatable to Indonesian humor because we often use ‘dog’ as an insult term)

Oh, the (living) man taking the picture with me was Aiden, by the way.

This is a statue of J.P. Patches, a television clown character “The J.P. Patches Show” that aired in Seattle in 1958 for 23 years. The statue was built from fan donations,

which signifies just how popular the show back then and how loved it was by both children and parents.

(just me casually hanging out with my topiary pals: the Apatosaurus mother and her kid)

And these do not cover other wholesome art installations that resides in Fremont. Not to mention things like the canal or the chocolate factory or the quirky antiquities store Archie McPhee.

So, um, that’s Fremont for you. And there’s nothing like Fremont, I bet.

(sources: additional info regarding these Fremont arts was researched through here)

#langkahanakbangsa #ramadan #fremont #rbhs #softball #afs friends

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papersandkeyboards · 4 years

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6/6-12 (1): Spend Your First Day of Fasting Effectively (i.e. Canoeing Under the Summer Sun and Count Tree Rings)

37th WEEK, JUNE 6-12, 2016.

“...you’ll get, what, eighteen hours of Ramadan?”

“No way. How will I survive?”

“You can do it. If you do it, you’ll get bragging rights.”

Main Topic #1: Ramadan 1437 Hijriyah (the Islamic calendar) fell in June 2016, which was in the summer. According to basic rules of fasting, one must fast—refrain from all kinds of food and drink and bad deeds—from dawn until dusk. That being said, in the beautiful summer of North America, fast will last from around 3am to 9pm. That’s 18 hours. Compared to equatorial countries—such as Indonesia—which has constant daylight of 12-13 hours, I’ve lived Ramadan my whole life only from 5am to 6.30pm. That’s 12,5 hours.

Main Topic #2: According to Brian, albeit fasting way more hours that I normally should is hard, at least if I survive 18 hours of Ramadan, I can brag to people back in Indo that I’ve fasted longer than them. Meanwhile, according to Islamic and—I’m sure—any other normative laws, boasting is not such a good thing to do. But still. Hehe.

That was a conversation from my first months in Seattle, when the sun rose at 7.30am and set at 4pm. I used to be able to wake up at 7am and still can do my morning prayer, but as time goes and summer approaches, the sun rises earlier and earlier that at one point it legit scared me how early it was. It scared me even more to realize that the shortest day of the year, the summer solstice, would be right in the middle of Ramadan.

Anyway, if any of you don’t get the concept of Ramadan yet, here it is: Ramadan is a month in the Islamic calendar where us Muslims are obligated to fast (the term has been explained above) for the whole month. Many reasons stand behind the ritual, mainly religious observance. However, other accompanying and underlying reasons also claim that fasting acts as a detox to your body from toxins due to food and drink you may have been gluttonously consuming, a method of a healthy diet (if you do it right), and an act of sympathy and self-reflection by putting ourselves in the shoes of those who have none to eat every single day.

The idea of eating and drinking nothing for 18 hours shocks many people (“not even water??????” they would exclaim), even Karen (and many of my fellow Indonesian exchange students’ host parents) was worried and suggested to skip fast instead and make up for it outside of Ramadan. Even though Karen’s background as a Public Health person is more than convincing, but despite the dreadful waking-up-at-2-am-to-eat and waiting-until-9-pm-to-eat-again, I was excited and was totally up for it. No joke, I prepared what I would eat for pre-fast meal to make sure I will survive the day (this surprises both sides of the globe: my parents and Indo friends would say “but how will you survive without RICE??????” implying the stereotypical Indonesian who cannot survive without eating rice; whereas my own host parents were surprised seeing my shopping list for Ramadan pre-fast meals: “Why do you plan this kind of diet only when Ramadan is coming?” implying a commentary to my not-so-healthy eating habits and why I didn’t try to be this healthy from before).

And some people even advised to go with the Arab schedule—following the dawn and dusk time in Saudi Arabia where it was shorter than in Seattle—but all I had in mind was, it’s not every Ramadan you can fast for 18 hours. So why not try? Hehe. hehehe.

One day, an email came from Brian, telling me that he was going to go on a trip with an English photographer Stephen Vaughan, who was doing a research and shots regarding the big Pacific quake in the 1700s (also well-known as the Cascadia earthquake), which was totally in Brian’s expertise. Knowing my interest in photography, he asked if I would like to come with him.

One catch: the trip, of course, was going to be a fully outdoor one, and it would be hours from Seattle, so we would have to leave early in the morning and would arrive back in Seattle at night. The catch was, it would be on Monday, June 6, 2016, which coincides with—you guess it—the first day of Ramadan.

Here’s the only consideration: I would take the offer, no doubt. But will I be able to survive the day while fasting?

Nope, don’t think I would. Plus, the location is like 280 kilometers away from Seattle (do your own math if you do miles). According to Ramadan Fasting 101, if you travel beyond a certain pre-determined range, you will be considered a ‘traveler’ and thus, a ‘traveler’ can omit from fasting (assuming back then in Prophet Muhammad’s times people had to travel by camel or foot across hot hot desert, so no way anyone could survive that without a drink), as long as one makes up for the fast they’ve ‘lost’ during Ramadan at other times, because the fast is nonetheless obligatory.

So, yay. My first day of Ramadan and I skipped fasting already.

I woke up earlier than I usually do and was picked up by Brian. Then we stopped by this coffee shop Zoka, which was right across the bus stop I usually took to get to Rainier Beach when I still lived in Brian’s, and got a taste of, for the first time, its delicious bagel and (a little way too hot) hot chocolate. Then we drove into another coffee shop in (what I inferred as) the middle of nowhere where we met Stephen the photographer, who would then hitched shotgun for our long long ride to Willapa Bay.

It’s not an often occasion that I spent a whole day immersed in nature. We parked by a bridge across a river, and we took out boots down the river delta—

—nope. Didn’t take my boots. All I did was tighten it and hoped for the best that it didn’t come off whenever I stepped because of the extremely thick mud. I got a few close calls, though. And this happened within the first hour we started our work. (well, Brian and Stephen’s work)

Throughout the trip, doing what I should be doing and what I do best—observing and enjoying, I realized that the area of focus Stephen conveyed on this trip was—well, how do I say this without me sounding stupid—layers of soil and rings of tree. You know, those circles you see on a cross section of a tree. I do know people read tree rings to figure out the age of a tree—the more rings, the older. There is even a whole field of study regarding this (Dendrochronology—the scientific method of dating tree rings to the exact year they were formed, Wikipedia). With what Stephen was taking pictures of and Brian’s fiels of expert, layers of soil and tree rings supposedly makes you look back in time and figuring out history.

After shoveling quite a fair part of the river bank, and if you pay close attention to the exposed soil, you can see layers distinguished by various color, from different shades of brown, black, or even dark yellow. Very much like brownies—layered brownies, if that’s a thing. These layers supposedly can tell you the events that happened in this exact location—what made these different colors of soil—like a drought, a huge flood, or a tsunami. If you ask what event caused what type of soil layer—beats me, Brian’s explanation was so thorough and it would’ve been good if not for my brain capacity voluntarily rejects knowledge to some extent, but maybe at the time I was just not paying full attention. At least I got the gist.

He told me, though, the events that happened here was somewhat related to the aforementioned huge Cascadia quake, because Willapa Bay rests at the edge of the Pacific Ocean along the American west coast, that some ocean waves impact affected this area. Correct me if I’m wrong, though.

(picture courtesy of Stephen Vaughan, 2016)

Uh... yeah. Don’t ask me what this picture meant. Brian and Stephen could probably tell a story by looking at this, but nothing came to my head.

From the river bank, we went back to the car and drove some distance to another part of the river. We set our boat, a small one that fit three people with two rowers. Brian packed snacks and told Stephen and me to put our gears in dry bags (dry bags are cool. I like dry bags). Then, off we went along the South Fork Palix River.

It was a nice day in the beginning of summer. The sky was stark blue, showing ever so little signs of clouds. That left us with nothing but our hats to shelter us from the strong ray and heat (given just getting out of a cold season, so to speak, a temp of 20 degrees Celcius was enough to make me sweat on a stroll down Capitol Hill. Even though I didn’t know the temp when we were in Willapa Bay, I dare to bet that as hot as it got, it didn’t even come close to what my home sweet home town Duri has to offer). The breeze blew slow, the water—though not a clear one—so calm it almost seemed like it was staying still, only disturbed by our boat. The surroundings was exquisitely tranquil, the sole obvious sound was the splash of the rowers against the water. I took a deep breath as I rowed on the left side and Brian on the right, three of us taking turns rowing. I was lucky to be offered the front seat. Probably Brian and Stephen had done this kind of thing a lot and decided to give a little poor town girl a chance to enjoy nature.

[source]

Every once in a while, we would stop by a river bank where Brian would dig out a part of the soil to expose the layers within, Stephen would take pictures, all while both of them discussing the meaning of the layers and what story lay behind them. I, understanding jack, took pictures of anything else but the soil layers.

[pic courtesy of Stephen Vaughan]

After a while of rowing, we pulled over. This time not digging out soil, though. We climbed out of the boat and sit by a small meadow to have snacks. Then we walked some more into the forest that surrounds the river. I remembered something Brian said about this forest being a ‘ghost forest’.

Nope. It was definitely not a forest of ghosts. Or maybe it was. Idk.

(brb googling)

Ghost forest. So, uh, from what I could infer at the least is that when the Cascadia earthquake happened, the shift of the tectonic plates caused the land to drop, and that made seawater came in, so the forest was ‘flooded’ with seawater and killed the trees.

So, what gave the forest the nickname ‘ghost forest’ was because it was occupied by a lot of dead tree stumps. How the knowledge of counting tree rings interpret history regarding this specifically, I do not know. I only came to understand as far as these dead tree stumps were victims/witnesses during the Cascadia earthquake, and that could tell us something, supposedly.

That was our next agenda: taking pictures of dead tree stumps and their rings. I wandered around, took pictures myself and played around the marshes while cleaning my shoes (they were soaking with mud to begin with, so why not finish it off by soaking them wet wih fresh, clean water).

[pic courtesy of Stephen Vaughan]

After successfully burning my hand by the power of the sun and Brian’s small-but-super-powerful magnifying glass he used to count tree rings (but somehow had been left to me for this trip) out of sheer curiosity, Stephen was done with his tree stumps and we paddled back to the car. It was late afternoon and was starting to get dark. We prepped the boat back on top of the car and drove to another forest. This one, I think, was not quite ghostly.

It was a dense forest, like any other ordinary forest. We parked by an open path, and walked in until we found this huuuuuuuuge tree. This one, I think, was very much alive and well, unlike the previous models which were practically tree corpses. This alive one, Stephen called a “witness-survivor”, indicated this tree was also a witness to the Cascadia earthquake, but it survived until the day we paid a visit. How they found out this tree was a survivor I had no idea. Maybe because it was huge and thus very old and old enough that it was alive when the quake happened.

It was really huge, though. Why I said it three times, it is because I’m not kidding. I could have gathered a dozen people and we could’ve joined our hands together to hug the tree.

[picture courtesy of Stephen Vaughan, 2016. BTW I don’t have the any comparison pics, but just believe me it was huge]

Well, since the tree was alive we couldn’t have very much slice it open to take a peep at its rings, so Stephen took a picture of its trunk instead. He whipped out this antique-looking camera and set a timer for a slow-shutter shot. The camera used a film, so he made us sure he was going to take every shot with care (and of course, that served as a warning to NOT mess with it—stay out of frame, don’t even move or else you might shake the camera and the picture could come out imperfect).

ALMOST FORGOT. If you wish to see the kinds of pictures Stephen takes, and his end result of this project he worked on with Brian, do check them out here, as I already inserted as courtesy for the pics I use in this post. Cool guy.

It was really getting darker, and by the time we went back to our car it was time to turn on the car headlights. We arrived in Seattle quite late at night.

---

Phew.

So much for the first day of Ramadan. Unforgettable experience, especially coming from me, who is not a huge fan of nature outing, but this one sure was fun.

Alhamdulillah hehe.

Udah, udah gaada alesan bolos puasa lagi. Besoknya udah harus puasa beneran. Dan besok sekolah.

Marhaban ya Ramadan, the holy month which all Muslims are excited about, come at me, bro.

#langkahanakbangsa #willapa bay #ramadan #stephen vaughan

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papersandkeyboards · 5 years

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5/31 to 6/5: (everything else and) Prom

36th WEEK, MAY 31-JUNE 5, 2016.

English class has always been interesting to me. If I think about it, English class (be it here as a first language, or back home as a second language) is always more fun than Indonesian Language class back home. In my class in Rainier Beach, which is IB English Language and Literature, we read classics and Shakespearean plays and interpret those. (don’t get me wrong, I had to read The Scarlett Letter for English Lang class during my short stop in Houston and it was painful, but something about how English teachers’ way of teaching is so interesting and, of course, not boring)

For the semester’s big project, however, we were told to make podcasts. About anything.

I understand that podcasts aren’t much of a thing in Indo, but the simplest way to explain podcasts in a nutshell is audio lectures, audio books, discussions, serial stories, or anything about a topic. And honestly, it’s not even just lectures. You can talk about anything in a podcast (in my Theory of Knowledge class, we listened to a series of online podcasts entitled “Serial”, which covers a story for each season that is told in an interesting and comprehensive way).

But this time, Mrs. Shaw doesn’t limit us to just audio, but we can put visuals in it as well. So, basically saying, our big project was to make an audio or video file talking about things which has our arguments in it. And we could do it individually or in groups of three, max.

Me, being myself who essentially resents group works can be quite an individualist, of course, decided to do the podcast by myself.

And me, being myself who almost always aims to be anti-mainstream, chose a topic that most people would hate and throw rocks to after the first glance.

I argued that zoos aren’t necessarily inhumane to animals. For a side that believed that zoos are downright cruel and disgusting, I stood against them.

Of course I know people aren’t always going to agree with me, but as a (used-to-be) debater, I tried to smother everything in good wording (and some solid arguments can i get a hell yeah), and at the end, all I need to be satisfied was Mrs. Shaw saying “you got a point.” (aka “hmm iya juga ya”).

It was an enjoyable school task to do. Ehe.

Anyway, the next two days, Wednesday and Thursday, were two sacred days we all students acknowledged dearly as Early Release days. The neverending amazement of Seattle has turned me into somewhat a Dora the Explorer, even though it was clear that I have always been a damn-straight home person back home. Would rather stay home that being somewhere else.

But an exchange student logic was that you’re missing a lot of you spend a lot of time at home.

So Kira and I hit the waterfront and rode the Seattle Ferris Wheel.

And the next day I spent by myself, visiting the Seattle Art Museum and indulging my fangirl side by watching X-Men: Apocalypse.

Remember I mentioned once that it was the time of SIFF—Seattle International Film Festival?

Karen, Eric, and I looked up the showtimes and movies, trying to find anything interesting, and of course the choice went to an Indonesian movie, entitled “Copy of My Mind”, so we watched it on Friday evening.

It never occured to me that films in film festivals aren’t those up the regular theaters. Most of them are months old before the time of the festival itself, some even a year old or more. But I guess that’s the point of having film festivals: as a platform to promote films, because almost all of them don’t include big starry actor names, and all of them aren’t in a franchise.

Copy of My Mind, however, was starred by Chico Jericho and Tara Basro (blame was on me for just recognizing these names for the first time), and soon after the movie started, I got why I’ve never heard of this film before back home: it would never be able to air in Indonesia. Simple as that.

As usual, my movie-goer sense was so much indulged in cheap plots of franchise films where every message is shown explicitly during the film with a mandatory happy ending and a bonus of occasional car explosion, so when I saw the ending of Copy of My Mind, I was disappointed. I didn’t get the message.

(later I googled the film and it turned out to be a hard-core social and political satire towards my own country) (so yeah, go watch it guys) (majukan perfilman indonesia)

On Sunday, I was reminded by the remaining days I have by attending Nouha’s goodbye party. She would leave three days after the goodbye party, which is June 8, and I’m still staying here until the end of the month, but surely it sucks to remember that you have to leave eventually.

But the goodbye party was a fun one—sliders, chips, other typical tasty American barbecue snacks in the backyard, people bringing going-away presents, and of course, pictures.

(I swear the pictures were up somewhere but now I couldn’t find them)

---

Aight. That’s quite a brief (???) summary of how the first 5 days of the week went. Whereas I usually said the fun part comes in the weekend, this WHOLE week was full of fun and things to do (thank God for early release). HOWEVER, though, however,

this weekend was Prom.

That’s right, everyone, you heard it. The infamous American High School Prom.

....

Gitu aja sih. Ehe. OKAY. Prom in Beach... was definitely UNLIKE Proms in other, harshly saying, white rich school everywhere else. But the part where people ask other people to Prom, well, that was done everywhere, I guess.

I was walking the hallway when Rebecca and the others stopped by and Rebecca asked me, “Nabila, who are you going to Prom with?”

“...????? I don’t know??? No one asked me to.”

“It’s America, you can do whatever you want. Why don’t you ask somebody?”

yaela yang bener aja lu dasar ampas kepala.

Jadi gini sih. The way Prom works (or at least in my school) is that only the seniors are invited, unless the seniors ask somebody else from other grades—juniors, sophomores, freshmen, or people from other school—to be their prom date, then those persons are also invited. And I know Kira is a junior, so I asked Kira as my prom date so she can experience prom and everybody is happy. Also because Rebecca and Emily were committees so there are fellow juniors there. yaela padahal karena emang gaada yang ngajak dan akhirnya ngajak temen sendiri supaya tidak garing

I didn’t take too much trouble setting up a promposal—Prom proposal—unlike those who are seriously dating—a friend from Theory of Knowledge class made a poster and got his football team to promposed his girlfriend, it was very sweet—and because I was an awkward unromantic piece of shit, I asked Kira to be my prom date during stretching before softball game.

She was appalled. At least she wasn’t repelled, which was good. Good thing she didn’t expect a canon of flowers or posters or an orchestra playing for her to be promposed.

And that’s the story on how I got my prom date.

Which was totally not unusual, because at Prom night I found out that Alex asked Justin, a junior, so that Justin can experience Prom with his senior fellows too. Zion, who is gay, asked Nina out of friendship. A lot of people do that that night. Many people even went with their squads instead of being in pairs.

When Kira was scrolling through numerous online shops to find a dress, I bought mine in Nordstrom Rack—which was basically Nordstrom but they sell old stuff that were cheaper (because I didn’t feel like spending hundreds of bucks on a dress I’m gonna wear, like, once or twice for my whole life). Not only I bought it in Nordstrom Rack, I also bought it last Febuary, which was before Winter Ball. That being said, I used the same dress as what I wore for Winter Ball. Which was good, because I didn’t want to waste money on dress I would most likely use once. The admission ticket was around $40 anyway, while other schools my AFS friends were in charged around $80-100 for it. sekolah saya miskin emang, tapi asik.

Sementara ada temen-temen saya yang ‘melamar Prom’ pakai poster, bunga, permen karet (dia nawarin sekotak permen karet gitu trus pas dibuka ada tulisannya ‘Prom?’ trus dikasih bunga, lucu abis sih), ada juga temen yang asal ngajak cewek manapun yang kebetulan lewat, dan kalau ditolak, geser dikit trus ngajak cewek lain terdekat. But then again, I didn’t know how significant a prom date is—whether being asked to be prom date equals being asked to be one’s girl/boyfriend, or is it just a one-time occasion thing?

Whatever it was, I do know that at least Prom in Rainier Beach High School doesn’t shun single people. Yay. Nabila can go to Prom without worries.

HOWEVER.

However, around a week before Prom, I found out that Indonesian Students’ Association of Seattle University (ISASU), which was like a couple blocks from my house, was holding some sort of event, and guess who came as a guest star.

....

NO.

I DO NOT LIKE HOW THIS TURNS OUT.

I REALLY DON’T.

After contemplating which one is rarer: to experience a classic American high school Prom night every exchange student wants to be a part of or meet a massive Indonesian dazzling pop-star in person, I did what I thought was best for me: I chose Prom and let go of Raisa, with the arrogance of “I’m Indonesian, she’s Indonesian, we’ll meet again but I only have this one chance for Prom” without realizing that that will least likely to happen.

I came to Kira’s house on Saturday afternoon, June 4, 2016, and ate Indomie for pre-Prom dinner (Prom dinner paling tidak modal sepanjang sejarah manusia). Then we had a photoshoot in which Kira and I look like a happy couple of lovers. Then Laura drove us to the venue. Which was a not-so-big space in SoDo but enough for the whole class lah.

(pic credit to whoever took this)

Long story short, it was fun. At first it wasn’t really because both Kira and I did not know many seniors despite some people I recognize from classes I am in, so we talked with Emily and Rebecca. Then people I know started to show up—Nina, Justin, Zion, Alex, Gretar, and others—and we danced. What was fun about it was that everyone didn’t dance with their dates, but mixed in into big groups of friends and was having a pure hyped-fun time instead of a romantic one. (not to brag but Nina and I did some duets and we were killing it) (kapan lagi bisa hacep dan meliar kaya begini ya)

The King and Queen of Prom, instead of voting, was done by a raffle (maybe so that everyone can get a chance instead of a cliche competition of popularity). Rony got King and Antoneyah got Queen. There was also two photo booths, an elegant one with a sofa and a fun one like a photobox along with hats and fake mustache and other stuff you could use.

(’twas Rebecca, Emily, Rony the playboy, me, and Kira)

(terus baru 3 tahun kemudian AFS menggerayangkan gerakan AFSPride)

(mampos kenapa w pendek sekali, bahkan dalam standar orang indonesia)

(tUH udah naik tangga pun masi lebih pendek)

THEN, the event continued for whoever wants to join everyone to the Seattle Ferris Wheel, while free tickets were provided! We sporadically went to the Ferris Wheel by Uber—some people didn’t come due to curfew and probably an after-party somewhere (I finally convinced Kira to join after many considerations. Since the Wheel was closer to my house, she agreed to crash in my house after).

Lucu banget aih. Anak-anak remaja pakai baju-baju bagus, sebagain berpasang-pasangan, dan sebagian lagi bergerombol kelompok, dan rame-rame masuk ke kereta Bianglala.

(’twas Gretar, Alex, Justin, me, Kira, Zion, and Mohamed)

Kapan lagi kaya gini huhuhu seneng.

It was—I don’t remember—a bit after midnight? After we were done Kira and I took an Uber back to my house, had ice cream in my bed while watching Monsters University, and fell asleep halfway through the movie (and my laptop ran out of battery).

---

Aaaand that’s probably as close I could ever be with Raisa: in the same city, neighboring neighborhood.

But at least, thinking back, I would not trade the experience I just had with anything else.

Salam dari penghadir Prom Rainier Beach High School dengan style hijab paling cantik (karena memang satu-satunya),

Nabila Safitri.

#langkahanakbangsa #rbhs #prom

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papersandkeyboards · 5 years

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5/23-30: A Week of Hangouts

35th WEEK, MAY 23-30, 2016.

Seniors at Rainier Beach High School skip so much in general, I thought there would be no Senior Skip Day like in other schools.

Speaking of which—Senior Skip Day, I guess you could say, is some sort of unofficial agreement between seniors to skip the whole school day on an agreed day. And yes—it is indeed a thing, apparently.

But as I said, seniors—if not students in general—at RBHS skip so much, it doesn’t seem like Senior Skip Day would be a thing to be excited about. In my fourth period—which is IB Lang and Lit for seniors—there are suppose to be, like, 24 kids or something, but there are only 10ish students in average every day. One day the number hit 14, Mrs. Shaw got so excited she could’ve cried.

Tuesday, another sparsely populated fourth period. We were in the middle of something when a couple of seniors got into the classroom and handed out papers to us that turned out to be a permission slip to go to Seward Park on Friday.

“...what’s this?” I asked Imi.

“Oh, it’s Senior Skip Day,” she said.

Well—turned out we did have a Senior Skip/Ditch Day. Unless that it was school-approved, chaperoned-by-teacher Skip Day... quote on quote.

Call me a nerd, but I didn’t want to skip first period on Friday. If it were a normal first period I would probably be delighted to skip, but since mid-end May until mid-June, there’s this big event called Seattle International Film Festival, which is one of the most famous film festivals in the world. A whole bunch of films from some one hundred countries around the world, different styles, different genres. One of the films from USA is called “The First Girl I Loved”, and the director was coming to my first period on Friday. The world of filmmaking has always been interesting to me, so no way I would pass this opportunity, although he wasn’t a big block-buster movie director.

So I went to first period. Which I think was worth going. However, on the way to and during second period, I started getting down for not going to Skip Day. I didn’t even turn in the permission slip. I was so ready just to skip fourth and sixth on my own and finish reading The 5th Wave in the library (ok now I really have no defense if you call me a nerd).

I walked to third—Tomchick—and welcomed by his question, “Aren’t you going to Senior Field Trip?”

I shrugged. “I don’t want to miss first period.”

“You can still go. They haven’t even started yet.”

That lit up a speck of light in my face.

I still endured third period, then went to the Activity Center as Tomchick instructed, where he said I would find a ride there. I ran into Mr. Henderson instead—Henderson and Tomchick were the chaperones. I asked him, then he told me to go to the main office since there were also other seniors who would be getting a ride to Seward Park. I met Sadia there, she turned her and my permission slips, then get a ride with her and Naimo to Seward Park.

In front of the park, right at the sign, a white poster that says “RBHS Seniors—follow the balloon!”. There were balloons tied up to road signs along the way, until we found a clearing filled with people.

Seward Park is a really nice park. It’s wide, it has open plains and tree-shadowed plains, benches, a shelter, a big swing set. I saw Mr. Christopholus by the shelter preparing the grill. The tables in the shelter were filled with unopened food, drinks, and utensils, and the benches outside were packed with backpacks. I got out of the car and Price shouted my name... which I totally didn’t expect would happen since we never really talk.

Anyway, I looked around. I saw people in the grassfield, playing frisbee. Some people in the shelter. Some people by the benches playing ping pong and bean bag toss. I put my backpack on one of the benches and slowly joined the others playing bean bag toss. Me, Nina, Alex, Jeremiah, Rony, Mr. Jefferson—the ceramic teacher—and later, Bobby.

Honest opinion—in second period, I was so close to giving up and hoping I won’t miss anything. I thought it would be boring (since when I asked what’s going to be there, Tomchick said “just hanging out”), I thought there would only be people I wouldn’t connect with (baca: anak-anak berandal hits), but it turned out to be really fun. Seriously, it was really fun—it was worth skipping a whole school day for.

(playing this game Tomchick dubbed “Chinese numbers”--which, apparently, is also a game I happen to know later back in Indo, also dubbed “angka Cina”)

Kapan lagi bisa bolos bareng-bareng seangkatan? Kalau niat sih, aku juga bisa bikin ginian di angkatan sekolah Indo. Bedanya 1) bakal susah buat ngerayu semuanya, dan 2) kepsek dan guru bakal marah besar sebesar-besarnya, rapor/SKHU bisa ditahan, seangkatan bisa dijemur seharian pas upacara (which isn’t new to us, hufft), dan beragam jenis kemurkaan guru lainnya. Belum lagi di angkatan memang ada anak yang superduper baik dan santun dan 99% bakalan nggak mau dirayu (mengacu ke poin 1).

Oh, satu lagi. Kalau memang kejadian, aku—sebagai anak AFS dan pioneer ‘hari bolos’—bisa lebih berabe lagi.

Uh. Okay.

I should’ve realized things like this always have an advantage—and one big major advantage that I would totally skip school for is getting to know people. There are people I have the same class with, people that also went on the Salish Sea field trip but were in a different group than me so I didn’t really talk to them, people who were just in the hallways—on this day I got to talk to them if I haven’t, and if I have, I got to socialize with them more (this might sound petty to you social butterflies, but as an introvert, I felt happy with it).

So yeah. Thanks for that.

Aside from that, this week really has been a week of hangouts—referring to the title. With friends, with family, and with myself.

Hey. I love me some me-time.

I wrote about this in the last post(s). Last week, I watched CA: Civil War, but before then, I had an hour to kill, so I went to Barnes and Noble. And I discovered this book, read the back of it, read a few first pages, and just like that, I was hooked.

Since then, I’ve been going to Barnes and Noble just to read the book without actually buying it. (well only three times since it’s a short read) On Monday I went there and finished the whole thing. I was dying. I went home empty-hearted, needing a closure.

(please refer to the previous post)

Not a perfect book, but then again, I’m not a perfect book reviewer, I was mostly just there for the emotions and intense storyline. If you like intense thriller books that wring your soul out of emotion, you probably will like it.

(“why not borrow it from the library?” you might ask—well, it’s a newly published book, that’s why, plus I looked it up on Seattle Public Library website and found jack)

On Wednesday, Kira and Tania and Victoria and I hung out downtown. Mostly because Tania is leaving on June 8th and Tania and Victoria’s school is close to my and Kira’s school so we gotta hang out after school at least once. So we did.

And on Thursday, Livia (this Indonesian girl I met in SCC) and I went to Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle Center. A good catch-up session, plus she’s transferring to San Francisco after this summer quarter.

Friday, after that senior skip day, my host parents and I went to Whidbey Island with Tommy and Anna—their friends—and their kids and rent a vacation house for the long weekend (Monday, May 30, is Memorial Day—which means no school and work). We didn’t go there right after my school day, so even though it’s not too long of a ride, we got there at around 9.30pm, where Tommy and Anna and their kids were asleep already.

In the morning, I woke up, went downstairs, and was welcomed by a 4-year-old and 2-year-old running around the house excitedly, stark naked.

“Naked baby!” that’s exactly what they said, over and over, until like an hour later Anna successfully put a shirt on Colin, the 2-y.o.

Cute kids. Typical loud, running-around, cute kids. Good thing the vacation house we rented had a huge sand box as its front yard (apart from the fact that the houses around were facing the beach, where there was... well, sand), plus the pails and sandcastle-making tools and all. There was also a bunch of tree trunks which unexpectedly formed some sort of cave (or maybe people in the past made it on purpose?) in which Colin and Anna liked to play.

It was probably the chillest weekend I’ve ever had. No planned activities, mostly spent walking along the coast, playing with the kids, reading (and finishing) my book, chilling in the front yard under the bright sun but cold breeze, and tagging along with Karen to shop for groceries and other trinkets (<--referring to the time she took me to a quilt shop).

OH WAIT. We also spend the nights watching Lord of the Rings. Hehehe.

Another thing that is the highlight of this weekend was how it has planted the first seed of what would affect my future life decisions since, which I will always be grateful for. But that part shall come later.

---

There it was. A week of hangouts. With fellow seniors, with AFS friends, with Indonesian friend, with my host family, with little kids, and of course, the most important, with myself.

Salam dari pelajar yang bermental main (in my defense, guru aku pernah bilang kalau punya mental main itu penting!),

Nabila Safitri.

#langkahanakbangsa #afs friends #RBHS

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papersandkeyboards · 5 years

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5/20-22: Time Getting Short? Time to Get Ice Cream

(STILL) 34TH WEEK, MAY 20-22, 2016.

Once upon a day, I was bored, because I had bought a ticket for a movie I’d been dying to watch (but as of now I forgot what it was) (it might have been Captain America) but I had an hour or more to kill. So I went down to the mall’s Barnes and Noble.

Barnes and Noble is one of the best bookstore I’ve ever encountered, and the reason why it’s so special to my eyes was because I couldn’t find one in even the biggest mall in my beloved home country. Since the best bookstore franchise in the country, although great, is not so reliable in providing me with non-translated books, I counted three most reliable bookstores for such things: Periplus, which are mainly spread in big airports throughout the country, thus the most easily accessible for me; Kinokuniya, which is basically Japanese but is great for two things—legit English books and legit cute Japanese stuff (including full-on non-translated Japanese comic books, but I’m not a manga fan to be freaked out by that fact); and Books & Beyond, which provides a whole shelf of classic English literature but too bad my interest isn’t really in Jane Eyre or Moby Dick and their friends.

Bottomline is, if Indonesia had a Barnes and Noble, I would totally freak.

Anyway, as for the lack of money (I’d also been thinking about space in the suitcase—what’s the use of all the great books I’d bought if I couldn’t fit them all in or if they could cost me a lot of bucks for luggage overweight?), I, as usual, strolled around the shelves, sifting sheepishly through the New Arrivals and Best Seller section. (one fact about me: I like to read but I’m aware that I don’t read as much as most people do—I just like to hang out in bookstores more than actually buying books)

I found a book and read the back cover. For some reason, I was interested, so I took the uncovered-by-plastic-wrap book to the nearest chair and started reading.

Next thing I know, I was hooked. Real bad.

The next visits to Barnes and Noble after that were to solely read the very book. It took me like three visits to finish the not-so-thick book, as I thought about getting caught reading the whole book without buying it if I stayed too long. I didn’t realize how badly I was going to be hooked to the book. The suspense (of the book, not from avoiding the store workers) was so real and I stayed in book hangover for days after. I loved it.

But if I loved the book so much, why didn’t I just buy it in the first place?

You see, the reason why was because I, at first, only wanted to see if the book was any good to spend my hour before watching that movie in the first visit. I didn’t want to waste my money on a book I would find disappointing at the end. Turned out I was wrong. Book was awesome. But now that I’ve read the whole thing, I didn’t feel like buying it anymore.

Sorry for the author, but I gotta say, kudos on that novel, I’m not a keen book reviewer but overall I praise it, and let me just say that I’ve been trying to find your other works and found jack and was a bit disappointed by that.

Oh, the book was entitled “The Truth”, by Jeffry W. Johnston, by the way.

Moving on to the next big agenda besides Multi and reading off books in a bookstore without buying them (God bless unwrapped new books), is the End-of-Stay AFS Orientation. It was from Friday to Sunday, and it was in a place called Port Townsend, and to reach it from Seattle one must take a ferry from Downtown Seattle to Bainbridge Island, and then take a car for some hours before reaching the campsite.

It’s a different kind of fun to hang out with other exchange students. We had sessions that everyone silently agreed were boring (sorry for any AFS volunteers who see this, but c’mon, even my local chapter back home did way better job in orientations). We played games of capture-the-flag, but instead of flag we had baseball mittens. That went crazy, by the way. We were awful at setting up territories and rules and someone had their ankle twisted or something. We played catch and soccer and badminton for a while before it started raining.

Oh, wait, a piece of memory just came in. My session group was fun, maybe because we held one session in the boys’ bunk, in which everyone can sit on the bed and get comfy, and because we had fun volunteers as our group leader (spoiler alert—and sorry for those who might take offense—I meant young, fun volunteers, which we all could relate better and they were more laid-back on telling stuff that older volunteers would not).

After rain was another session by the fire (this one was particularly not boring, though, haha). Each of us had to say what did we learn during the exchange—like what did we especially like about it that we decided to bring it home, what changed of us throughout, usual stuff but interesting. Some people brought up the idea of healthy lifestyle (apparently we all lived in a healthy part of the state, I guess). The Europeans all brought up the point that Americans are friendly (i.e. in grocery stores) and they wanted to bring that ‘warm’ attitude back to their countries. (except Italy, I guess? ...because Italians are already so friendly in general) Some people also mentioned how are they changed throughout the year—healthier, stronger (mentally), more outgoing, all the good stuff.

(among other points, I brought up the idea of waste separation and recycling that I came to love, but who knows that one small idea in mind could steer my one of biggest decisions of my lifetime)

Then the volunteers held a small quiz, through which I earned an extravagant American flag-themed LED glasses (which I traded with a friend for a notebook and a pair of 3D glasses). Our group of exchange students seem to have an obsession on hot chocolate, and particularly whipped cream, so what we’ve been doing if nothing else was hogging on the whipped cream and hot chocolate. We also wrote things in our language on a blackboard in the session room. We walked around the site in the morning, passing through people’s vacation homes and by this old military site with unused cannons, and we ended up at a beach beyond the bushes and took pictures.

capek, Mak.

After that session by the fire, at night, we played with our given glowsticks and had s’mores. Classic.

On the last night (that’s Saturday night), some of us girls decided to walk farther, way down the site, through the long and winding down road to another beach. I remembered something about it being illegal (as in we were not really allowed to go down there or at a certain distance from the cabin or whatever), but I guess that was exactly what made it much more fun.

We left Sunday morning.

Tania and Nouha carried their home country’s flag around so people can sign it. Raya passed around Indonesian-themed keychains. I also carried my flag around, asked people to sign it, and gave them wayang—shadow puppets—bookmark afterwards. (the funny thing is that Raya gave me an Indonesian keychain and I also gave her the wayang bookmark, because who would’ve guessed I, or she, would have someone from the same country in their chapter, hahaha) It’s not like that day was the last day we saw each other—there’s still departure day—but YES students—Tania, Nouha, Soha, Mubasshira, Raya—would leave earlier than us (around the first week of June), so it WAS the last time we would see the YES kids on an AFS orientation.

It took another 2-3 hours in total to get back from Port Townsend to Seattle, but right afterwards Cece, Hinaho, and Nouha planned to go to an ice cream festival which was apparently held in Capitol Hill, which was like, only 8 blocks from my house. And who on earth would miss free or discounted ice cream? Hell yeah I tagged along.

We got there to only find that the line to the ice cream trucks were as long as my list of never-ending responsibilities, so we gave up free ice cream and got paid ice cream from other ice cream shop instead. ... gpp lah ya yang penting makan es krim gitu.

All in all, this week seemed like a long week, writing-wise, but it was because there was so much happening (BOTH on weekdays and the weekend). ‘Twas the week I did something I had never done before, stepping yet farther out of the comfort zone, and receiving the utmost fun at the end.

...maaf euy kalau cheesy abis. But it essentially reminded me of why I went on an exchange, because the chance of performing a collectively-performed traditional dance alone or being in a night color run do NOT come where I come from. Or interacting with exchange students in general. Karena di kota asal di Indo simply nggak bakal datang kesempatan nari saman di depan umum sendirian dan ikut color run. Dan berinteraksi dengan anak-anak exchange in general.

Lagian bukannya emang itu salah satu tujuan internal ikut pertukaran pelajar? Bukan ke arah seneng-senengnya sih, tapi lebih ke expanding comfort zone nya itu. Sekalian belajar budaya negara lain, lebih dari budaya negara tujuan.

Salam dari satu-satunya orang yang ikut color run dan hacep sampai tengah malem yang pakai jilbab,

Nabila Safitri.

#langkahanakbangsa #afs friends

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papersandkeyboards · 6 years

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5/16-19: [LONG POST ALERT] Here’s One Reason Why You Should Be an Exchange Student and Go to Rainier Beach: Multicultural Night

[EXTREMELY LONG POST ALERT]

34th WEEK, MAY 16-19, 2016.

Rainier Beach High school is a superdupermegagiga diverse place. Southeast Seattle, they say, could be the most diverse neighborhood in the US. Let’s see what countries the people from RBHS are from, as far as I know:

we got a lot of Africans: Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Kenyan, Senegali, South Africans, Nigerians. a lot of Asians: Vietnamese, Filipino, Chinese, a few Laotians. African Americans. Caucasians (as in white Americans). Polynesian a.k.a. Pacific Islanders (Samoa, Tahiti, I guess). Central and South Americans. Caribbeans. Native Americans. And a mix between two or more of those roots.

And, if it counts, three exchange students: one Indonesian, one German, one Icelandic. Pure breed.

Which makes this school so interesting. Hearing students speak languages that you don’t know in the hallways is no surprise. Recognizing names that are uncommon—at least in the US. Making jokes about white people.

In fact, there’s this one time two Somalians in my English class debated about tribes in Somalia. And apparently a conversation about different Somalian tribes could turn violent. Mohamed literally backed away because he said he was afraid for his life when Anisaa picked up the big-ass class hole punch.

Meanwhile, Abdullahi, the only person in the class who speaks Somalian besides the other two, only laughed, because he said this whole thing that was happening started when they debated about food.

Anyway, back to my main point. I found out that RBHS has a big annual event going on, and that is Multicultural Night—people call it Multi for short. I never really paid attention to it until half of our team were missing during softball practice because of Multi meeting. After a struggle that I thought I would never face, I got on contact with Ms. Pam, the woman in charge. The reason it’s so hard to get her contact is because she isn’t even a school staff.

I called her in the evening after softball practice. She told me how she started this thing since 1984 and it’s been a big thing for Rainier Beach High School. She told me to meet her on a Tuesday after school in Mrs. Street’s class (the little theater) so I could show her what I’m gonna do for Multi.

Which was sort of a problem.

See, at first, I thought it is an important thing to learn something from your country that you can perform in front of everybody. I don’t know when, but somehow I was just convinced that I will. So I did learn something. For sure, I’m not a singer, so I cross that off my list of things I could do to show what Indonesia is like through art. I... maybe could play a song from the piano? But that would mean that there has to be a piano.

I can’t do shadow puppets. That’s for sure, for definitely sure. I can’t even speak Javanese properly, nor I know any puppet story well enough to tell it to everyone through this intricate performance of shadow puppet story-telling.

I sighed somewhere in an empty space of my mind, then I browsed YouTube for some Indonesian dance I could learn by myself and in a short time. Tari Zapin. Laksmana Raja di Laut. The only living memory of me dancing in front of public was to that song, way back in kindergarten. Like hell I remembered what my moves were in kindergarten. Long story short, I found a video and with determination and time, I learned how to Zapin.

But then came Seattle Central Community College.

Seeing no prospect of doing Zapin or even a presentation as long as I still go to SCC, I stopped practicing. I think I only practice once since I got to the US. I didn’t even remember what for.

And then fate came and here I was.

I supposed I could try to remember the steps for Zapin, but a fraction of my mind told me that it would be boring for people. The only other dance I can do is Saman. The problem is a) Saman is a collective dance—maybe you need at least 6 people to do it, and b) Saman is done fully sitting down, which goes back to point a), which means it would be really lame if I were to do it alone on the stage, sitting down the whole time, and c) I never really performed Saman. I never knew the steps properly, I just hung out a lot with people who do. My friends were performing in 8th and 9th grade so I tagged along during the practices. But I never really do it properly for the face of the public.

Uuuuuuhhhh.

At the end, after a long process of thinking and weighing, I settled on Saman, because I think Saman has more element of surprise, and is not like any other graceful dances where you sway along the stage. It’s just... different. Anti-mainstream. Because that’s kind of the way I am.

I crossed my finger and found an old video of my upperclassmen doing saman when I was in 8th grade, they were 9th. Because if you YouTube it, you will find possibly no identical version of Saman—some will be really simple and some will be really intricate and long, and this old video, this is the version I have lived with. I learned the moves for this particular version, and thank God I found it, otherwise I would have to learn Saman from scratch and that would not be good.

Anyway, I looked for the correct lyrics, then I perfected it, then on a Tuesday I went to the Little Theater after school. I peeked my head at the door and this lady was looking at me and asked firmly, “Are you from Indonesia?”

Ms. Pam was a small old lady, her gray-white hair tied up in a bun. Big round glasses covered her face. She didn’t smile a lot, but when she did, it shone with sweetness. What I didn’t expect was that there were also some people there. Mrs. Street also. But I had to do it—later on I’m gonna do it in front of hundreds of people.

After I performed, Ms. Pam told me to shorten it then told me to go practice during advisory on Thursday.

Only I couldn’t make it. Softball game.

However, the day after I met Ms. Pam in that little theater, I went to see Mr. Robinson, the music teacher, under Ms. Pam’s orders. We needed to work out the sounds because, among other reasons, I had no background music but the one I’d sing, and so, Mr. Robinson figured an accompanying drum would be good. He said that Rony Nunez should do it and I should get in touch with him.

I know Rony. He was in my third period in the first semester, he is in my fourth, and sometimes he comes to Tomchick’s room at lunch. He is an unbelievably outgoing guy. He is African Guatemalan (and he is really good at Tango), and, when I told him about drumming for me Saman, he said confidently that the drums beat in his heart.

Which is a good thing, really, because all he had to do was seeing me dancing, and once he gets ahold of the rhythm and everything, it looks like a piece of cake for him. In fact, I don’t think we ever had an exact same rehearsal because the dude just kept improvising, aside from the definite beat marks at certain parts.

After the one on Thursday that I missed, we had three rehearsals: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday is D-day. Now it seems that we don’t have a lot of time left.

Practice was held in the auditorium, a.k.a Performing Arts Center, or simply the PAC. There I found out that this event isn’t all-traditional like you would expect in a ‘multicultural night’. Most of the part is, though, we got Somalian, Ethiopian, Polynesian, Latin American, and many more. I know the Filipino students have been working out on something, like a dance that involves bamboo sticks, which the concept sounds oddly familiar to me (maybe there is a version of it in Malaysia or Indonesia, I suppose...?).

And boy, as what an impressed Rainier Beach High School students would say, they were filthy.

I considered staying a while after my rehearsal to see them stepping and hopping ferociously under the chase of clicking bamboo sticks.

Besides that, there are also performances from the Vikettes (the school dance club), the drama club, some students doing hip-hop dance, and a student singing a recent pop song. Not all traditional, but it is indeed a culture, isn’t it?

During the week of the multi (May 16-20) was a spirit week entitled “Multi Week”—it didn’t demand a lot of crazy things like a common spirit week, but even though it’s only like ‘Monday, wear green; Tuesday, wear black’, still, almost no one did it. The only person I think I saw did it all was Justin. Haha, itu anak school spiritnya ga ketulungan emang.

The alleys were filled with decorations... well, almost filled. I suppose a hallways got its own theme of decoration, like how the hallway where Sr. Cadenas’ and the Special Ed rooms are in was filled with flags of European countries made by Special Ed kids. Doors of classrooms in another hallway had posters of Africa. A hallways where Ms. Yip’s and Mrs. Wong’s classrooms are in—I dubbed it the ‘Science hallway’—is Asian-themed. I was walking to Mrs. Wong’s one day and saw this colorful paper fish hung at the ceiling.

Thursday, May 19, the day of Multi, was ‘Rep Your Culture’ day in spirit week. It was the only day I participated in this spirit week. I wore a batik shirt to school.

Then I found out in break time that Ms. Black was wearing this African unisex dress—she’s not African but she borrowed it from Mrs. Shaw. In fourth period I noticed Mrs. Shaw was wearing the same thing—an African dress, which actually was her church dress back in her church in Chicago, but the dress originated in Nigeria. She had another extra and Rony tried it. Then he stand confidently in front of the class, chanted, and did this:

There was no Multi practice today, but, during Advisory, I told Mrs. Harris anyway that I’m leaving for Multi practice and went to Kira’s advisory instead. Her advisory is in the music room, with Mr. Robinson, and I’ve heard rants on how they never did anything in Advisory and everyone is just immersed in themselves. She was right. The room was incredibly loud with Mr. Robinson’s drumming and the other’s playing the piano or singing shower-style or just chatting. I saw Kira sitting alone with her violin, which is what she always tells me she does. I put my backpack beside hers and fooled around with the electric piano.

That was for a while, until Rony came out of nowhere and dragged me into one of Robinson’s recording rooms and we practiced there, me dancing and him drumming and unconsciously blowing my eardrums off.

After school was dinner provided by the school for Multi contributors. There was also another separate dinner for guests later in the day. After dinner (which I think was a wee too early to be called dinner), I went to change, then meet Eric in the cafeteria real quick. Then I went to the PAC to finally, for the first time, check sounds. They told me before that I would get a head mic and a regular wireless mic in front of me for my hands.

Should’ve done that earlier, really. Because the mic sucked. When I bowed down, the mic on my face and the one on the floor got too close it caused this high-pitched ringing sound. We tried different ways of adjusting the mic, but it didn’t work the way we wanted. Finally Diego, who was in charge of the sounds, sort of gave up and hoped for the best when I performed later on, saying that the head mic was unpredictable, it could work one time and couldn’t the next.

The clock was approaching 7, people started pouring in to the PAC. All the performers were gathered in a room backstage, each of the performers were given a stem of rose, briefed real quick, then we marched upstairs to the back entrance of the PAC, lining up, waiting for cue that seemed to never come.

When it did—which was some time after Imani sang the national anthem—we marched down the PAC through the aisle in between the audience seats, carrying our signs (as for me, my flag), while the African drum ensemble beating hard on the stage. We went backstage while the drum line continued for a while. After that, the line of performers went after another without any announcement (since it’s mentioned in the program).

The first after the drum line was Rainier Beach High School Band and Southeast Seattle Community Youth Orchestra, which was Robinson’s music kids and some younger kids (like, elementary young), playing various instruments including strings and brasses, performing the song “I Feel Good” by James Brown. This junior was looking sharp with his white suit, singing.

After that was China: three girls in red dresses performing a Chinese dance with long fans. It was graceful and soothing.

After that was two sets of hip-hop dances: the first one was these two Filipino girls dancing to Fifth Harmony’s “Worth It”, and the second set was three students (Katera, Monte, and I forgot who the other one was) dancing in white shirts and blacklight paint all over their bodies, the stage smothered with blacklight. Keren abis.

I would probably enjoy it more it if weren’t for my turn to come next. Someone gave me the head mic backstage after we marched down, and told me that it was muted, so I had to unmute it right before I performed. That’s all I have to do. Don’t even mess with it since once it’s unmuted, the audience could hear you.

Well, the second before I walked to the stage, I pressed the unmute button, and tapped the mic lightly.

“The head mic was unpredictable, it could work one time and couldn’t the next.”

I tapped the mic a little bit harder and I still heard nothing.

The freakin head mic could have had a thousand other days where it could make itself not working for any reason, and it had chosen this very day.

Anjir.

Alright. Alright. Alright.

Oh shit.

Alright. Alright.

I continued walking, turned my body facing the audience, the lights blinded me so I could barely see the audience. That’s good. Not being able to see who sees you gives a little less of embarrassment and nervousness. A flick of memory came back, when I stood on this stage in front of the public for the first time was like three-four months ago, when I was green, performing a monologue from theater class.

I turned my head slightly to look at Rony, who sat on the opposite side of the stage from the side that I came in, with this tall African drum between his thighs, he gave me a thumb up.

I nodded. Facing the audience. Took a deep breath because the damn head mic didn’t work and now I had to sing louder than I wanted. Ugh.

I swear to God that was the first time I actually sang in public. The most public I’ve ever gotten before was probably a test of singing the national anthem back in seventh grade, and no, I’m not proud of that. I always think of myself not a person who would sing—at least in public, since duh, we know we all sing in the shower.

But the thing is you don’t need a golden voice to sing Saman lyrics, because most of them weren’t that melodious, plus, you’d be moving around, the beauty of your voice and articulation was probably not your main focus.

I liked the applause in between sections of my dance. It is indeed consisted of different short sections, and whenever I ended a section and they applaud, I got the feeling that they thought I was done.

Sike.

They hadn’t even seen the last part, the best part, my favorite part, which is a series of fast-tapping on the thighs and the floor which I like to dub ‘hand-rapping’. I remember I was truly mermerized by my upperclassmen doing it when I saw it for the first time on our school’s cultural festival, and I’d like to see the audience as amazed as I did back then.

Rony himself was on fire. I could feel it.

After we were done, we walked to the wrong side of the stage, but I didn’t care anyway since it’s too awkward to turn back. High-fiving people. Happily high-fiving Rony for us being awesome. The next performance was Afro-Caribbean dance, and I didn’t see most of it because I was moving to the audience area, where it was heavily packed, so I stood by the entrance for a few performances, then I spotted Kira on the stairs of the aisle, then I shuffled up and sat there for the remainder of the night.

The next performance was Sharmaine, a senior, singing Tori Kelly’s “Paper Hearts”. The auditorium went total darkness with the only spotlight on her, and after a minute of her singing, the audience started pulling out their phones and waving their flashlights in their phone, which made this beautiful formation of waving stars, accompanying her sweet voice and calming back sound.

Asique.

The next one was Oromo dance from Africa, which was a group of girls doing some serious hair flip.

The drama club did a short skit in which most of it was an accapella song about moving on. Remember about the head mic being unpredictable? We thought we were good when those things work on them on Wednesday, but as it did with me tonight, those didn’t work on them too.

Next, Somalian dance, which was pretty simple to my eyes but the dancers seemed like they enjoyed it so much, so it was sort of enjoyable in some way.

(no pic bc i think i forgot to take one)

The Phillippines. I was doped. The dancers were four: Raffy and Mica wearing their traditional clothing in red, and Alex and Andrea in yellow. It was purely traditional, simple hopping and clapping to supposedly traditional Filipino music (cmiiw). The bamboo sticks were controlled in a simple but swaying rhythm. It was interesting even at the beginning. But this part was just only the beginning. At some point the music stopped suddenly and the stage went black and the four hassled into the backstage. Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us” started playing, and the bamboo stick controllers started clicking the bamboo sticks a bit more fiercely, and a bit more, and a bit more, and the dancers came back to the stage with different outfits and started hopping a bit more fiercely, and a bit more, and a bit more, until finally it was a perfect hand-eye-feet coordination between all the personnels that no one dared talking and the audience were left in awe. At least I was.

Now that’s what I call a perfect aculturation between traditional and modern ways. For real.

Then the audience were brought into a different kind of exciting mood by an extremely suave performance of Latino dance.

After that we took a turn to the Pacific Islands, where the girls brought in calming, beach-vibe-y Polynesian traditional dance. Think of, like, Lilo and Stitch—no, a better one would be Moana (this entry is edited in 2017 when Moana was released already) (in fact, when I watched Moana I was reminded to this Polynesian performance so bad I felt somewhat lucky to be able to experience a live show from real Polynesian blood). The men, though, was completely different than the women, because they roared and stomped their feet and basically intimidated the whole auditorium. But that’s what I like.

Unexpectedly, the next one was Rahel, a friend from Physics class, and she took the whole stage just for herself. I say unexpected because I didn’t even see her during rehearsals and the next thing I knew she is taking over the stage with a burning passion and so much positive vibes with her Ethiopian performance. I don’t even know how, but seeing her enjoying it so much as if nobody’s seeing, the whole auditorium seemed to enjoy it too. Everyone was cheering for her.

The last one, but not the least, was a modern dance number by Rainier Beach’s very own dance crew—The Vikettes. Fire.

(no pic bc i thought i took one but turned out i didnt??? sigh okay then) (but it was LIT i swear)

Aaand it’s over.

WAIT, NO, IT’S NOT. The whole participant were invited to the stage, and the next thing you knew, you have a stage full of people in different traditional clothes doing The Running Man.

Which was fun. It’s not everyday you can do a collective running man on stage, in front of parents and teachers, where no one can tell us not to. Hahaha.

At the end, we took a collective picture, then went into our own businesses. The rose was very sweet, though, though it died like three days afterwards.

But then again, I shit you not, this is the kind of experience I don’t get to see anywhere else, where a community consisted of multiple communities of multiple countries, and they got to show their identity. However, I can to realize that the event was more than showing off how good you are, but to show everyone how much you are having fun with who you are.

Aktualisasi diri. I like that.

Aight. Thanks a lot, Beach, for giving me the opportunity to show y’all a fraction of Saman, and at least I brought something new to your annual multi instead of your regular performances. At least, now you know there’s a country named Indonesia on the map.

Salam dari yang bukan orang Aceh dan barusan nari Saman pakai baju kurung dan hijab batik,

Nabila Safitri.

#langkahanakbangsa #multi #RBHS

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papersandkeyboards · 6 years

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5/9-15: Went Chicagoan Jewish for a Day (or not really) (aka ‘antek-antek Yahudi!’ as some jerk would say)

33rd WEEK, MAY 9-15, 2016.

Many exciting things happened this week.

But I have the right to prioritize which one deserves to be mentioned first.

This Thursday, I finally (finally) watched Captain America: Civil War.

And if you’re reading this blog for quite some time, it can be seen that I am sort of a hardcore MCU fangirl. At least compared to my friends.

I just died watching the movie. Imagine my heart is an egg and the movie screenwriters and actors were some extremely good scrambled egg makers.

I just can’t.

I cussed and swore so much during the movie, even though I was there by myself (actually—it’s because I was there by myself), and just being emotional in my own little world. By the time the movie was over entirely, I didn’t even have the mood for anything. I was either about to explode or just melt and let myself washed away to the drain and to the Puget Sound. And never come back again.

Huh. I wish my fangirl fellow Darin or Ica was here. They have been the only ones qualified enough to talk the shit out of any marvel movies with me. We can handle each other, and other people, apparently, just can’t handle or understand me being emotionally overwhelmed over some fictional stuff.

Anyway.

Summer is approaching, and on Wednesday the 11th the day hit the thermostat a good 26 Celcius, so after school I went to Capitol Hill and bought myself an unapologetic cup of frozen yogurt across the street from Seattle Central.

However, the highlight of the week, like with almost all cases, came on the weekend.

Karen’s nephew, Gabe, was having his bar mitzvah that weekend. Good news: his family, of course, invited Karen and her family over for it. Good news #2: Karen’s sister and her family lived in Chicago, IL.

Hell yeah! It’s not everyday you can go to big cities like Chicago (unless, well, you live in or nearby Chicago) AND go to a bar mitzvah (unless, well, you happen to have a lot of Jewish relative or friends).

For those who haven’t known, bar mitzvah (or bat mitzvah, for female) is a coming-of-age ritual, meaning a ritual that marks a young person’s transition from being a child to being an adult, that is practised by the Jews—

“Jews?!”

—is probably what your response would be if you’re a typical, religiously conservative Indonesian Muslim who credit most of your knowledge to controversial-titled articles on Facebook that are shared by friends from exclusively your own circle.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, and I’m not supposed to talk about my tolerant/intolerant country in this entry, so let’s get back to my main point.

Gabe here was 13 years old, so, in order to mark his coming to adulthood, a bar mitzvah was held. Let’s say... uhm, a bar mitzvah is an equivalent to Indonesian ‘khitanan’, a ritual after a boy’s circumcision to celebrate his first steps to adulthood.

Karen and Eric and I left Seattle in the afternoon, which means I had to leave school a couple hours earlier to catch the plane. After we arrived, we rented a car and drove to the hotel. Later at night, I finally met Ayesha, Karen’s mother, and us four spent some time talking.

Saturday morning, we went to Downtown Chicago to have breakfast and walk around. We crossed the Chicago River and passed by the Trump Tower. But our main destination was Millenium Park.

You see, when I thought of Chicago, I thought about this particular piece of art I wanted to see for myself. It was this sculpture, sitting right in the middle of the park. The sculpture has a power to amaze everyone who sees it, and at the same time providing a new perspective to see the Chicago skyline and the buildings surrounding it. Designed by an Indian-British artist Anish Kapoor in 2004, the stainless-steel sculpture was initially and officially named “Cloud Gate”. Thanks to public’s creativity and appreciation of its shape, the sculpture is more widely known as... The Bean.

To be fair, it DOES look like a bean. However, I felt somewhat sorry for the artist that had surely thought about the philosophy behind the name Cloud Gate and how the name will inspire people and all that. But I guess the first time people saw the sculpture, they went “oh, it looks like a giant bean!” hence the name.

Think about nicknames that you give to your friends or that have been given to you by your friends. It’s like how a person is named Richard, but everyone just end up calling him Dick. Or a name as pretty as Zahra but everyone end up calling her Ijah. Or something like that. There are indeed some people in my school who are so widely known by their nicknames, anyone hardly know what their real, birth names are.

However, in any way, The Bean (or Cloud Gate, whatever) is so pretty, no matter the weather. It can be sunny or cloudy and it still manages to reflect the whole scenery around it perfectly.

And right under the bean structure was ever crazier. The structure was bent and shaped in such a way that it provided multiple reflections of you in different forms, like a kaleidoscope. Looking at it was hypnotizing, and making me dizzy if I stared at it for too long.

Oh, and it’s cool that I could see the photographer in the picture because he was reflected by the bean behind me. Ehe.

Then we moved to the next block, the next cool thing about the city, the Art Institute of Chicago. (which is what we could cram in a day of Chicago) More than a place where people study—like the sound ‘Institute’ gives—it was more like a museum, like the Met. It had everything in there, for real.

I would say that the Met has more complete collection than Art Institute of Chicago just because the Met is more famous and the whole building is probably as vast as my neighborhood back home, but AIC contained a lot of artefacts and other kinds of old stuff from different times and places, like Ancient Greece and Roman Empire. There were also extensive collections from the Middle East during the rise of Islam, from India, Africa, China, and Europe, with artefacts related to their respective culture and certain religion the region was dominated by.

I’m a statue person, and most likely not a painting person. Seriously, though, my art senses are probably dull enough that I don’t enjoy paintings as much as people do in general (especially those of abstract paintings). Thus, what I did when Eric and Karen and pretty much everyone in the room were philosophically and emotionally connected to an acrylic representation of grass, I took pictures of them.

Alright. Time to bail as evening was approaching and we needed to be at Karen’s sister’s house for dinner before the ceremony. Karen told me to dress real formal—because maybe last time they took me to a formal event—that was a wedding—I wore a cardigan over a long-sleeved shirt and—wait for it—a pair of sneakers. Karen made sure I did NOT wear sneakers (or shirts) for the bar mitzvah, and thus, left me with the only acceptable shoes I had: a painful pair of high high heels. It was black and fancy and I looked good in it, but it was for sure after the event I decided to throw those elegant representation of hell.

When we got to the venue, it became clearer that it was indeed a black tie event. Good thing about having a dinner party with the Jews: kosher food! Kosher is like food guidelines for Jews, the same way us Muslims categorize food and beverages into halal or not halal. Now, I don’t know the full scope of what makes a food or beverage kosher, but I do know that both kosher and halal guidelines strictly and entirely prohibit swine (or any kind of pig product), and that is good enough for me in this kind of situation.

Quick tip: when you’re in the US and is really self-conscious about your belief in halal diet, if you can’t find a proven halal food, look for kosher ones. (especially for products in packaging like salt or biscuits and such kinds, finding a kosher mark in the packaging is good enough if you can’t find products with halal mark on it)

After dinner we moved with our respective vehicles to the synagogue for the ceremony. Synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. Before we entered the main room, the men were given this small head covering—that was so small it didn’t really cover the whole head—that I’d later figured is called a kippah. Gabe, the man of the hour, besides wearing a kippah himself, also wore a kind of prayer shawl called tallit.

(illustration--photography was not allowed during the ceremony--at least the one i attended)

During the ceremony, there were chants and songs—in Hebrew—but the main event was the reading of the Torah—big rolls of Jewish scriptures. Presumably just about everyone in the room paid attention to the reading but me, but to be honest it’s not even easy for me to concentrate when an imaam—the leader of a Muslim prayer, when done collectively—recites long verses of the Quran during prayers (being able to read and write Arabic doesn’t help when you can’t understand the language itself), let alone a set of long verses in Hebrew. So what does a girl with zero understanding of the Torah and a quite short attention span do during this time?

She decided to open the holy book in front of her seat and tried to decipher the Hebrew alphabet.

Prepare for a quick elaboration on her observation regarding Hebrew and its comparison to Arabic. (<--calon judul skripsi S1 Sastra Arab/Ibrani)

I guess now I understood why people who don’t understand Arabic see nothing but unreadable wiggly lines—even I’ve heard people said to me that all the scribbles look the same. It took a while for me to figure out that Hebrew and Arabic have pretty much the same system. (uhhh I don’t know how to explain this. But like in Arabic a letter needs to have an accent that serves as a vowel, in order for the letter to be readable. So, for instance, if there is a certain accent above the Arabic letter ‘s’, that accent’ll give an ‘aah’ sound so the letter will be read as ‘saa’. Another accent gives the ‘ooh’ sound, hence ‘soo’, and another gives the ‘eeh’ sound, hence ‘see’) (why am I suddenly giving Arabic lessons)

Anyway, it’s not exactly the same, but some letters in Hebrew, if accompanied by certain accents or additional wiggly line, will be read differently than without accents.

(I can’t give you an example) (because by the time we all got home in Seattle I already forgot the whole thing) (not that you asked for one anyway right)

(well, I guess it would be kind of cool if I preserved on deciphering Hebrew. Albeit the language itself I can’t understand, at least I can write things I don’t want people around me to know in Hebrew letters)

After the whole ceremony ended, we moved to another room, which was a vast hall, where we had dinner (again) and heard speeches and overall celebrated Gabe’s first step into adulthood. Pictures would’ve been cool, but photography weren’t allowed during such ceremony.

The next day, on a nice Chicago Sunday morning, all the family members gathered in a cafe for brunch. Got into some more talking with Karen’s extended family members, since I didn’t do so much talking during dinner the previous day.

It was quite a small place for such a big family and it wasn’t as easy to move around, but I got to one point where I met one of Karen’s family members (I forgot who, sorry) who happened to be the heart surgeon for Indonesia’s back-in-the-day famous General A.H. Nasution. (General Nasution was a member of the military who was lucky to escape the terror attack from rogue members of Indonesian Communist Party in 1965) (it took a while for me to figure out when he was telling me he did a surgery for Nasution, because apparently if you pronounced the name ‘Nasution’ the English way it sounds waaaaaay different than the Indonesian way)

As if it weren’t enough, I met Karen’s brother-in-law and he told me he’d met Indonesian former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Give me a break. I technically live closer to President SBY and I’ve never seen the guy live, or even General Nasution.

(well, probably NOT General Nasution, as the guy had died long ago)

We went back to the hotel and took off to the airport right after, Karen’s mom Ayesha came with us to the airport so she could tell me about my personality and prospect for the future through my birth date and place and chakra flow. Accompanied by good thick Chicago pizza. Mmm.

It wasn’t exactly a trip to Chicago a tacky tourist like me would expect because we barely got around Chicago, because it really isn’t a tacky tourist kind of trip, but a family event. Nonetheless, if I think wide and positive enough, chances of me visiting Chicago as a tacky tourist is bigger than chances of me attending a bar mitzvah. Therefore, one shall not remorse on being unable to explore Chicago, because one can always come back.

(aamiin)

(brb melamar jadi buruh cuci tetangga)

And I shit you not, the experience of attending a bar mitzvah is one of the most impressive point in my exchange year I will always remember. Thinking about the time where I could casually walk into a synagogue without being questioned (maybe Karen gave a heads-up to the family, I assume?), and imagining how a Jew—or anyone else, for that matter—should always be treated the same way if the situation were to be reversed.

Peace out.

Salam dari yang baru pakai high heels dua kali langsung dibuang,

Nabila Safitri.

#langkahanakbangsa #chicago #bar mitzvah

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papersandkeyboards · 7 years

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[On being a college student] . For most students, one big achievement is unlocked once they get to college: freedom. Everyone is at free will to do what they want, to explore and create oneself's identity, to be a sponge and clay: to absorb and be molded. To prove one's worth of existing. With this freedom, college students often take their unlimited share of expression to a whole new level. Public forums, observation, innovation. Volunteerism, orations, demonstrations. Any kind of action that can be done. With this freedom, everyone expects college students to do things no one else are able to. Being at the peak of youth, everyone expects them to hold their power for the greater cause. To inspire. To create. To fix. To contribute. To be the voice of those who have none, and to be the bridge for those who need to be connected. Personally, freedom gives college students the choice to improve from the inside. To be academic pursuers as well as to be humans. To balance mind and soul. College life freedom is a gate that delivers you from the life of inner circles to the realization that the world is vast and needs help, and offers you a stance on it. . But that's the great thing about freedom: it either thrives you or destroys you. #inisiasi17itb

#inisiasi17itb

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papersandkeyboards · 7 years

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5/2-8 (2): Black Light Run, and the Time I Almost Ate Pork

The week didn’t stop there. Fun things mostly happen at the weekend.

The story for Saturday goes back to the morning of my (and Kira’s) birthday, when everybody came to Kira’s house. Somebody discovered this event called the Blacklight Run, which was pretty much the same concept as the famous Color Run, only that this one was held at night, and the color powder glowed under blacklight (also known as UV light). We spent the whole morning discussing about it, and how we should just do the Color Run, which was the morning after the Blacklight Run, and then Nouha argued that the Blacklight one would be much more fun, considering it’s at night. But then some people claimed they found it difficult to go at night.

It was a long discussion. At the end, I decided to join the Blacklight one because I felt like I should take risks more often (((ya))). The other thing that made it such a rush to decide was because the website said the ticket price was $20 until March 13. After that day, the price would go up to $50.

But the next day, I happen to check the website and they extended the $20 deadline. Screw marketing.

Out of many more, the people ended up going to the Blacklight Run were me, Nouha, Cece, Gretar, and Antonio. Everyone but Antonio met up at KFC in Renton at 5pm on Saturday, May 7th. Before that, Karen took me to Seattle Art Museum—or simply SAM—because there was this particular exhibition she wanted to see. I just wanted to go to SAM in general—it was on my list, but we only had time to go see the exhibition Karen wanted to see, especially because that day was the last day for the exhibition. So, yep. Definitely going back to SAM in the future to see the whole museum.

Then I took a long bus trip down to Renton, and from our meeting place, Cheryl, Cece’s host mom, drove us to Washington State Fairgrounds, Puyallup, where the run would be.

(that’s another thing people found trouble with, because it’s not in Seattle but in Puyallup instead, which was way far down south from Seattle, like almost as far as Tacoma)

Antonio said he was coming with Maddy, his host sister, who was around my age. Maddy got all our packets (shirts and numbers and whatnot) except for Gretar’s. We asked Maddy to get our packets before this day because if we get our packets on the D-Day, we would just have to wait in line and pay 5 bucks. But Antonio, apparently, was being Italian, and it drove Nouha (and pretty much everybody) nuts because the pre-race party was supposed to start at 7.45 and he hadn’t come yet.

He did come, like, maybe 20 minutes after the pre-race party had started. Surprisingly, he came with another Italian, who turned out to be this Italian guy he met when we were at Seattle Central (and even though him and I had practically met, we just discovered each others’ names today). We also got crayons to ‘paint’ ourselves with.

Eventually we all walked out to start the race. We were released in ‘waves’, as in everybody lined up at the starting line, a certain amount of people were released, then the line moved forward, and so on. It was a good strategy instead of releasing a thousand people at the same time, but it makes the wait extremely long. It was still daylight—as in 8pm—when the first wave of people started, but when our turn came, the sun had set already. We even got the chance to munch some snacks and painted our white t-shirts “AFS” on our backs in case we got lost (and during the lining up we sort of lost the Italians already a few times). Mirko—the other Italian—Antonio’s friend—since he’s not an AFS exchange student—wrote his phone number on his t-shirt instead.

Turned out it was kind of impossible to stay together the whole time. People wanted to run in different paces. The Italians were out of sight the second we started running, God knew where they were the whole time. I was with Maddy for some time, then I lost her and was with Gretar instead. Then we found Nouha. Nouha insisted that we stayed together—which was sort of compromising since Gretar wanted to run the whole time and us girls didn’t. So we ended up half-walking, half-running throughout the course.

I thought the run would be on the streets, but it really was on the Washington State Fairgrounds. We ran past the old roller coaster, through some empty barns. Lots of turns and zig-zaggy course, like a snake trail, pretty much. There were only three powder-throwing station. Another thing I thought about a color run was that we were going to be rained with color powder the whole time (yes I wasn’t thinking how many gazillion bags of powder were going to be wasted if it were that way). but at the end, the last powder station, people just grabbed a handful or two of color powder on the ground and threw it at themselves. There were also several spots where the blacklight lamps were, so it’s not like we were glowing the whole time.

Oh, one more thing. It was totally not 5k. Not at all. 5k my butt. 2 or 3km maybe, but not 5.

So yeah. The run was kind of disappointing. Not as many powder and blacklight and fun as we want, more like just running in the dark most of the time. Not even music.

The after party, though, was lit.

Each person got a small bag—as big as a fist—of color powder. People were packed around the stage, where the whole warehouse was in total blacklight and the music was blaring and the bass was dropping every two minutes. The DJ threw out glowsticks and bags of color powder every now and then. The floor was entirely covered with mixed color powder it looked bland. Some people were lying on the floor and making angels with the color powder as if it were snow.

We finally found Maddy and Cece in the middle of the crowd. Not that I was tall enough to see in front of me as these tall people were around me. Everytime the bass dropped, people threw their color powder to the air. Dropped some on their friend’s head or shirt. There was this particular time where the bass built up too long and dropped too hard, literally everyone—including the DJ—including me—just wasted their bags of color powder. They filled the air it got to our noses and eyes and mouths and ears.

Halfway through the after party, I was half deaf.

Maddy and Nouha and I got out of the crowd for a minute to go to the restroom. We looked like zombies. No part of skin that was not covered with shirt or pants (or headscarf, hehe) was not covered with powder.

The whole event ended at 11.30, with us (finally) finding the Italians, with their ears totally covered in powder and Mirko and Cece debated whether we were lucky to meet him or he was lucky to meet us. Cheryl, Cece’s host mom, so kind-heartedly drove us back to our homes. I got home a little bit after midnight. Thank God tomorrow (or should I say today?) is Sunday, I thought as I took my time adoring how I looked in the bathroom mirror. Shirt, pants, scarf, totally trashed. Not until the next day I found out that the powder in fact will wash away, ironically, when I was browsing the Internet to find out any way I can preserve the color. Uh, yaudah sih.

I slept in and found out the next morning, when I lazily woke up and got on Snapchat, that many people I know—Rebecca from school, Maria from the AFS chapter, and Greta from MIHS, unexpectedly—oh, and Maddy, although I knew this from before—were in the color run that morning in Seattle Center. Seems fun, though. More color, or at least visible color.

But oh well, the blacklight run was fun too, anyway. It was an experience worth remembering.

Sunday, May 8, was Mother’s Day. Or at least American Mother’s Day (Indonesian’s is December 22). I was being an ungrateful host daughter by not giving Karen anything but a hug. I honestly never really give anything to my real mom on Mother’s Day, anyway, besides a hug and a verbal thank-you. Probably should change that by making something more tangible, maybe?

Eric planned to go to Bellingham. Again, I was being ungrateful by spending the afternoon at Kira’s instead. Uh. It was a hard choice, okay. Kira invited me and a bunch of girls from school to make schnitzel at her house. A couple people could not make it because Mother’s Day, though. So finally for schnitzel we had Rebecca, Mary, and Emily in addition to me and Kira of course.

Pretty funny story. I was in the middle of peeling potatoes with Rebecca, then I went to the fridge and took a can of Dr. Pepper. I walked past the kitchen counter next to the stove and I caught a glimpse of a grocery store package of pork loin.

Hmm.

I decided not to ask her right away, but I finally did a little bit after Mary made a remark on how she likes pork. “Uh, Kira, what meat will you use for the schnitzel?”

Not looking up from cutting cucumbers, she said casually, “Pork,” as if it was nothing. Well, to be fair, it was nothing for her.

Hmm.

Anjay ini anak. Ingin berkata kasar.

Instead of lashing out on this poor little German, I only managed to let out an “oh.”

It was probably two solid seconds before she looked up and realized her mistake. “Oh. Nabila. Sorry! I’m sooo sorry!”

I only stared at her, giving her a “really?” look. She sounded sorry, though. She apologized and said she forgot and then she walked out of the kitchen to find her host mom to see if they have some other kind of meat.

Rebecca was behind me laughing at her. She got it, haha.

For real, though, Kira, I thought we were friends long enough for you to know my stuff. I thought me wearing a headscarf every day is enough of a reminder. You got a Muslim friend back in Germany. You know I sometimes prayed in your room when I spent nights at your house, for God’s sake.

However, on the way home, I did realize that I’ve lived in a Muslim-majority country long enough that when I came here, I forgot that people could forget I am a Muslim. Psh, I’ve been offered some bacon chips or pepperoni pizza, and most of times I just refused politely without reasoning, or when they asked, I just said I didn’t feel like eating. More like didn’t feel like explaining why my belief doesn’t let me eat pork and ended up making my non-Muslim friends really confused.

Ya gitu, salah satu tantangannya pergi exchange. Harus sadar diri juga kalau kita bukan bagian dari mayoritas, seperti di negara sendiri. Jadi ketika ada teman yang ngundang kamu ke acara masak-masak yang ternyata kamu malah nggak bisa makan, ya harus maklum.

Good thing Kira’s fridge has a piece of chicken breast. Upside: it was big in the first place, so when you flatten it like how you usually make schnitzel, it became really huge. I had the biggest piece of meat out of everybody. Thick and wide. Downside: because it was thick and wide, it wasn’t as crispy and was harder to finish than everyone else’s. Upside #2: good Lord you have chicken, Kira. Really. *smh*

Four teenagers working in a not-so-big kitchen was a bit of a chaos, honestly, haha. Plus, there were many things to do. Frying the potatoes, flatten the meat, dipped it in flour, then egg, then bread crumbs, then fry it. The first time Kira tried to flatten a piece of meat she did it on a ceramic plate and it literally broke into half on, like, the third pound or something.

But we did good. We cooked for us and the whole family, that makes 7 shcnitzel, because Kira’s host sister, Eden, is vegan. We also got fried potatoes and veggies and eggs and other stuff. Good stuff.

Kira just spent her day well for Mother’s Day, hahaha.

But overall, this week was well spent. Yay.

Salam dari anak yang di negara kampungnya nggak pernah hacep malam-malam,

Nabila Safitri.

#langkahanakbangsa #black light run #schnitzel

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papersandkeyboards · 7 years

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5/2-8 (1): Beach Trip; Softball Senior Night

32nd WEEK, MAY 2-8, 2016.

See this?

This is the scariest thing I’ve seen this week.

Or maybe this month.

Or maybe in a long time.

And what makes it scarier is the fact that it will keep going earlier and earlier until summer solstice.

I looked it up. On Ramadan, which will start around June 6-7, average time for Fajr will be around 3. Which means I will have to wake up at 2 to eat suhoor (a pre-dawn meal you eat before you fast for the whole day).

And the next scariest thing would be the fact that sunset on Ramadan will be at like 9pm. So... roughly 18 hours of fasting.

I was totally not prepared for this.

(kebanyakan dosa)

Ehm.

On another note, this week has been okay, although not quite same-old-same-old.

On Monday and Tuesday, the IB students had IB testing for Language and Literature. Since seniors have to take IB Lang and Lit, we all had to take the IB Exam. (unless you’re like me and some other people—who weren’t registered on IB website for IB testing because you enrolled to the school late) (but Mrs. Shaw said even if we’re not registered we still had to take the exam as our grades) (which made me complained to Mr. Pierce—the man in charge—on how unfair the world is because he let Gretar and Abdulmalik and Raffy not to take the test for some reasons but not me)

But the test went on from the beginning of school day to around 10.30ish, so if that means I can skip second period, I’m not complaining no more.

The first day wasn’t so stressful. We had to pick one of two provided texts and just analyze the hell out of it to the very core. You know, basic English class stuff. Everything happens for a reason. Why is the size of the text like this. Why does the author put this part before this part. What does this picture mean. Why is the person in this picture wearing a dress.

Subhanallah. Suka-suka aja deh.

And on the second day, we had to answer one out of six provided questions about the books we’ve read over the year. Some students had to do “The Things They Carried” and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” because they’ve been in the class since the beginning of the year, and for the students who had just enrolled to the school this past semester had to do “Othello” and “Things Fall Apart”. That’s for standard level class students. Higher level class students had to do three texts instead of two.

To be honest, it’s not that dreadful. (or maybe because English has been a fav subject for me) and to be honest, it feels good to skip first and second and third period. Haha.

Oceanography class keeps getting better and better. Mrs. Wong has this target to take her Oceanography class to three field trip this year. So far we’ve done one, the Salish Sea one, and here’s our second one: we went to Alki Beach in West Seattle to go tidepooling!

The day we went—Friday, May 6—was one of the days where the tide was really low, probably among the lowest for the month. So when the tide is low, we will see things that is usually below the water surface. What you will see during a low tide is there’re gonna be little pools of ‘leftover water’ from when the tide was high, and inside those little pools are usually multiple organisms you won’t see during the high tide. Tidepooling is like that—looking for (and at) organisms in those little pools during low tide.

Our class is a small class to start with, so, with two people not joining us, there were me, Sadia, Mikhel, Azhanae, Makayla, and Gretar. And Mrs. Wong and Mr. Henderson. We took the school van (that “looks like a rapist van,” Mikhel said) to Alki Beach.

The weather was so nice. It was hot but windy. The beach was pretty too (if you’re thinking about sandy beaches, then you’re wrong. The sandy part of Alki Beach is man-made, the natural beach of most of the Pacific Northwest is rocky—plus, most of organisms we were looking for for tidepooling live off rocks). We found some cool creatures. Small crabs, hermit crabs, moon snails, flatworms, green-pink anemones, and at one point we found a big purple sea star.

It was exciting to see creatures you don’t see very often and you mostly see on the internet.

We were split into two groups. There were me, Sadia, and Makayla in my group. Each group had to come up with an idea of an experiment. We were given hand-outs about the experiment that had been done by previous students, and we were to come up with an experiment quite similar to that one but not exactly the same. My group came up with the experiment of correlation between intertidal zones and size of anemones, while the other group, I think, tried to find out the correlation between intertidal zones and amount of crabs.

Mrs. Wong brought two hula-hoops as a transect, which is like a ‘frame’ that marked the area that we were doing our experiment on. Say that you put a hula hoop on any random place in intertidal zone 1. That means we, in this case, my group, were only allowed to observe anemones within the area inside the hoop ring. This helps the consistency of the experiment, so that we’re not making mistake doing our experiment in different sizes of areas.

After fooling around with the hoop (Sadia was pretty amusing with her hoop skills—and I apparently rediscovered my childhood spirit and did the longest hula-hoop session in my entire life), we sat and filled our papers with background information and procedure. We’re going to do the experiment after lunch.

At lunch, we walked along Alki Beach and tried to find some good place to have lunch. Initially, Sadia had spoken for the entire class that we should have fish and chips at a place called Ivar’s, but much to her disappointment, Ivar’s doesn’t exist in West Seattle. Downtown, probably.

So we ended up splitting up for lunch. Mrs. Wong tried to console Sadia by suggesting some other fish and chips place, but the girl wouldn’t budge, so she stopped at Subway instead, Mikhel later followed. Azhanae and Gretar decided to eat in this place called Fatburger. So Makayla, Mrs. Wong, Mr. Henderson, and I walked some more and found this place called Spuds that sells fish and chips.

It was satisfying. Then we walked back as a group to the beach where we did our experiment. Now we got to use the hoop for collecting data. What we did was we identified intertidal zone 1, 2, and 3. Then we walked to Zone 1 and dropped the hoop on a random spot in Zone 1. As for my group, we measured the diameter of 5 randomly selected anemones within the hoop. As for the other group, they counted the number of crabs within the hoop. Then we moved to Zone 2, making an imaginary straight line outward from the shore as we walked. Then we did the same for Zone 2 and 3. Then we calculated the average and made a claim.

Mrs. Wong is one of the best teachers I’ve ever had—the reason I said this, aside from she really is a good teacher and a nice person to talk to, is because by the time we finished out experiment, we still have 45 minutes of free time if we were to come back to school right when the end-of-school bell rings. Our faces told Mrs. Wong that we didn’t want to go to class, so she gave us that 45 minutes for chilling—strolling along Alki man-made sandy beach. Enjoying the strong wind. Immersing feet into the warm sand. Seeing people laying all over the beach, trying to get tan (while this tropical-born person was trying with all her might not to get sun ray on her skin). Some women doing yoga or some sort. Kids playing with the sand.

Aah.

We went back to school with a happy state of mind. We got to school just around 10 minutes before school ended. If I had nothing to do, I could’ve taken the light rail or the bus straight to downtown to watch the movie I’ve been waiting—Captain America: Civil War, since it was its premier that day. But that’s the thing: I had things to do. Well—one big thing, to be precise.

Friday was our last home game (and last game overall) for softball this year. We were going against Ingraham High School from North Seattle. The first time we were against them was the preceding Wednesday, I think. First thing to know about our softball team: we are so used to losing, and it’s the truth. But for some reason the game left me kind of upset. One big reason why, maybe, was because they deliberately gave themselves three consective outs so that we would have the chance to bat. The same thing Cleveland did. I started to question if this ‘walking off base out of pity’ thing is some kind of secret code of ethics that all schools had but ours.

Oh, and Kira was injured at the very last moment of the game. She was, at first, safe at second base, but then, according to the view from our dugout, she was shoved off by the second baseman, then she fell off the base, then the second baseman had the ball, then she’s out. The girls (of our team) were furious. If you’re from Ingraham High School softball team and reading this, I’m sorry, but some of us did talk shit about you for a while.

But, this last game means it’s our senior night. Senior night just means a little celebration after the game for the seniors who, obviously, will not be playing next year.

(...and exchange students. Well, I am a senior, but Kira is a junior. But we did a celebration for her anyway)

Again, I repeat, it’s our last game. So I won’t let this game make me upset, I’m just gonna have fun. Because, with these guys, I know that we don’t need to win to have fun.

The seniors in our team were me, Imi, Mikhel, Tina (who preferred her name to be written as Teenaah), and Martina. Before the game, the non-seniors (excluding Kira) came with big folded posters. I didn’t know what those were, until they put it along the outfield fence.

Those were posters with the seniors’ (and Kira’s) name on it and their jersey numbers (except me, apparently). Imi’s says ‘Captain Imi’, Tina’s says ‘Teenaah, outfield’, Kira’s says ‘Wir Lieben Kira’ (‘we love Kira’), Mikhel’s says ‘Mikhel, right field’, and Martina’s says something punny about her being a catcher and a get-well-soon wish (since she’s injured a week before our last game).

That did enough to make my mood before the game started.

Nonetheless, the game turned out to be fun. I said it’s fun and I’m pretty happy with it because this time, we were actually better than how we did at our previous game with Ingraham. Our fielding was good and our batting was definitely better than last time (not for me, though, I still suck at batting). I felt so comfy in my inital position as second baseman—although at the last inning I was moved to right field.

Ingraham still won by a lot. But this time, we had points that we acquired ourselves, we gave them outs without them deliberately taking. It was, indeed, a good game.

After the game ended, we gather around a circle as usual. Some girls were fooling around with water from the water dispenser, then secretly tipped it over Tomchick so that the ice-cold water splashed on his back—basically all over his body (I, who was standing next to him, got a bit splashed too—it felt nice, actually, since it’d been hot). Kira and Martenus got a game ball. After the talk, Tomchick took out this plastic bag which apparently had been there all along. Inside it were long necklaces of candies. (iya, kalung permen.) Tomchick gave them to each of the seniors and Kira. Then Coach Beavers gave us a free softball shirt that she made. Then Kira kindly asked for a last group picture since I wasn’t there when they took the official team picture for the yearbook (aww).

Ah. What a good way to end the season.

The week didn’t stop there. Fun things mostly happen at the weekend.

-continues

#langkahanakbangsa #rbhs #softball #field trip

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