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papersandkeyboards · 7 years

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4/18-24: When I Decided to (somewhat) Run Away from Home

30th WEEK, APR 18-24, 2016.

“I’m so tired.”

“I can’t do this.”

“Are you asking me? Don’t you realize I never even try to answer the question?”

“Uuuuugh.”

Aaah. Back to school. Back to routine of hearing at least five complaints a day. Back to hearing at least one swear word in every other sentence people say in the hallway. Back at it again with calf-high white socks and Nike slippers. Back to Monday that everybody hates.

Unless I didn’t go to school on Monday. I had a major headache since on the plane the previous night from Phoenix to Seattle. In the morning, I was better to the extent that if I had a strict mother I would be able to be forced to go to school, but I found myself lying in bed, awaken by the alarm at 6.23, thinking to myself, “screw this. I’m staying in my bed.”

So I went back to sleep until 8 or 9-something.

I was trying to be productive, and even though I did something (if ‘taking a shower’ counts as productive for a sloth like me), then again, I could’ve done better. Biasa.

Anyway, over the spring break, Kira’s family discovered that Dave—Kira’s host dad—had a kidney stone, so after spring break, Karen offered Kira to stay at our house. So Karen planned to pick up Kira after school . Meanwhile, I went downtown to the public library to pick up a book I was planning to read.

So, Tuesday. My official first day of school after spring break. Two weeks of no school made me forget some people (I couldn’t even understand why) and made my handwriting acceptably ugly, as usual. Besides that, nothing much.

On Wednesday, we had a softball game against Franklin High School, and we won big. 25-5. Woohoo. (perlu diingat bahwa sebenarnya tim softball kita bukan yang terbaik, if anything, sekolah kami dan Franklin palingan dua sekolah dengan tim softball terjelek)

On Thursday, Mrs. Shaw was in the middle of explaining in English class, when somebody suddenly shouts, “Mrs. Shaw, Prince died!”

I’ve heard of the name and I know he was a singer, but that’s all I know (to be honest, at first I thought they were talking about Prince, my classmate from Oceanography). Looked like only Gretar and I were the ones who weren’t so surprised by the news, while everyone was in denial, then Mrs. Shaw googled him through the computer that was connected to the projector screen, and it was displayed there, as big as it can be, that the legendary Prince died that morning.

The class went chaotic. Mrs. Shaw stormed off the class, holding back tears.

That was pretty much the topic of the day from that moment on.

That’s a quite brief—if you would call it brief—recount of my first school week. The less boring part of the week is, of course, the weekend.

I’ve been dying for some independent travel. That means travelling without your host family or AFS volunteer. My friends in Europe have been doing some serious independent travel—considering that Europe is pretty small and you can easily go to other countries on your own.

The thing is, AFS-USA is complicated. A lot of red tape. You have to get permission from your host family (duh), coordinator, then your natural family, then they have to ask national coordinator in your origin country to release a travel waiver, then you have to send the signed travel waiver from your natural family to your coordinator, then your coordinator has to ask for approval from New York office.

Rempong banget, kan?

Harus izin ke sinilah, ke situlah, kalau pengen overnight gak boleh tanpa orang dewasa lah (walaupun disetujui host family—seriously, my host family gave me one night of hotel room fee, as a birthday present, if I were to do the independent travel, tapi ya... gitu. Gak dibolehin.), banyak banget syaratnya pokoknya. Nego dengan alasan udah 18 tahun pun tetep gak dibolehin.

Ceritanya gini. I planned this with Raya, and since we’re not sure whether we can stay overnight or not, we set the destination to be Tacoma (the only place reachable and touristy enough for a day trip), and we set the date. Then I found out we can’t stay overnight without someone 25 or older, because if we could, we could go to Leavenworth and book a motel room or something with our host parents’ names, at least. Then Nancy said you can if you’re staying with someone you know. But I know no one from Leavenworth.

Then, one day, I found out I actually know someone in Portland, another exchange student from Indonesia. Her name is Ari, and she’s from Bali. So the plan changed to going to Portland for the weekend, staying one night at her house, then going back home on Sunday. I told Nancy, and the long chain of asking permission began. Two weeks before the agreed D-day, Raya cancelled. Then I asked Kira and she agreed. The birthday gift from my host parents changed from ‘one free motel/hotel room for independent travel’ to ‘free round-trip ticket from Seattle to Portland’. One day before D-day (Saturday, April 23), when she found out the price of the ticket, Kira cancelled because she said it was too expensive for her. Terus aku sempat ngambek ke dia setengah harian di sekolah. Lalu curhat ke Audrey tentang ‘kenapa semuanya ngereject aku’ pakai full bahasa Indonesia sementara pihak yang digibahin lagi leyeh-leyeh di kasur kamar di lantai atas. Biasa, moody teenager.

Tapi beneran deh, kesel. Padahal aku udah rencana mau ngajarin siapapun-yang-bakal-pergi-bareng main speed pakai kartu remi di kereta. I think that the trip itself, the journey to the destination, is one of the most exciting part. Especially with a friend.

Anyway.

Here’s the final plan: I, with me and myself, would take the Amtrak train to Portland on Saturday morning for around 4 hours, then Ari would pick me up when I got there. I would stay overnight at her house, then I would come back to Seattle Sunday afternoon and arrive at the evening.

Setidaknya, kalau aku pergi sendiri, aku bisa ngomong ke Ari pakai full bahasa Indonesia (bayangin kalau si bule ikutan, kan gak bisa terlalu bebas jadinya), dan aku bisa bawa laptop dan nyelesaiin hal-hal yang perlu kuselesaikan di kereta (baca: this very blog itself). Woohoo!

Now if I were to take a train from Jakarta to Yogyakarta or something without my parents, it wouldn’t sound so bad. (denger nih Ma)

So. I got to Union Station in Portland, and I met Ari, her host mom, Jessie, and Jessie’s friend, John. I also met Dan, Ari’s host dad, and Evelyn, Ari’s one-year old host sister. I dropped my backpack in the car, then Ari, Jessie, John, and I walked to what I want to do first thing in Portland: voodoo doughnut.

Or at least I think I want to do, until I saw the line that was even longer than what I saw at Georgetown Cupcake. It was like a line to a ride in an amusement park.

We stood in line for five seconds, then I asked Jessie, “...is it worth it?”

Long story short, we walked away from the line to a food truck nearby and bought mini donuts from it instead.

Yes, we didn’t get the doughnut but we took a picture. [biar kekinian]

We walked around Portland, basically. From this one food truck to Blue Star, a coffee and doughnut shop, to buy yet another doughnut. After that, John and the rest of us split, and Jessie and Ari took me to Powell’s City of Books. it’s basically a gigantic book store. It’s so humongous you need a map. It was cool.

The initial plan was walking from there to an ice cream shop, then Ari suggested us to go to the water front, so we walked there instead, then John and his girlfriend Marie would pick us up from the waterfront to the ice cream shop, then to Jessie’s house.

The waterfront was pretty. A clear evidence that Portland has a lot of bridges across the Willamette River. A good place for a picnic, a boat, a jog, and for homeless people to hang around or take a nap. (i’m serious)

Ari is in a dragon boat team in her school—it’s a sport of rowing a long dragon-shaped boat along the river. So she took us to see the dragon boats.

Along the way, I also saw a couple of boats, one of which is used as a museum, and a submarine that serves as a museum as well. Cool.

From there John and Marie drove us to get ice cream, then we went home (to Ari’s host family’s house), since John and Marie were joining us for dinner anyway.

Jessie suggested earlier that we made gado-gado for dinner (turned out Ari had made gado-gado for her host family many times), so we did just that. (then Ari told me that Dan, her host dad, is Indonesian—both of his parents came from Palembang, Southern Sumatra, but he was born here, so basically he doesn’t speak Indonesian)

We had a good talk with everybody on the dinner table until 9.30ish, then Ari and I went down to the TV room, where we would spend the night. The couch was awesome. That’s all I have to say.

The next day, Ari’s host family (and John and Marie) and I went to Woodburn, around 45 minutes from Portland, to a tulip farm. (yep, not exactly spending the whole weekend in Portland, but I got a good portion of it from yesterday afternoon) I was excited because I know there’s a tulip farm in Washington, but it was far up north, like, almost reaching Bellingham. At least I got to go to one, in Oregon. Hehe.

Then we found out that only 10% of the tulips were blooming since it’s the end of the season. Yah.

The tulip farm looks pretty much like a pumpkin patch. An outdoorsy place, with bounce houses, popcorn stand, photo booths with face holes on it, and hay rides (in which you sit on the back of a truck filled with cubes of hay). Except, in this particular tulip farm, there’s a train with wooden-shoe-shaped cars, a wooden shoe shop, and a windmill. Very Dutch.

And the best way to handle a Dutch-themed farm is by taking a picture in front of the windmill with big-ass Indonesian flag fluttering in the air (Indonesians would get the reference).

The tulip farm was kind of sad, though. You can see the colors of the tulips from the distance, but once you get close, it’s actually kind of sad, seeing the flowers almost dying and not as crowded as we expected it to be.

Well, at least we still have 10% of tulips, which were still beautiful. The garden next to it was filled with rhododendrons and they were beautiful too.

Then we went to Mt. Angel to get lunch in a German restaurant. Mt. Angel is a small Bavarian town, I assume it’s like a small version of Leavenworth. I didn’t get to go to Leavenworth but at least I got Mt. Angel. Hm.

The last thing we did was driving back to Portland to the train station.

The whole trip turned out to be fun. Not regretting anything right now, really. It was really delightful to meet everyone I met this weekend. Thanks a lot to Ari and her host family for having me for the weekend.

And I’m so glad now I can cross of something from my list. Not the totally independent kind of travel that I expect, but hey, I was happy, so beat it.

And it was definitely wonderful to meet Ari. Yay.

Salam dari exchange student yang terlalu semangat keluyuran,

Nabila Safitri. (featuring Ari Widiastuti as the best host of the week)

#langkahanakbangsa #portland

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