Written as a thank-you letter to Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (KL-YES Program) and CECF Better Understanding for a Better World Orlando 2018, February 2018.
Also published on http://www.yesprograms.org/stories/seeing-the-world-through-a-different-lens A few weeks ago, 27 people from different backgrounds gathered in the same room and everything changed. This moment happened during the three-day Better Understanding for a Better World (BUBW) Conference I attended in Orlando, Florida. BUBW is an annual conference conducted by Civilizations Exchange and Cooperation Foundation. It gives American and international high school students from diverse backgrounds the chance to meet each other and work together on leadership-building, interfaith and intercultural dialogue. It was a great honor for me, and other exchange students from around the world, to be selected as a participant. The event included an International Youth Summit, group discussions, visits to various houses of worship to learn about different faith traditions, and presentations from all the countries and cultures represented. From the very first pizza dinner with the participants, I loved learning from and seeing all the different cultural viewpoints. The discussions on religion and culture were eye-opening. I learned to see problems from other perspectives, which helped me gain a better understanding of the issues being discussed. I also highly appreciated the interfaith discussion and the visit to a church, synagogue, and mosque to speak with faith leaders and learn more about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What I discovered was that all these religions have the same roots and have more commonalities than differences. I think we should have more conferences like this throughout the world, where students of all faiths and backgrounds can meet, talk with each other and collaborate on solutions to issues facing our communities. We have the power to spread peace in diversity. The only thing that matters is we are all human. I’m so grateful to the US State Department, CECF, and my placement organization, AFS-USA. Thank you for giving us this excellent opportunity. In the end, I learned that we are the leaders of tomorrow. We built friendships together, learned about our different nations, cultures, and beliefs, and broke down lines that separated us. Being different is okay, it is valuable for society and shouldn’t be used as a reason to fight. With courage, intelligence, and this experience, we hope that we can change the world, for a better future among the beautiful diversity of people across the globe.
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Initially written as the third newsletter as an exchange student, May 2018.
Playing sports become a culture of American high school student everywhere. Most of schools and clubs offer a wide variety of sports, on every season. From the beginner, junior varsity, until the varsity level, sports unite every people from different backgrounds. The euphoria for sports happen not only for the players on the team, but also for the parents, coaches, cheerleaders, friends, marching bands, or just the fan of the sports itself. For this reason, I was joining a Native American sport called Lacrosse on early spring while I’m here. There’s not a lot of people outside the United States know or even play lacrosse. I may not know if my host brother and host sister aren’t playing the lacrosse. Even my school doesn’t have any team sport because of the small number of students. I’m also not a sport kind of person, except that I did a Physical Education classes before. Despite the lack of knowledge, experience, and the ability to play this, I encouraged myself to join this fun sport. I signed up with my host sister and brother for North Kitsap team at Poulsbo, the town beside my host town. Lacrosse is a simple but tricky sport. It requires twelve people on the team including one goalie for the goal, defenders, midfielders, and attackers. The goal of the sport is simple –shot as many ball to the goal with stick as possible. Yes, we use stick to catch and throw the ball. Also, since I’m on girl team, we only need goggles and mouth guard to protect ourselves; the game is pretty rough if you aren’t strong enough to be on the “fight”. But, that’s the fun part of lacrosse. Some basic skills that I learned so far is cradling the ball (or trying to keep the ball inside the net stick), throwing, ground ball, shooting, and checking the stick. It does take time to finally able to master these. I personally choose to do lacrosse as my sport because I want to know more people. I don’t have much friends outside school beside my neighbors and exchange friends, so I think lacrosse will provide me the chance for meeting new people. In fact, all of the girls on lacrosse are super nice and willing to help me learn lacrosse. Sometimes, after the lacrosse finish, we have time to just sit down and talk about our life and interests. Since I join the team by Parks and Recreation Department club Poulsbo, we come from many schools in Poulsbo. Spending time with them makes me understand two different environments in public school and my private school. From playing lacrosse, I learn lots of new things. The sport, of course, it’s the experience I may never do it again back home. The friendship created from the weekly practices that we have. Also, persistence and motivation for doing routine exercises. The time management ability, divides time for host family, host school, and exchange students’ activities. The last but not the least is that I become part of the American culture. It has been almost ten months of my existence in the Uncle Sam nation, time flies so fast. Being part of Americans builds my respects toward different customs. I slowly accustomed to their daily life, as well as what I do for lacrosse. This is one of the reasons why I feel that exchange students program is important: it introduces me to so many new experiences that I won’t experience back home, opens a broader understanding of the world and the society, and also fun time. Thank you for everything, for everyone who involved in my journey a year being an exchange student in the United States. I appreciate all your help for me. In the future, I hope that what I’ve learned here will be important experience to consider later in life. Initially written as the second newsletter as an exchange student, February 2018.
Also published on https://medium.com/@Bina.Antarbudaya/the-washington-state-capitol-tour-a-realization-of-similarity-a7535d6fdc82 I never expected that the fifty-thousand rupiah money I spent on 2016 is a start of everything I would never think I would ever experience before. First of all, I’m living in the United States currently, and become part of exchange students in Washington states through Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study. Being an exchange student in the US bring me to a new level as a global citizen. A lot of barriers that was around me before suddenly wrecked as I start walking and exploring the world. I look around and find that the world here in Washington and back to my home Indonesia has all the similarities that open my eyes: we are related to each other. One of the incredible opportunities that I got in my sixth month living here is the Washington State Capitol Tour in early February. Located in Olympia, the capital of Washington States, the Capitol building is built with neo-classical architecture style, with its pretty big rotunda, pillars, and details in the walls. The Capitol areas itself contain couple governments offices including the Legislative Building, Temple of Justice, Governor’s Mansion, and smaller buildings around. What makes it interesting is that I found lots of arts inside and outside of the building. The chandeliers, statues and sculptures, curtains, and marbles coated almost the whole structure; all have their symbolism meaning and the seal of Washington states too. The tour itself is an event for the exchange students living in Washington, in which we learned more about the government of the United States and Washington State in particular. The guide introduced us first to the legislative system of United States that similar but different in each state. For Washington, we have one parliamentary that is divided as the House of Representatives and the Senates. Each member represents their districts and county (in Indonesia is similar with Kota/Kabupaten) and becomes the representative of the citizens. Besides, we had a court trial simulation! We discussed a case and had different tasks as attorneys, judges, the audiences, and some others. During the tour, we also had lunch with two representatives from Washington states, Rep. Muri from Republicans and Rep. Kilduff from Democrats. The tour gave us so many new things about the United States that some of them I never knew before. While I mesmerized with the US government system, I came to the point where I realized that Indonesia and United States shared similarities of the nations. Both of us have a democratic country, from the citizens, by the citizens, and for the citizens. Both of us value citizens’ opinion in order to improve citizens’ life. Both of us respect the law and rights, especially about the autonomy of Indonesia’s provinces that similar with the US States’ rights. So does YES program goal: to build a bridge of understanding. Here, I shared about Indonesia, and they shared about the United States to me. The moment where Americans and I feel “click!” because no matter how different we are, we are related to each other with our similarities. From this particular moment, I hope that the whole exchange students in this world and I start to build the bridge together. That we may know, any difference won’t separate us, because we are similar. At the end of this newsletter, I wish that we will be aware that we are united, we are one, and it is possible for this world to reach an understanding towards each other. Initially written as the first newsletter as an exchange student, November 2017.
It was the third month of me living as an exchange student from Indonesia to the United States. There’s a lot of changes happening; the habits for not having rice as my main meal twice a day, the language that I speak, or even every little thing that I never noticed before –how I see the cedars beside the daily road instead of coconut trees. The temperature changes, from almost cold to really cold for a tropical kid –who used to not comfortable wearing sweaters and socks, now become a big lover of it. Or the leaves color that turning into yellow and red between the green pines, something that I always love to see during the study hall in my school through a big window in the library. The third month also means that it is the October, the spookiest month in a year. Every store hung the trick-or-treat decoration; put much more candies in the first isles so people can easily buy it. The unique costumes filled Goodwill, a place where you can buy things pretty cheap –also one of a favorite place of exchange student spent their money too. The families planned to go to the pumpkin patch with their kids, and a crowd pumpkin patch was something familiar every weekend. Cafés in every corner sold pumpkin spice coffee and pumpkin spice cakes. Americans were ready to embrace one of the “informal” holidays that is known in the world as Halloween. My first Halloween experience started on October 20th with the Halloween Dance, an event that held at my school, West Sound Academy, hosted by Social Committee and The Thespian. My school doesn’t have a homecoming dance, so they put this dance to replace it. I participated in Social Committee as a volunteer for decoration. It was super fun; it was my first time to be a part of decoration team and also my first dance! Everyone wore costumes to the dance and mingled. Pumpkin cookies, ghost-shaped cookies, chips, and sparkling water filled the energy through the night. I wore a black-colored outfit with vampire make-up. We danced for three hours, and everyone was so excited and happy. The night wasn’t end yet. We continued the spooky experience to the Kitsap Haunted House with my friends. Some of us were still wearing their costumes and makeup too. We walked through a 3D paintings isle that gave you the “confusing, dizzy” vibes. Then we walked through the ghost isles, filled with the vampires, spooky dinner table, scary music, and a cool isle called “the reborn.” The difference with “Rumah Hantu,” the Indonesian version of the haunted house, is the version of ghost. It wasn’t the pocong, nenek lampir, or kuntilanak; but they have vampires and monster instead. It wasn’t enough to experience Halloween with the pumpkins. I went to the pumpkin patch with my host family and their friends there. Thankfully, it was sunny, not rainy as the typical Washington weather. We almost ran out of the pumpkin, since we went there on the last weekend before Halloween. But we still got enough pumpkin for all of the kids to have one. We had the fun race that my host mom called, “the pumpkin race,” and we pretended to run for the only pumpkin that left in the yard. My host brother won the race and got the biggest pumpkin. I ended my Halloween with the trick-or-treating activity. I wore the fall queen costume with maple leaves all around the clothes and a flower crown. I joined my friends in the evening for a big American dinner in my house. We ate baked potatoes with sour cream, cheese, and bacon. Then we continued to do the trick-or-treat in another neighborhood since there’s not a lot of kids in my community. They were so loud but funny! Some of the house that we visit even told us that we were too old enough to ask for candies, but we didn’t care. Well, because they had a group of ten teenagers knocking their houses and saying trick-or-treat to them. Sometimes, we just randomly visit a house that looked like no kids coming over, and we were so happy to know that we were the first people who ask candies for years! Seeing them smile and really happy touched my heart. We had a blast, of course. After we got lots of sweets, each one of us made a small candy trading and arranged the candies on the floor. Suddenly the house become so loud with all of us made the exchange candy or trade candy program. I felt like in a crowded candy market. It was so cool to be the part of them. Some of us even got popcorn, a big KitKat, and a big Hershey chocolate that they didn’t want to trade. October meant a lot to me. It was one of the challenging rollercoaster month, the biggest American cultural experiences, and the memorable moments. It is the Halloween month, but I also called October as the Hello-ween. Ween in Old English means to fancy, imagine, believe; expect, hope. So, hello to what I’ve been hoping in my life, America! I am proud to experience and share the culture with Americans. Today, I write this in my 97th days living in Kitsap County, Washington, United States. Thank you AFS and U.S Department of States, terima kasih! It was two more days before the deadline for the first placement and departure to the United States for the YES student when I received two emails in the afternoon. I had been waiting for almost three months to get that. Just couple seconds I wanted to stop hoping for the first departure, my phone beeped. Bina Antarbudaya sent two emails. I cried in tears, screaming happily. I couldn’t describe the feelings that less than two weeks I would be living in another part of the world with a family that welcoming me through the email. It was just the beginning of everything. Here I am now. I am currently living in Indianola, Washington, United States of America. Indianola, a small community beside the Puget Sound is a peaceful and just so beautiful place. With the cedars and pines that guide me to the northeast, I can see a long dock with a brown sand beach. A country store that sells sandwich, ice cream, foods, and souvenirs from Indianola. Lots of pretty and unique houses from woods, there, I find my host family, the Gsellman. From Seattle, one of the biggest city in Washington state, I went to Downtown, to the port. I went with Ferry to Bainbridge Island around 35 minutes through the Puget Sound water. Bainbridge Island, then I passed the bridge, then Suquamish. Couple miles to the intersection, I arrived at Indianola. Almost a month, I finally recognized the streets, the houses, and I’ve been falling in love with this place. Friendly neighbors and people, I feel welcomed by them here. And of course, my host family. Two months ago, they were complete strangers that live in a cute house near one of the intersections in Indianola. Now, I fall in love with them as a family. Finally. |
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