I just thought I'd take the time to dedicate a blog post to the funny little things that have become a part of my day-to-day life here.
So today after dance practice, my friend asked me to grab a cup of coffee with her. Back in Wheaton, this would probably mean that she'd pick me up in her car, and we'd go to the Starbucks near my old high school which is less than a five minute drive from where I live, and there I'd probably pay about five dollars for a fancy-named-latte. Here, it means hoping on the back of my friend's motorcycle, zooming in and out of traffic while she navigates amongst the winding streets and alleys for at least twenty minutes until we end up behind the back of some restaurant owned by 'a friend' who hands us a glass of steaming hot, black coffee grown in the mountains of my island, Sulawesi, with a cup of susu, or sweet, condensed milk to be poured liberally to taste. No fancy labels or unpronounceable names, just one really darn good cup of coffee for about thirty cents.
While I walked home from school the other day, I decided to count how many times people on the street shout out to me, "Hello, Mister!". I have no idea where all of these people learned to say this whenever they saw a white person, though it was probably in some American movie they all saw, but it happened forty-seven times. I live ten blocks from school. After I got home, I also realized that after living here for two months I had gotten pretty good at tuning it out entirely when I go out. One thing I don't ever want to tune out is the beautiful call to prayer I hear emanating from the mosques five times a day. It's all in Arabic, and of course there's no way I know what every word means, I feel like I can understand. Hearing it reminds me to take a deep breath in, close my eyes and feel the moment I am in and enjoy every, irreplaceable second of it.
I've also realized that some of the things that used to completely stun me with culture shock at the beginning of my time here have now just become part of my life. The babies wedged between parents on motorcycles rushing along to their next destinations, the orphans playing soccer with battered flip flops or no shoes at all with a patched-up soccer ball near the cleared construction sites behind my house, or the toothless old woman who sells me the mangoes and papayas that I buy with my host sister every day. It's crazy, especially for a girl coming from a place like Chicago, that these are the things that bring me comfort and that this crazy, beautiful and mysterious place I'm beginning to call home.
A thing about the language- I am pretty proficient in Indonesian right now and can hold a decent conversation with most Indonesians about nearly any topic. At the beginning, I remember having a meeting with the headmaster of my school one of the first days I was in Indonesia and my host sister, the only person in my family who speaks any English, was walking around the building and it was just him and I. He asked me all of these questions and I just kind of nodded and smiled while he went on and on. When my sister came back into the room she talked to my headmaster and then we left. On the way home she said to me, "Kaitlyn, I didn't know you played bass guitar since you were little!" and I said, "What?! No, no I don't!" and she said that that's what I told my headmaster before. This kind of thing happens all the time, although a lot less often now that I'm actually understanding the language. The funny thing about the other exchange students is that other than a boy from Alaska, we are the only ones who come from an English-speaking country. Communicating with the rest of the exchange students who've come here isn't always easy, not to mention all of the other exchange students from Indonesia who recently came back in July or August from their year-long exchanges to places like Paraguay and Turkey.
For instance, I was with my Indonesian friend, Nunu, the other day who just got back from Columbia. We only speak in Spanish together, and when I have a question about an Indonesian word, I ask her in Spanish, and when I'm with my other American friend I translate that into English. If I'm with Nunu, Lucie (an exchange student from Paris) and other exchange students, Lucie, Nunu and I all speak in Spanish (Lucie took Spanish in school like me) and then Lucie translates into French for the French-speaking students (from Belgium and and Switzerland) and I translate into English for my American friend. It's one really crazy, really awesome way to make a lot of even crazier and more awesome friends from all around the world, and isn't that what exchange is all about?
So today after dance practice, my friend asked me to grab a cup of coffee with her. Back in Wheaton, this would probably mean that she'd pick me up in her car, and we'd go to the Starbucks near my old high school which is less than a five minute drive from where I live, and there I'd probably pay about five dollars for a fancy-named-latte. Here, it means hoping on the back of my friend's motorcycle, zooming in and out of traffic while she navigates amongst the winding streets and alleys for at least twenty minutes until we end up behind the back of some restaurant owned by 'a friend' who hands us a glass of steaming hot, black coffee grown in the mountains of my island, Sulawesi, with a cup of susu, or sweet, condensed milk to be poured liberally to taste. No fancy labels or unpronounceable names, just one really darn good cup of coffee for about thirty cents.
While I walked home from school the other day, I decided to count how many times people on the street shout out to me, "Hello, Mister!". I have no idea where all of these people learned to say this whenever they saw a white person, though it was probably in some American movie they all saw, but it happened forty-seven times. I live ten blocks from school. After I got home, I also realized that after living here for two months I had gotten pretty good at tuning it out entirely when I go out. One thing I don't ever want to tune out is the beautiful call to prayer I hear emanating from the mosques five times a day. It's all in Arabic, and of course there's no way I know what every word means, I feel like I can understand. Hearing it reminds me to take a deep breath in, close my eyes and feel the moment I am in and enjoy every, irreplaceable second of it.
I've also realized that some of the things that used to completely stun me with culture shock at the beginning of my time here have now just become part of my life. The babies wedged between parents on motorcycles rushing along to their next destinations, the orphans playing soccer with battered flip flops or no shoes at all with a patched-up soccer ball near the cleared construction sites behind my house, or the toothless old woman who sells me the mangoes and papayas that I buy with my host sister every day. It's crazy, especially for a girl coming from a place like Chicago, that these are the things that bring me comfort and that this crazy, beautiful and mysterious place I'm beginning to call home.
A thing about the language- I am pretty proficient in Indonesian right now and can hold a decent conversation with most Indonesians about nearly any topic. At the beginning, I remember having a meeting with the headmaster of my school one of the first days I was in Indonesia and my host sister, the only person in my family who speaks any English, was walking around the building and it was just him and I. He asked me all of these questions and I just kind of nodded and smiled while he went on and on. When my sister came back into the room she talked to my headmaster and then we left. On the way home she said to me, "Kaitlyn, I didn't know you played bass guitar since you were little!" and I said, "What?! No, no I don't!" and she said that that's what I told my headmaster before. This kind of thing happens all the time, although a lot less often now that I'm actually understanding the language. The funny thing about the other exchange students is that other than a boy from Alaska, we are the only ones who come from an English-speaking country. Communicating with the rest of the exchange students who've come here isn't always easy, not to mention all of the other exchange students from Indonesia who recently came back in July or August from their year-long exchanges to places like Paraguay and Turkey.
For instance, I was with my Indonesian friend, Nunu, the other day who just got back from Columbia. We only speak in Spanish together, and when I have a question about an Indonesian word, I ask her in Spanish, and when I'm with my other American friend I translate that into English. If I'm with Nunu, Lucie (an exchange student from Paris) and other exchange students, Lucie, Nunu and I all speak in Spanish (Lucie took Spanish in school like me) and then Lucie translates into French for the French-speaking students (from Belgium and and Switzerland) and I translate into English for my American friend. It's one really crazy, really awesome way to make a lot of even crazier and more awesome friends from all around the world, and isn't that what exchange is all about?
1 comment:
I love that you truly have gotten to what exchange is all about. What a remarkable personal discovery and great experience for your future.
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