Experience is a great teacher, John Legend said. We live, we feel and we learn something every moment in our life. Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. It’s priceless. I believe everyone has their own happenings, feelings and stories along their way of life. Some are dreams, some are passion and we give a hard trying to get them. Dreams, life, passion, stories and even ourselves are the product of all our experience. That’s what I thought after through (almost) eight weeks in Tucson, Arizona with my twenty friends from Indonesia, since I got scholarship of IELSP this year.
Living in Tucson need a hard trying. It took two weeks for me to adjust and make sure of myself that “it’s not in Indonesia”. I have to take care of myself instead of my parents used to. I have my own room apartment shared with my friend, Hera from West Borneo, Indonesia. She was three years older than me, good chef and nice roommate. I was Bugisian and she was Javanese. I realized that, the fact that I’m living in a country that has a broad cultures and different people came here for many purposes, my first exchange culture happened in my own room.
The key is tolerance. I was reckless, moody and have a bad habit : procrastination. After (almost) eight weeks living in here with my twenty friends from Indonesia and CESL’s friends and teachers, I feel more understand and realized that tolerance is a difficult to learn. We have to think instead of just follow our feeling; think that we are all different, that we couldn’t hope another people do what we want them to do for us. I was reckless, moody and did procrastination but now I have to change, because I have to tolerant with my tidy discipline roommate, because I realized that I was shared my life with her. It started with her then others.
My first impression when I arrived in Tucson is the people was very friendly. Everytime I meet with someone new, they greet me like, “Hello, how’re you?” or just “Hello..!” and I replied with “Good, how’re you?” and they answered, “Good..”. That’s one thing. When I want to go somewhere by Suntran and I don’t know how to get there, I asked people and suprisingly, they want to help by showed and explained the way on map. English is everywhere here. Two months here, English was just like Bahasa to me. My first class in CESL, I got surprised too because I catched everything teacher said although there are some words I didn’t know the meaning.
This scholarship have showed me the other side of the world that made me really ‘see’ diversity in this world. In this young age, I have been so lucky for getting such a great opportunity like this. When I really want to study and improve my English, IELSP come and take me to an appropriate place like Center of English As a Second Languange (CESL) in Tucson, Arizona, US. This program provided me a really comfortable accomodation, nice atmosphere for study with many places to visit on weekend.
From pre-departure orientation in Jakarta last April, we given many informations about our departure, visa interview and chance to see our alumni for each representative in university. There is person who take care of us from the beginning until we arrive in our destination. I couldn’t hope much more, for me it’s more than enough.
This is my unforgetable experience and my best journey along my life. There are so many culture lesson I’ve got that will really helpful in my CV for seeking a good job...and get a masters degree scholarship later. I really want to continue my study in Europe, someday. Like I always think, knowledge making us addiction. Once we get enjoy of them, we will hard to stop it. I hope I will never quit study; academicly and get life lessons. []
