My Kind of “Normal”
Jariah Rexy Revindy (INA AFS to Hungary YP 16–17)
It’s been 5 months since i left home, things started to change. The feeling no longer something strange anymore, it started to feels like home. How people get used with me walking in their main streets, how people that I don’t know started to smile to me just because they know we are going to go with the same bus or the nanny that lives infront of our house start to notice me and offering a lunch after school or the people that i talk to in the bus because of little thing. This all people do make me feels like home, like it’s my life, like this is “normal” that i have. All those strange feeling become a warm feeling in my heart. I never thought that i could be just as normal as the other. I never thought i will be part of any society far away from home. Just like how I found out a shorter way to my house from the tram station make me feel normal.
In school the class started to prepare for the campaign that ever 11th grade have the right to join the campaign. Let me tell you a little bit about this campaign. For all of us this campaign is the most fun program that the school has! Because once in your school life your class get to be the school leader for one day (only if you win this campaign) and all the classes start from 7th grade untill 12th should decide which 11th grade classes worth this position. So to win this campaign we have to dance, make a movie and bake a cake! But now we’re just practicing our group dance and talking about what clothes should we wear as a team. I know right, there is no such as this program in Indonesian school this is why also the most interesting and exciting program for me and for everyone in my class. We get to rule the school for one day that will be so much fun. You get to tell the teacher there is no class for that day or maybe allowing a test on that day, it’s all you decision. Becoming part of them, feeling the excitement and te anxious make me feel like I belong here, to this place. I can’t wait for baking the cookies and making the movie. I bet there will be more fun!
In this exchange year i know how it felt to be part of the family that celebrates Christmas. I can feel the excitement from everyone welcoming the Christmas. How i walk around the city to found a Christmas gift for my family. How my mom asked me to help her to bake the cookies. How my dad came home with a very big Christmas tree and put it in the corner of our living room. How i decorated the Christmas tree for the first time. How everyone gather for Christmas dinner. How the santa bell rang and everyone running to the Christmas tree to see their gift. For me those experiences that i had with my family here were priceless. I can’t change them with any amount of money that you offer me. Those things were something i could never experienced if i weren’t here with them. I always feel blessed everyday that i have my family even though I’m far away from home
Since it was Christmas and of course here come winter! My very first winter. Nothing excites me more than snow. My first seeing snow fall, my first touching a snow, my first playing with snow, my first shoveling the snow, and first time fall down because of the very slippery road! It’s all about the snow and the cold. But i love it! And even every time it snow falls I can’t keep that happy face away from me, it’s always like the first time i saw a snow. Snow always a magical thing for this tropical girl like me, it never fail to amaze me. When the snow fell so hard for the first time, me and my family just go outside the house start to walk to the playground and play with the snow. We just threw a snowball to one each other and buried everyone that fell to the snow. I do enjoy my first winter so much. In winter i get to try how it really felt to play ice skating in winter. I don’t know it was that hard, i need 2 times experiencing the ice skating so i can stand on my own and not keep holding on with my friends. Before I can’t really balance myself and felt the shoes keep hurting my leg but after the second time it went well for me, it felt way better than before.
Being and exchange student in a continent you never been before make a lots of different in me. I can’t thank God more and more everyday for everything that i have. I am blessed with my kind of “normal”
