Look who is posting again!!! It's been long and tiring ears, but I've finally resurfaced haha, Seems like I miss writing too much to fully stop. And here is me fulfilling a part of my promise. Enjoy!
Eventhough it’s been years, IBO
is still one of the best thing I have ever experienced. It was such an honor to
be one of the delegates, and sometimes, it felt surreal for me. I always had
bad scores at practical exam, so when the lecturers announced our names from
the lowest rank and arrived at the 5th name, I thought to myself “It’s fine if
you can not go now” and repeated it again and again. Then they scrolled down
the screen, and well, it was not my name. I have forgotten what I felt at the
moent, but it was somewhere between happy and relief. I could not believe I
could represent Indonesia again after years since elementary school, and I could
not believe that I got to go to Europe, for free! See, Europe is like one of my obssession. I do not know why,
but for some reason I always dreamed to go there. So, I’m not really sure which
part I was happier with, the IBO part or the Europe part.
The things before we went to IBO
were fun too. Studying felt different somehow. It was more serious of course,
but somehow it was more fun too. I could redo the practicum that I kept
messing. Changed this variable into other variable. Tried various ways to be
faster. We would take a walk around and picked flowers to study them, while
wondering what kind of flowers they had in Denmark. We would cut shrimps,
squids, worms, grasshoppers (but why didn’t we cut fish?? *cry*). We tried to
solve questions from past years while hoping that it would not be this hard.
I
and Hana could go to mosque for Tarawih prayer (it was Ramadhan) that
was a bit far from our place because we did not have that many task as before.
We threw a birthday party for Peti, complete with roses and all. We went to
several midnight walks to buy ice cream, or even to a department store where
they had some big sales. We prepared our visa and passport. We had an
invitation from the ministry to Jakarta, and I had to borrow Hana’s veil
because I didn’t bring any formal ones. We also went to buy dresses (and tux
for Valdi).
Going to Denmark was not the
first time I went abroad, but it certainly felt very different. Denmark is in
another continent which was 14-16 hours flight away. We flew with Emirates,
which was said to be one of the best airlines in the world, and I knew most
people hate flights, but I don’t. Most of the time, I actually love it. Sure,
flying for hours was tiring and people hate airlines food because of its small
portion. But well, I have never eaten much anyway, it was exactly my portion of
food, and I think they tasted good. We flew for several hours before the plane
transit in Dubai, and I am the type of person who actually like airports. So
even the transit felt like a nice experience to me. I tried to revise on the
plane, but the lecturer sitting besides me said that it was past the time to
revise, so I watched Lord of the Rings movies instead (and I finished the three
of them eventhough each was almost 3 hours-long).
We arrived in Copenhagen. It was
not the venue of the event, but our lecturers thought we should at least adapt
to the time and temperature difference for several days before the competition.
It was summer so the temperature should have not been that different, but
still, the average temperature was around 13-15oC (even lower
sometimes), with chilly winds, too long day-time, and too-short night (the sun
set around 11 PM, and rose around 2 AM, it messed up the prayer time too). We
were picked up by some people from Indonesian Embassy, and they drove us to our
hotel. The first thing that came to my mind while we were driving was that the
city was so empty, especially when I was used to the crowd of Jakarta. There
were few people on the streets (It was actually even fewer in Aarhus, I only
saw 1 or 2 people from the bus). There was no traffic.
The City Centre (and
the “right” Scandic)
Indonesian Embassy
Our hotel was in the centre of
the city, so we could walk to places easily. There was a funny story during our
first day. In our first walk through the city, our lecturers asked us to meet
them in a kebab place near a building named Scandic. We thought it would be an
easy stroll, I’m pretty good with directions too. But it wasn’t. Because it
turned out that there were more than 5 buildings named Scandic, so we walked
far from the correct place. I think we walked for around 45 minutesbefore we
arrived there to eat. In Copenhagen, we also bought souvenirs (yes, we bought
them even before the competition started), and went to Indonesian embassy. The
embassy was not a big office-like building, it was more like a house actually. A
lovely brick house with beautiful flowers in the garden. We stayed for three days before we went to Aarhus
by train.
In front of the hotel
I’m going to talk about IBO
itself in the next part of the story, but now let me talk about Europe. As I
have written above, Europe was like an obsession for me (read this to find my
escape-to-europe dream), so I was really grateful to be able to go. And here is
some of my impressions about it:
1. I
remembered Peti said the first time we stepped outside the airport “There are
so many bule!”, and we just laughed. At
the same time, I realized one thing. There, we were the odd ones out,
especially as I wore hijab.
2. The
second thing I realized, was of course the cold. I wore 3 layers of clothes
every time I went outside, and before you said that we felt it just because we
were not used to it, the people there also wore jackets outside.
3. Food
is one thing we need to think about. IBO committees provided halal food for us,
but in Copenhagen we needed to find it by ourselves. We mostly eat in kebab and
curry place, or buy variety of breads. We can drink from tap water, which is
kinda weird because you can actually fill your bottles in the bathroom. Probably
out of the context, but the first time I went to 7-eleven, was not in Indonesia,
it was in Denmark (to buy food for the train)
4. Flowers
are actually thriving there! I think it’s the combination of cold weather, and
the sun of summer, the colors were vibrant and so so beautiful. Not only in
Indonesian Embassy, we also found flowers on the pavement, and we could
actually smell the scent. And since I DO love walking (but hate running), I
tried to walk different paths from city center to the hotel, and I was delighted
to find a secluded garden behind a museum with kinds of flowers I had never
seen in Indonesia.
5. Since
Denmark is in Northern Europe, we could really feel the long summer day here. The
sun rose around 3 in the moring, and set around 10 or 11 at night. Prayer time?
Subuh was around 02.30, I forgot Zuhur and Asar time, but every time we came
back after activities around 21.00, it was still Asar time. Maghrib was around
22.00, while Isya was around 00.00. The time difference with Indonesia was
around 5 hours, but I didn’t have any trouble sleeping there. Though in the
first week that I came home, I slept for almost the whole day on each day (no,
I don’t think it was because of jet-lag)
6. Bikes
were everwhere here. Our LO said that even their minister bikes to work.
7. One
of my lecturer who had taken his PhD in Europe said that actually, almost all
city in Europe is similar, at least in ambience and architecture. And if you
need to find some food, go to the station. There were many stalls there.
8. I
noticed that there were not many shopping mall there. Most of the shops were at
the street. We loved going to supermarkets there because there were, of course,
many kinds of stuff we could not find in Indonesia. We loved the fruits and tea
selections too!
Don't ask when I'm going to post the second part, just trust me, I will ;)
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