I've Fallen in Love with This City of Million Faces

New York City, April 27th 2009

Postponed Posting = Random Stuff

Hi there!!
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haha...I forgot what I wanna say :p

What I clearly remember now is the fact that my limbs are so sore, down from my butt until above my ankles. Track practice is killing me slowly, but I'm thrilled cuz I seemed to survive these first 4 days' torment.

O yeah...I started to remember what I wanted to write...

1. Shiori's back to Japan T.T. Yeah...last Friday was her last day in school. She went to my hostfam's house on Saturday but I wasn't there. So, Friday afternoon on the bus was the last time I saw her. This past seven months, we had good times together. Ice cream time, gossip time, shopping time, biking and golfing in Florida, and many other stuff we did together. Some other time she also annoyed me and I annoyed her, but it doesn't matter at all, cuz every relationship has that 'sour' part. Anyway, I'm gonna miss her so much. She said that she's gonna come to Bali this August. I really want to see her there...I hope I'll have time to go since my school will start in August.
By the way, she just sent me a message in Facebook that said there was an airplane accident in Narita Airport right before the plane she was in landed. I'm glad she's okay...
Oh, by the way, before Shiori left, she had a presentation about kimono in Concord. She was planning to show how to wear a kimono. And she made me a model when she was practicing. Here is me in Japanese style:

I realized how short I am -_-!

Shiori and I in 3D theatre, Busch Gardens

2. I had a ski trip to Waterville Valley, NH last weekend. I expected the snow would be so icy and hard to ski on. But, it seems that Waterville's people have got a techineque to keep their customer happy during the last weeks of the season :)
However, I was not very lucky that day. When I tried to warm up and and recall how I usually ski downhill, I fell down so hard because I was going too fast. BAM! My ski fell off. And whoops! there's something wrong about it. The thingy that keeps my feet on the ski dangled hopelessly. It's screws must have been fallen off and gone when I fell down. Darn it!

A crew that happened to be next to me at that moment suggested that I should go to the repair shop. In the shop, I figured out that I need 20 bucks to fix my ski! Yeah...20 bucks to screw back my ski! -_-
The thing was...I only had 7 bucks with me. I went out of the shop and tried to find Linda (my friend's hostmom). But I couldn't find her. I had no choice, so I interrupted Ferdaous who was having a ski lesson to lend 20 bucks. 20 minutes later...I had my skis back. Fffiuuh -_-! I don't know what my hostmom gonna say if I came back with broken skis. She's not gonna kill me or make me pay for that, but she'll be ticked for sure.
Anyhow...skiing was pretty good that day. Even though I didn't get to go up to the top of the mountain (because I didn't have guts for that ;p), I was quite satisfied of myself ;)

After dinner on the same day, Dolores announced that scholarship students had to stay to watch a movie. It was mandatory. Our agency wanted us to watch that movie because we didn't pay for our trip, they paid for us. Well, the movie was probably the thing that they want us to pay back. Anyhow, it was just a movie, no big deal. There were 3 choices of movies: Hotel Rwanda, Osama, and I forget the other one. Hmm...they want us too watch THIS KIND of movie...lol
Dolores told us the duration of each movie, and we picked the shortest one, which happened to be Osama. It was not about Osama bin Ladden, but it has something to do with him since the setting in Afghanistan. The story was about a little girl that was in disguised of being a boy in order to get a job. At that time in Afghanistan (probably ot is right now), women can't work. The girl's father had died, and she only had her mother and grandmother left. Her mother forced her to conceal herself in boy's outfit so she can work for her family. The story was all about her struggle to keep the secret. It was so depressing so I wouldn't tell you what it was. The point is, she ended up being sold to an oldman.
After we watched the movie, Dolores brought up a topic to discuss. My friends from mid-east started to explain how untrue the movie in reality was. There is nothing like that in their country, they said. Yeah..it's true, because this movie is about Afghanistan, and it doesn't represent other Moslem country at all. And then, they started to discuss stereotypes about Moslem. I'm sorry I didn't participate as I was supposed to, cuz I was not in the mood to talk about religion and stuff. You know, talking about it is not comfortable at all. I already got many chance to talk about those stuff in English class and in Senior's religion class. So, yeah, I wouldn't recommend that movie to anybody.

OSAMA: the movie we watched

Back to my ski trip... Waterville Valley is a really cool place to stay during winter time. It reminds me of villages in England, which are so peaceful for me (hahaha...I'm saying it as if I've been to England, which I have not).

On Sunday we're supposed to go skiing again, but I couldn't, cuz the person who gave me a ride needed to go home early. It's ok for me, cuz I didn't lose any money to go home earlier :p
When Kunzang and I loaded the car with our stuff, it was snowing. It was in the parking lot when I saw snowflakes on Kunzang's hair. Waw!! I was soo thrilled to be able to see those pretty flakes again. It could be the last time I saw snowflakes before I go home, that's why I urged Kunzang to stay still while I observe the flakes. Hahha...what a nerd! lol

Before I broke my ski xp



Moosin' around in Waterville Valley: that's exactly what we were doin'

I felt like I'm in an English Village...hahaha *sotoy

Snowflake on my sleeve >.<

3. This week is the first week of track and field. Bwah...it's killing me! If I list what we did in practice, it may not seem that hard, but doing it non-stop without a break can really tear my lungs apart (hyperbole, haha). On the first day we did 10 minutes running without walking, and we raised the time each day, and tomorrow we're gonna run for 20 minutes. I wonder how long we're gonna run in the end of the season.

4. My friends back home are working on their (technically, our) yearbook. The theme is a crowd. So, they would stand in the crowd and someone will take a picture of them. Then, they edit the picture, they will wash out the backgroudn (or probably make it black and white) so the person will be the one in color. My friends took pictures in railway station, downtown Malang, in the middle of an avenue, stadium, etc. Since I can't be there to take picture for yearbook, then I have to take a picture by myself and send it to one of my friend. Even though the result is not as good as my friends', at least I will be on the yearbook :p. I also need to send my baby picture, which happened to be this one:

ain't I cute? :D

5. Pato broke his wrist when he went snowboarding. Gosh, that's what I'm afraid of when I go skiing. Moreover, jade told me that Liam Neeson's (Bryan's cast in Taken the movie) wife has died because she hit her head when she went skiing. She did not wear a helmet at that time. Once, I fell on my head really badly, but --thanks to helmet's inventor -- I'm okay :)

Anyway...Pato is going to have a surgery tomorrow. He said that he wants to see the surgery process, that means he wants to stay awake during the process. Urgh...I wonder how it fells to see someone dig on your flesh, fix your bones, and sew your skin. Gross...

However, get well soon, Pato!

Florida Day 11: LMAO

Today when Florian practiced his Bahasa Indonesia for our presentation, he said "Selamat pagi bapak-bapak dan ibu-ibu" (which means 'Good morning ladies and gentlemen').
Hearing those words, Zhanar who was lying down on her bed laughed so bad. "Hihihihihi" was her naughty laugh.
We asked, "What's so funny?"
She replied, "Do you know what 'ibu' means in Russian?"
"What? What?" Florian and I asked.
She continued laughing for several minutes and added, "It's so dirty..."
"In Russian, ibu means 'I'm f*cking".....HUAHAHAHAHAHA
All of us burst in laughter.

Then, if you say Ibu Siti (which means Mrs. Siti in Indonesian), that means "I'm f*cking Siti" in Russian....
Oh, dear...
:p

Florida Day 10: There's nothing better than free stuff ;p

O yeah...we got free tickets to Busch Garden! The last time we went to Busch Gardens, we found out that we can get a free pass that is valid within 6 days. We took them and used it today. We paid 80 bucks for 2 days...good deal, huh? They also have a non-sense deal though... Their one day pass is 80 bucks but their one YEAR pass is 100 bucks! Whatt?? doesn't make sense at all. If I were a Florida resident, I would buy the year pass in the first place.
Anyway...today was pretty awesome. We went on the roller coasters, the good ones. My favorite is still the 90-degrees-straight-down Sheikra. It was just so awesome. I think I got used to the rides. The last time I went on roller coaster, I screamed so bad. But today, I didn't scream at all, I just laughed loudly (hahaha...it's different, isn't it?)

After that, we went to a water ride. We got soaked (of course). The last time I went on this ride without the boys, I didn't get wet very much, but I don't know why this time the water splashed all over us and we got wet so much. That's so unfortunate, because today is so chilly. It feels like fall in New Hampshire, haha. Speaking about chilly weather, I saw people in the amusement park wearing winter jacket...here, in Florida! Hahaha...it was chilly, but not that cold that it's necessary to wear a heavy jacket ;p
Hahaha...I was like that as well. In fall, I always wear sweatshirt when some other people just wear T-shirt :)

*Before*

*after*

so chilly.... ><

After that, Zhanar, Pato, and I took a ride of Rhino Rally. We went on this truck and get closer to the animals. I would say it was worth waiting, because the rally track is kinda unpredictable. We floated on an artificial river (pretending to be lost) and went on a bumpy road.

In the gorilla preservation.


This is the ending scene of Jungle Musical, Katonga.


Group Picture!!!

I actually still have things to write, but I'm so tired right now...
I'll catch up with the writing later...
*Have a nice sleep, eki!*

Florida Day 9: A lil bit of Childhood Nostalgia

Last night I went to bed at 2.30 after I watched Crayon Shinchan in Cartoon Network. It's strange to hear Shinchan and all the characters speak English. Moreover, they pronounce Shin like Shane. That's not cute anymore. In Indonesia, the trade mark of Shinchan is when he calls his mom with a deep voice, "Mama mama...". In English when it becomes "Mommy...mommy" in a child voice, it doesn't sound as great. I just looked up Shinchan versions in many languages from youtube. I watched the Indonesian, Malay, Spanish, French, and Hindi versions. In Malay, Hindi, and Spanish versions, Shinchan's voice sounds really like a child, a normal one. In Indonesian version, Shinchan's voice is deep and it sounds like an abnormal child, and it is so great because he is a little bit extraordinary (in a bad way). The one that always makes me laugh so bad is his voice, honestly.

Well, we cannot really decide which version is the best because it all depends on the viewers and their preferred language. I would say that the best version is the original one, which is Japanese. But, I still say that Indonesian version is really good, hahaha. It doesn't matter, anyway...

Anyway, back to Shinchan...although this anime is known as a bad effect for children because of its vulgar scenes and conversations, I still have it in my favorite cartoon list ;)
Until my junior high years, I always watched Shinchan every Sunday morning. I sometimes rent its videos. Watching it last night was kind of a nostalgia of my childhood :)
I have the opening soundtrack video of the show posted, for those who used to watch Shinchan every Sunday morning in their childhood :)
Enjoy!

Mid-Night Bike Riding

I just came back from midnight bike riding with Zhanar. It was pretty cool to have the whole street for our own, but it's kinda creepy also. I kept thinking about pocong that is hiding behind the palm trees (well, palm trees are too good for pocong, though; and if you don't know what pocong is, google it ;p)

Back home, I would never ever go biking at midnight. I don't know why the atmosphere back home is much creepier than any other place in the world. Here, I don't mind walking around at night, but back home, I get scared really easily. Oh, well....I'm such a pussy...

Florida Day 8: Lazy Day and Bad Luck

There was not much going on today. I woke up at 12 (haha) then ate a late breakfast and went online. Not long afterwards, I ate lunch (hahaha). Just a typical lazy day. At 2 o' clock, Florian came to my condo to work on our project. Oh well...
After we're done, it was like 4.30. I went biking by myself. Bad luck was on me today. On the half way of biking, the pedal fell off. I did nothing; I didn't fall down or crash or anything; it just fell off. I tried to fix it, but it kept falling off every five seconds. Oh dear...
I had no choice, so I walked my bike home which was like 20 minutes walking :(
By the way, out of the topic, my skin smells like pool water right now...
Yeah, we went to the pool for about 2 hours from 7.30 this evening. Zhanar, Florian, and I kept going up and down the hot tub while Jade and Pato went catching up with the hot chicks ;p

Florida Day 7: wow...it's been a week!

aargghh... it's a week more before I come back to the freezing New Hampsha...
Well, I love snow and all winter stuff (not including shoveling snow), but I think I will miss sun, the smell of wet lawns, and flip flops... :(

and however, it also means that I also have 7 more days to finish my project; and I'm wicked far from done. Today, I didn't learn any German because Florian didn't want to work on it. That's what is not fun about working with boys :(
Yeah...it happens a lot; for example, I had a group of 3 boys and 2 girls...and the girls ended up working on 90% of the assignment. The only good thing was: we laughed a lot ;)
Hmm...I will miss those moments... Next year when I come back to school, I will not have the same friends since all my friends are going to college. Probably I will not have the same fun. Well, 12th grade is not fun anyway. But hopefully I will have friends as good and fun as my friends right now.
^_^

btw...
I'm tired...

guet nacht!

Florida Day 6: Busch Garden = All Day Fun

Busch Gardens is basically a common theme park that is located in Tampa Bay, FL. The theme is Africa. They divided the place into regions that are named after some countries in Africa. They also have a big plain for african animals. And the greatest thing is...they have many awesome roller coaster!!! ><

In Egypt region.

Waiting for roller coaster. Oh, I look so horrible in this picture -_-!


They have 7 working roller coaster, and I took the rides ten times! My favorite roller coaster is the one in the picture. As we can see, there is a vertical track. When we were right on the edge between the vertical and horizontal track, they stopped the roller coaster. So, we were sitting there looking hudreds meter down and screaming. The next five second, we were dropped! Oh... what an awesome ride!!!


Group picture!


I like Jade's and Florian's face in this picture! lol. Jade looks like he just took a bitter drug, and Florian was like, "What the eff is wrong with you Jade?"


On the train. Looking at the animals from afar.


Girrafes!!!


Before we watched 4-D pirates movie. After that? we got wet...


Another roller coaster :)


To get out of Busch Gardens' parking lot, we have to walk maybe for 1 mile. We wanted to go to a restaurant just across the street behind this wall. Since we didn't want to walk really far, so...we just climbed the wall!


Thanks Jade! Hahaha...I know I'm heavy...


To get to this restaurant, we had to cross a very busy boulevard. When there was no car nearby, Pato shouted, "RUN!!!" and all six of us run crazily across the street. The good thing is: the food is worth fighting, lol.
What a fun day!!! ;)

Florida Day 5: continuing Schwiizertüütsch and that's about it

This is my lazy day...
All useful things I did today were just bike-riding, learning Swiss-german for 1 hour and 15 minutes, and eat. I didn't even take any picture! Yeah...that's surprising for me!
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ok, steak is waiting!
tschüss!

Florida Day 4: Schwizz and Indonesian

Today I woke up at 10, had a light breakfast, took a long shower, and got on the computer. Pretty lame, yeah. After a while I got bored, so I went biking for a while. It was not much fun to go biking by myself, because I will look pretty strange and I have to say hi to everyone I meet on the street including some fancy young mothers who blocked a narrow lane by their baby buggies.
However, when I came back to the condo, I found Shiori who wanted to go jogging. So, I followed her jogging with my bike. We went outside of the resort area and found a very interesting track for biking.
We came back exactly at three o'clock...an exact time that Florian promised me to start doing our project. Yeah...this two weeks break is a project period week from our school. All the students are supposed to do a project whatever they want and present it when we get back to school. I decided to learn Florian's language for project, and Florian decided to learn my language as his project. How exciting, hahaha.
So, here we were, in my condo's balcony. I took note of some Swiss-german greetings and expression and he took note of some Indonesians. Learning Swiss-german is pretty hard. They use Swiss-german in speaking only, they do not write in Swiss-german, so there are no exact spelling for the language. I also practiced to pronounce the "kkhhhh" thingy. It is so hard, probably because I'm not used to spit so intensely. The word "zwanzg" took me the longest to pronounce because Florian kept saying that I don't pronounce it correctly.
Florian had a tough time as well. He took longest time to pronounce "ng" and "ngg". He had a hard time to pronounce the word "mendengarkan". It was so funny to hear him speak with his "kkkhhh" accent.

We're gonna continue learning tomorrow.... and tonight I gotta practice how to pronounce "zwanzg" and "lieblingsgetrank"

guet nacht, people!

Florida Day 3: Basketball, Hot Guys, and Alligators

Today, Zhanar and I went biking together. Zhanar have not been biking for such a long time, so she got freak out and she almost hit an old lady. We passed the same bridge, and we saw an alligator! Finally...The alligator is tanning, lol

and we saw this birdie! and there are a lot of them. I guess it's a heron... I'm not sure...

Zhanar and I played asshole. Hahaha...don't assume anything. Asshole is kind of basketball game. We just shoot the ball and if we didn't get it in we get a letter of the word 'asshole'.
Btw, nice picture, isn't it?

Zhanar and I are not that impressive in basketball. Many times we made the ball stuck in the net. Zhanar tried to kick the ring pillar (or whatever it's called) but most of the time it didn't work. So, we ended up calling a guy to help us. He was tall and looked pretty good, lol. The second time we made the ball stuck, there was another passing-by-hot-guy, so we asked him for help. He was tall and really good at basketball. After he fixed the net, he was just standing there to check whether the net is good enough or not. But, we didn't even get the ball in, so I asked him to try, and he made a perfect three points (clapping hands :p). The third time we made the ball stuck there was no guy around. When one guy passed by, I asked Zhanar, "Hey, ask that guy!" and Zhanar said, "No, he's ugly. Let's wait for the hot one!" Huahahahaha...actually there were many girls passing by, buy we preferred to ask for help to a guy, a hot one, hahahaha. If Sam is reading this; no worry! When I asked Zhanar, "Hey, go look for a hot guy over there!" And she said, "No, I don't need one!" Aw...aw.... :)

When we got tired of messing around with basketball, we sat by the pond. We watched the birdies and even the alligators eyes that emerged and vanished multiple times from the water.

Ch...ch...chilling...

Clear sky and cute girls :p

Florida Day 2: Missing Home, Frog, Toad, and Armadillo

My bed! This is actually a couch in the livingroom, but we turned it into a bed! yeah...there are only 2 beds in our condo and there are 3 of us...so one of us has to sleep in the livingroom. We take turn for the bed, hahaha

The pond behind our condo. There are some alligators in it, but I've never seen one yet.

The view from our balcony. The whole thing makes me miss home so bad, especially when I hear the sound of bouncing tennisball on the court nearby, I miss my parents so much. Back home, they sometimes take me and my sister to a hotel or resort while they play tennis; the view and feeling is exactly like this.

When Zhanar and I tried to scare Jade (who was still sleeping) in his room, we saw this unnatural looking frog on the door knob. We tried to scare it and even took a picture, but it didn't move, so we thought it's fake. Then Zhanar poked it, and it shocked and moved. We screamed...but Jade didn't wake up at all, hahaha. After that, Zhanar and I argued whether it was a frog or toad. I said it's a toad, but Zhanar was right...it was a frog, hahaha.


Shiori and I went biking when Zhanar tried to tan (it didn't work, though). We passed this pretty pond. There were turtles and weird huge birds that fly very low.

I'm so glad we have bicycles here ^^

Zhanar, Pato, Jade, Florian, and I took a walk at night. This is the same pond that I passed by. It looks so creepy at night.


When we went back to our condos from night walking, we saw an armadillo in someone's front yard. I got so excited, and I yelled, "Look at that thing!!!" At first, I forgot what it's called, but Pato reminded me. When I yelled, the armadillo got scared and run. Pato approached it to take a picture, but the armadillo vanished in the bush. Too bad :(

Florida Day 1: Not only Paris Hilton who can ride a limo

Waiting to get on the plane in Manchester Airport

Pato, Shiori, and Zhanar....cute picture :)

Frozen lakes :)

This is our ride to the resort!!!! O yeaah!!

There were so many goblets and ice cubes inside the limo, but...

There was no water!

Sherry, Mom, and Greg :)

Look at the lights...

They change colors!!! hahaha