The Essence: People

Sebagai introvert (cough), gue sangat menghargai dan treasure orang-orang yang menjadi bagian dari hidup gue. Apalagi kini gue mulai dari awal, tanpa banyak koneksi kenalan berkaitan dengan kepindahan gue. It's kinda tough for me to mingle and socialize with people for the first time. There is always this awkward silence after few questions that I don't really know how to break.

Beruntungnya, gue dikelilingi banyak orang-orang baik dan fantastis selama seminggu ini. 

The Southeast Asians

After SEALNet, gue selalu merasa nyaman dengan teman-teman dari Asia Tenggara. Selama orientasi, gue cenderung gabung dengan Malaysians dan Bruneian meskipun mereka berbicara dengan Bahasa Mandarin yang super lancar sedangkan gue hanya mengerti 60%. I am determined to pick up Mandarin again after this. B-)

ex-Indonesian? Haha

Say Hi to Iso! Disaat gue kira gue harus fix ngomong dengan standard English and my English (which sounds pretty much like mixed Manglish/Singlish) selama di Ewha, gue ketemu Iso dari Timor Leste yang masih lancar dan sering ke Indonesia (saw her passport before lol). Bahkan sekarang masih pake nomor Indonesia karena ke Koreanya pun lewat Denpasar dan Jakarta instead of Singapore. Anehnya gue baru tau kalo tiap dia ke Indonesia harus bayar VOA $35. Gila jahat banget astaga kenapa gak free aja sih.

Iso manggil gue Kak padahal mah gue lebih muda muahaha. Anyway, harusnya ada 2 orang lain dari Timor Leste tapi yang satu lebih pilih ke Australia dan satu lagi gak lolos dari cadangan. Padahal kan seru kalo semakin banyak yang mother tonguenya sama :P

Aracua from Venezuela

Next is the Venezuelan, Arauca. OMG she is super friendly and she amazes me from the very first second when we met at the airport! Muahaha turned out that we're both cat lovers and she speaks fantastic Korean after learning for 3 years! 2 hari pertama kita selalu pergi bareng bertiga, plus Lucia dari Meksiko yang belom sempat gue ajak selfie hahaha.

Pi Ling, Brunei

Lydia, Chloe (Malaysians), me and Pi Ling

Pi Ling is literally the cutest girl ever in Ewha haha. The way she speaks is really cute and she practices some cheesy lines in Malay like "Aku akan selalu ada untukmu". So lovely. As for Lydia, we actually talked before on Kakaotalk and she knows Korean, too. So there was no awkward moment or 'adjusting' time once we met, yeay! Chloe and Yi Qing, the other two Malaysians, are not in Ewha but they are very friendly too :D

Yogya peeps 

And I would not miss the Indonesian peeps for sure. They are probably the first people that I would approach whenever I face any hardship during my journey. Menariknya, meski 3 KGSP-U tahun ini berasal dari UGM, kita belum sempat ngobrol selain light talk waktu mengurus visa. Not even waktu berangkat karena kita duduknya nyebar. Jadi saat ketemu kemarin, gue merasa sangat senang dan yes, there was no awkward moment! Great ;)

So let me introduce them. Dari kiri ada Ridwan, manusia kebumian sejati yang saat meet up pun pake kaos 'Geologi UGM'. Gue gak tau banyak tentang Ridwan sebelum ngobrol kemaren dan ternyata dia bukan cuma anak OSN tapi juga Silver Medalist IESO. Ridwan bakal ambil Earth Science di SNU. Emang hidupnya untuk bumi haha. Ridwan juga ternyata anak PASIAD dan udah melewati hell of SAT. Faith brings him here to Korea. It wasn't his intention karena dia udah dapet jatah scholarship pemerintah. Sayang akhirnya dia di PHP pemerintah sendiri hahaha.

Sebelah Ridwan, Ivan. Ivan adalah anak IT, asli Yogya dan bakal kuliah di Daejeon University. Tadinya sih mau KAIST tapi akhirnya tetangganya KAIST. Ivan sangat penuh informasi ketika proses seleksi kedua dan ketiga karena dia selalu kontak dengan liaison KGSP di Kedutaan. Gue gak suka telpon orang karena entah kenapa gue males ngomong dan Ivan yang bantu kontak lalu menyampaikan informasinya ke gue. Ivan super deket dengan Ibunya dan selalu stay in touch as in every minute every hour every wifi.

Sebelah Ivan dan sebelah gue ada Mas Farras, an inspiring 'scholarship hunter' from Yogya. Mas Farras adalah grantee KGSP-U 2014 and he deserves my deepest gratitude karena dia yang sudah membantu gue selama proses KGSP. Ada banyak non-technical things yang membingungkan dan gak banyak senior yang bisa dikontak virtually. Tapi lain cerita dengan Mas Farras. Gak cuma berbagi kisah di blog, Mas Farras juga dengan sangat baik hati menjawab seluruh pertanyaan prospectus KGSP dari Indonesia. Finally, setelah berbulan-bulan komunikasi via Twitter dan email, we managed to arrange a meet up at Korea University! So glad that it worked out!

I am really happy that these three guys are so friendly and helpful. Especially Mas Farras because I never met him before yet he is so warm and kind to bring us around in his free time. I heard that free time is incredibly rare in Korean top colleges so I really appreciate that. It was a fun day and we share same sense of humour ("let's copy that PDA-touchy-touchy couple on the street!") haha. Somehow I can't wait to have another day out with these Yogya peeps.

I am so thankful for these wonderful people coming through different corners of the world.  And let's not forget that we are uniting here in Korea because of the generous scholarship from the government. What a life changing opportunity, indeed. Hope everything stays amazing. Can't wait for my class to start. I am nothing but a 'super productive' blogger yet a lazy badass girl these days hahaha.