my april 15th!! officially 18th now ;p

Heey. Yesterday was my 18th birthday!!! *feel sooo old:p. This is how my apriln15th here in US. Actually people back home already say happy birthday to me when it was still april 14th hehe but thanks to all of you for the wonderful bday wishes! It's kind of sad having birthday without mama,papa, and my family back home that i usually celebrate it with.  Miss them so muchhh ♥ but it's okay this year i have my host family whoch is the one that i could celebrate my bday with. Thanks to lower dauphin kid, all of my american friend and teacher who really care about me, in my choir class all of them sing happy bday to me(literally they sing happy bday song really good with improvisation!!!) Haha lol. And of course from my bestie Olivia ♥ in that day in honor of my bday, my choir teacher decided to continue learning janger song for our spring concert. Really can't wait for our performance :3. My host family took me to texas roadhouse for dinner, omg the restaurant is quite interesting, that was really really american experience for me! We all had a big steak, free peanut for appetizer, and big friend onion ring! *yumm but yeah i feel like i gained lotta pounds after eating that haha lol. And guess what, for the birthday person, i have to ride in a fake horse and wear a big country hat and the waitress saying outloud that there is a bday girl in the restaurant and they yelled yihaaa and wooohoo rite away giving applause to me. Wow!!! Happy bday to me and my exchange sister carole!!

They gave me a birthday yee-haa

my kind of weekend♥

So, last weekend i went to the cinema wih heather, one of my american friend, she is my classmate in english class. So we went to see "divergent", uuh finally i saw that movie. And it was really good althou there r several scene that freak me out hahaha. But overall the movie was so good and it's kind of my type of movie that i like hehe. Rite away after watching movie, it was about 9.30 p.m heather's mom asked me whether i wamma join the, to visit ashley and emma 's house or nah, so they r heather's mom friend's daughter. Haha complicated. So i met them before when i was at halloween parade with heather. Ashley is 6 and emma is 2 i guess, they r having new baby brother omggg,, his name is gavin. So after watchin movie, i went to ashley and emma's house. They r sooo adorb, and they want to interact with me hahha althou they don't really know me well. You know, whenever i'm surrounded by lil kid, it's kind of my heaven!!! Hahha. And in the next day , i volunteered in my host family's church called cross point. They hold an event whichis the easter egg hunts! Yeaah the easter is coming! All the participants in the easter egg hunts are all little kid.. omg you know tht i love lil kid so much , so i enjoyed my time helping them huntin the eggs, and do all fun stuff with them together. Inside the eggs there is one chocolate, too bad i could't grab one haha lol. In that day, saturday april 12th is the global youth service day, so i'm glad i was participatin it by doing community service in my community♥

Today is Nationalsiblingday!

i've just known that here in the US, on April 10th is the national siblings day. so i want to give shout out to my older sister, Eki! i usually call her 'mbak' Eki <3 in Indonesia, we have certain words to call someone older than us so we couldn't really call people just by name hehe. it's been 8 months i haven't met my family back home. i talked to them on skype, i try to still keep in touch with them at least once a month usually i have skype with them. to make sure that every thing are okay and i usually tell them bunch of stories while i'm here in America. talking about national sibling day, it makes me really miss my sister:" she is 5 year older than me and u know what she was also the exchange student in america <3 so glad i got to experience this wonderful experience just like wht my sissy already experienced. she always get my back, she gave me some advices and she is the one who always there when ever i was up and down,, tseeehh. but indeed she is also my inspiration, she has a great leadership and personality, so many people like her! i'm way much closer to mbak eki since she got back home from U.S. yeahh she was in U.S when I was 12th and right away after she got back from  U.S , i was so much closer and tell a lotta story and she is really a good listener! i don't really know her story when ever she was down or something because probably i'm just too young to understand her problems. but here I am, i will always get your back and I loooveee you to the moon and back. i still read her letter that she gave me before i leave from indonesia, her support, quotes and everything mean the world to me! i try to do my best mbak, i hope i could make you proud as a sister, best friend and also as the ambassador of indonesia amiiiin :) here she is, my precious big sistaaahh ( not big in size :P) i send my love from here :* happy national sibling day!

sooo jealous, she is too pretty!! hehe

SENIOR CITIZEN PROM

Hey everyone! rite now I'm really in mood for blogging hhe.. so yep I've just got home from volunteering at senior citizen prom in lower dauphin high school( my host school) . beside joining choir, i also join volunteen at school. this club is so great, i get a lot of community service hours by joining this club. during my stay here i just really enjoy doing community service, i meet a lot of people and touching so many lives by being a volunteer. this morning we prepared for the decorations for the senior citizen prom, setting up everything needed for this event. i was sooo excited XD the theme for this year is  "Fabulous fifties" and all the decoration really portrays about 50's era. last month, we had a senior citizen breakfast and i also volunteered at that moment. some of the visitors of senior citizen breakfast also came today at the prom. they r all soooo cute :3 we all having so much fun. we danced and hang out with grandma grandpa :3 wkwk. some of my friend's grandparents also came to the prom. i also dressed up to be like in the fifties! i wore poodle skirt which someone make for us. here is the pics!

in love with this cute skirt! :3

there were about 130 of them coming to this prom!

DANCE DANCE DANCE!

I feel like this event kind of similar with the events that usually shown in "Batu TV",one of local channel back home. because basically the one who dance usually are the elderly people :3 hehehe. i learned a lot of dances, especially tap dances which is a lil bit complicated for me, but i tried! hehe. overall, this event was successful and soo much fun :)

Youth Day Of Caring with Lower Dauphin Kids

Yesterday , April 4th I volunteered with another 39 lower dauphin kids in the city island. it was my first time going there tho. We all just joined the 1st period at school and then around 8.20 we headed out from school and we took a school bus. it isn't too far from school to the city islands, probably it just take for about 15 minutes. all day long i spent time with heather, my volunteering buddy hehe. all of us were divided into 2 groups that will take care of two different area. in my group, basically we cleaned all the trash, pulling weeds, cleaning all the dead plants and did all of the landscaping works. it was pretty hard to pull out the weeds and we all get so muddy hehe but it was sooo fun tho all of us did a really really great job. we spent for about 7 hours volunteering there, and they also provide a good lunch for us hehe, i just picked veggie burger just in case to avoid pork hehe. so glas this week i'm gonna get around 14 hours of volunteering because the next day i'll help in the senior citizen prom :3

Lower dauphin kids who participated YDOC

Tommy and Angela was collecting trash

Good job guys!

What we did yesterday :' Watch out guys! haha

Indonesian Cultural Nite @ Penn state

on 23rd march 2013 was one of memorable experience that i ever had, sooo excited that my host family and I could come to Indonesian Cultural nite at Penn state, state college. well, approximately it was 2 hours away from my host family's house. this event was held by the association of indonesian college student in US which is called PERMIAS. so the indonesian penn stater hold that event every year, and they also get sponsored by the US department of state. it was a really really fun day tho, the event was started at 6 p.m and they showed several popular dances from different islands in Indonesia such as Tari sekar jagat, Tari piring, Tari Saman, and they also showed us angklung ansemble. there were a small gallery about the traditional sword, traditional clothes, and several pictures about Indonesia. i know some of the committee there and we spoke bahasa indonesia, but too baad it was kind of awkward at the first time because we have different dialects hehe. for dinner, i had nasi goreng( fried rice), satay, lumpia, oh myyy i love them! i miss indonesian food so bad, coming to that event made me at least ate some of the indonesian cuisine hehehe. i hope while i was here, at least i could go to one of indonesian restaurant here. while i was thousand miles away from home, lotta indonesian here said that they are all way more proud to their home country and proud holding our flag and say " I love my country", everything that related to my home country usually give me goosebumps while i heard about it. i also love when people at school or everyone in my community ask me about my country, i'd love to share to them <3 well probably i could be the first indonesian that they ever met who could share a  lot about indonesia :) some of them had a hard time to figure out where indonesia is or even to distinguish between indonesia and india hehe lol. i always glad to answer all of their question, so enjoy being an ambassador for my country:) in the indonesian cultural nite i tried one of the head band from Bali, and my host mom and host dad also try the javanese mask ( Topeng) :3 here they are

Mom, Dad wearing javanese mask (Topeng)

:)

I love to be Volunteer

In my first three months, there were a lot of exciting thing that I’ve had. My first community service is the thing that I will also remember forever. I helped in the food bank at church. Food bank is like a small pantry that stores various kind of food for the family that don’t really have a good economy condition. There are approximately 50 families that usually will come to the food bank because they are not able to buy all the food to fulfill their need. I helped in that church for about 10 hours. I helped to prepare their breakfast after they have a Sunday prayer. Food pantry or food bank usually is held every first and third week in a month. I helped to prepare their sandwich and put them in the plates. After that I helped to bag all the stuff that they take from the food bank and helped them to carry their stuff. The thing that made me very touched is, they always said thank you and smiled at me “Thanks for being a volunteer”.  They recognize me as an exchange student who always cover her hair with scarf. Everytime I went there, I always wore my CIEE shirt or YES shirt. 
That’s why I do love volunteering because I could connect lives among each other, there is no gap between the one who give and receive help. We all talked each other. They always say “May God bless you all”.


I love being in part of food pantry because of how close we are. They are all so nice to me. I’m so glad to see them happy, doing community service also makes me really grateful of the things that I’ve had. Being grateful of the things that I’ve had makes me to still stay positive. In every ups and downs that I’ve had during my exchange year will be useful as a life lesson for me. Joining this exchange year also gives me a new eyes to see the differences, being respectful to others. For me, rainbow will not beautiful if it’s just consist of one color, the various color in it even makes it more beautiful. Everytime I was hanging out with anyone, it could be my friend, family, people at church and another communities, they will ask me about how my country looks like, how do I feel staying in America, and even they could ask me about my belief. Not only being representative of my country, but I’m also being the representative of my religion. I want to bridge understanding between my home country and my host country. I shared several things about my belief and they do respect me so much just the way I respect them. At school, I am allowed to do my noon prayer every lunch time in the nurse office. I am so blessed because of surrounded by good people. Being a minority is a great challenge that I had. I still do my prayer whenever or wherever I go, people around me always respect me when I was doing my prayer. This experience even makes me more faithful and respectful to others. Before having dinner with my host family, we usually say the blessings. Sometimes I will say the blessings in Arabic, and I always listen whenever my host family say their blessing. Sometimes every Sunday I come to my host family church. I’ve experienced to come to my family church for several times, but not everytime. Usually I just stayed in the coffee shop in the church and will talk to them as they finished their prayer. People at my host family’s church are also my host community that I often meet, instead of our neighbor. I talked to them and share a lot of things about my experiences that I’ve had here. I joined some activity that is held by youth group at church. We had several fun games at church and one time I went to hockey game with them.

I love to be Volunteer

JANGER!

I am so excited for this piece! i will definitely try to have someone record my choir performance hehe. so far, they do really great and respect me so much while i was trying to teach them this song. this song is kind  of complicated and hard to pronounce because yeah it's not their language. but i see their perseverance and excitement whenever we r learning this song. Bismillah, I hope we will do great and will make all the audience surprised and love our performance. there will be few dances while we were singing that song. isn't  it exciting? and i also gonna sing a solo part for that song, awwww kind of throwback to the times when i sang javanese song with Bhawikarsu choir, my school choir <3 miss them sooo much. like always, choir is like my second family for me, i really love being part of LDHS choir!

Baltimore! I'm coming

Yesterday, wednesday april 2nd has been one of happy day that i have here oh my i have to be really grateful for this because I'm one of the exchange student in the US who got selected to join a BUBW(Better Understanding for Better World) Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. So I submitted the short video about my exchange year as the requirement to join this contest. my video only lasts for about 1.42 minutes long and basically telling what i got during my exchange year here. so yesterday before i go to the gym, i saw mom's post that saying congratulation to me, as  i read that i opened my email and YES! i got an email telling me that i'm one of the one who get chance to go to baltimore for a conference. if i'm not mistaken, i kind of recognized one of other students that will go to baltimore as well, i guess she is also a YES student just like me.Alhamdulillah, because of my perseverance finally i got this chance ,because i applied for another contest and i didn't win it but for this one i tried to do my best in making the video and finally i won it. Alhamdulillah ya Allah :"). yesterday, my local coordinator sent me a bucket of flower for me, how sweet <3 and in the morning i had an early dismissal of school due to the water breakdown, so literally yesterday was a really really good day <3 go check my video in Youtube! my channel is: dwike aprilia. I hope this video kind of encourage students in indonesia or may be around the world to be an exchange student. it's really worth it guys :)