My 2012 Summer Vacation Highlight: My Special Travel Mate Camp

My Special Travel Mate 2nd Batch 2012

Being a student in Korea, I always get offered a very delightful pleasure after a tense and stressful semester: 2 months and a half vacation! However, even a long vacation will not be fun if there is nothing to do, right? I actually have this resolution this year that every year I will go to another country at least one. Unfortunately not this summer vacation. I have been staying in Korea this vacation, but it does not mean I can not have fun. I have done a lot of things during this vacation: dance, meeting friends, part time job, trying other countries' food, and this one is the highlight: CAMP!
I have not been to many camps, the one at the top of my head is when I was in the US. I did not really have so much fun to be frankly, but I love kayaking at the lake part and burning marshmallows. 아주 특별한 여행 친구 (My Special Travel Mate) Camp held and organized by MC Korea (MC stands for MultiCultural) was the camp that I attended for 3 days and 2 nights. This camp was different. There are a number of foreigners from different countries and each foreigner has their own partner which is a Korean kid! How cool is that?!? Well, I have some experience dealing with kids since I have 2 younger sisters and 1 younger brother, but dealing with Korean kid was something else.

Day 1

First I met the foreigner friends. They are from Guatemala whose boyfriend is Indonesian, Philippine, Thailand, Vietnam, China, US, Malaysia, and a Korean whose English accent is really British. We were divided into 5 teams and each team was assigned a color and part of the world that the team was going to create their own travel plan at. Mine was red and we were going to plan a trip to North America. With me in the team was an American lady, a Korean team leader and of course, the kids.
I was kind of nervous to meet my partner. I was expecting a really talkative and full-of-curiosity type of kid but no, my partner was a total quieter. I was trying to make him speak but it was really pain in the ass. Until they, the MC Korea team, asked us to give nickname to each other started with the letter that was picked before which mine was A. He gave me "Ace" as nickname. I do not really actually believe about destiny or fate or something happens for reasons and stuff, but this word has come up a lot of times to me. And I started to believe that this camp was going to be a super fun camp. Anyway, I decided to give him "Amazing" as his nickname, so we are the Amazing Ace.
Apparently, my partner has been to Indonesia. That was where we started to talk. MC Korea team gave him a piece of paper that had to be filled out by the time we arrive at the camp place. It consisted of questions about me and my country. He was stuck at the capital city of Indonesia's question. From that, he was started to be a little bit excited. So was I.
About 1 hour and a half journey, we finally arrived at a Gapyeong, far away from the stressful atmosphere of city. I noticed a swimming pool and I knew that we were going to play there. After a settling up our luggage and having lunch we began our first activity: A mini Olympic!
There were several games at this mini Olympic. The first one was a game where one of you has to avoid the ball and one of you has to catch the ball, protect it from hitting your partner, and to throw the ball trying to hit your opponent. My team won this game. The second one was 2 person 3 legs. and the last one was a kind of running game but we have to finish a mission assigned to us before start running. The game was fun to make the bonding between foreigner friends with their partners.
After dinner, we proceed to the main activity which was I am a world Traveler. Here, as we assigned before, we had to make a travel plan to our assigned part of the world. My team was to plan a travel to North America which includes north part of the USA, Canada, Greenland, and land of ice. It was pretty hard because I did not have many knowledge about northern part of America continent. After a long discussion and thousands of pictures we finally ended up with a route: Rushmore Mountain --> SixFlag California --> Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone National Park --> Rocky Mountain --> Toronto.

Day 2
I was very excited because on this second day we were going to play water and the weather was also very supportive. After breakfast, while the kids having the Ethiopia class, the foreigner friends were composing the presentation about Heroes, Festivals and Residential Culture. There was one interesting thing when I was helping the host of Heroes subject. She was asking me if I were a hero, what super power would I want to have. I asked back to her, and she had this really deep answer: Understanding. She said that the main cause of people hate each other is just because we are lack of understanding. I was pretty amazed by this simple answer, yet does make sense. Peace is understanding.

View of Gapyeong

We then had a presentation about the travel plan that we made last night. Every team seemed to have made really interesting plan. Even though ours were pretty good, I was really "seduced" to want to go to Purple team: South America. They really lured us with this beaches and food. They did win the popularity vote.
The next activity was to have a culture traditional market. Foreigner friends had to draw whatever that Korean kids could not find in Korea and then sell them. Korean kids then had to buy them and remember what the stuff was, from where and how much did it cost.
After bunch of hard work planning this and that, we finally went to the pool! I can not really swim but somehow I really enjoyed playing water maybe because I grew up in a city that near beaches. There was this water see saw thing and it was really fun. Also, we played throw and catch water ball and treasure finding. The water play was the highlight of the day.
The activity continued with talent show. Everyone did not know that every single person had to do the talent show. I already prepared my self for a dance as my talent show. I danced like this by WonderGirls. I was very embarrassed but I think they pretty enjoyed it. My partner did his magic trick by cards. There was also Brazil capoeira show and it was pretty interesting, too. I won the favorite vote!

Day 3
Have you ever heard about bucket list? Bucket list is a list of things you want to do in your life before you die. I had not really thought about this but I came up with 10 things I want to do. One of them is that I want to go to outer space and meet alien. Also, I really want to meet my partner later when he has already grown up at least once before I die. My partner wants to be a baseball player and he also wants to have KRW 1,000,000,000 before he dies.
After that, we were making scroll papers. Each of us had to write whatever you want to say to the paper owner. It was really a bunch of papers to fill out. When I finally could see my paper, I saw some really touching and interesting comments. One of them is from a Korean kid that says "내 이상형" which means my ideal older brother. I was really happy to see that.
It is always sad to say goodbye. I really did not want this to end. The camp was such a blast I strongly thought that 3 days was too short. Nevertheless, I had so much fun and I got many friends. Memories are precious and priceless.

Amazing Ace!

angga | 앙가

See the story here at MC-Korea official website:
Day 1: http://mc-korea.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=03_2&wr_id=12&page
Day 2: http://mc-korea.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=03_2&wr_id=13&page=
Day 3: http://mc-korea.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=03_2&wr_id=14&page=

Want to have your own experience? Visit www.mc-korea.net.

Introduction to Indonesia

Since the first time I lived in foreign countries, I have been getting so many questions about Indonesia. Not only that, some people have been knowing false knowledge about Indonesia. For instance, and it is really bothering me, the fact that some Korean thought that Indonesia is ... India. Funny, because by physical it is pretty clear that we, Indonesian, are different from them, Indian. Therefore, I want to introduce my very own country, Indonesia.

Where is Indonesia?
Easy, google it hahah. Well, if you know where Australia is, Indonesia is right north of it. We share border with Malaysia, Singapore, and Papua New Guinea. It is pretty big, so you won't miss it.

How big is Indonesia?
It's big. Probably 8 times Korea. Indonesia has around 17,000 islands with 5 main (big) islands. As far as I know, Indonesia is the fourth most populated country in the world, we have around 220 million people live in Indonesia. Also, Indonesia is the country with the most muslim population in the world with around 85% of tits population is identified as muslim. The fact, though, Indonesia is not a muslim nation. It is a secular democracy nation.

Unity in Diversity
I don't really like to talk about this since the reality is not the same as the slogan. From what I know, we have around 500 different ethnic groups and each has distinct traditional languages, clothes, food, wedding traditions, and even different funerals. However, most people speak the national language which is Bahasa Indonesia. There are 5 religions acknowledged in Indonesia and every single person has to have religion. Well, at least on your identity card. The ironic thing is, even though we have the slogan of unity in diversity, but there are so many fights between ethnic groups and lately, between religions. But what is a life without conflict, right?


The Good-s
People are nice, they smile to you. Things are cheaper than some other countries. We have a lot of natural beauties: beaches, forests, mountains, volcanoes, you name it. We have natural exotic skin color (HELL YEAH). The culinary is the best. 


The Bad-s
A lot, hahah. One among them that really bothers me is the tradition of corruptness. I hate it. It is such a big problem in Indonesia and it has to be ended soon. Another thing is in some big cities, especially the capital city which is Jakarta, there are many inconvenience things such as super bad traffic jam, high criminality, is pollution, trash everywhere, etc. And this one is one of the best: Indonesia is HOT.


Got the picture now? If not you can always ask me or maybe something smarter than me, Google!


angga | 앙가