The Day has come!
After one month of preparation, finally, the day of my departure to Philippines is coming. I am not alone, I'm with one of my friends who was also sent to Saint Louis University. We started our journey by train for eight hours to reach Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. We were leaving Indonesia on 16th September at 02.00 am and reached Nino Aquino, Manila at 07.00 am
It was hard to say bye to my family and my friends, I was nervous and couldn't stop worrying and questioning silly questions about "What if?". Especially, that was my first time going abroad and getting on a plane. But as soon as I put on the seat belt, I feel the excitement and can't wait to start my journey.
My Journey began when I saw the Philippines cloud from the plane's window. I could sense all of my adventures waiting for me down there. Once I reached Ninoy Aquino, I said "Mabuhay Philippines, let's have a wonderful adventure!"
However, my place is not in Manila, it's actually in Baguio City, where my host university Saint Louis University housed. Surprisingly, me and Fahreza met our friends from ULM, Hana and Hilya, and UPI, Nafisah, and Undo. None of us expect that we're gonna make a wonderful friendship in just one month. However, we continued our trip by car for about six hours. And finally, we arrived in Baguio City! Here, we met our buddies Kanneth and Freesun and our other friends from Indonesia, Puja and Kevin from Halu Oleo University. Also our friends from Dong Tahp University, Thung, Thing, Thuang, Annie, and Jasmine. We got a warm welcome from them, so we already forgot about how tiring our trip was. After getting enough rest, we had our first dinner in Baguio with Kanneth and Freesun. Not forget to mention, that the food in Baguio is kinda different than food in Indonesia, so it was very unique experience.
Beatufiul view from dorm
Our first dinner in Baguio
Chicken Inasal
We spent our first week exploring Baguio City. We went to the Burnham Park, the session road, and SM Mall of Baguio.
Honestly, I got a little culture shock here, it was about their "walking habit". We explore all of that place by walk. Can u imagine ?! It took me more than 10,000 steps a day. Well, it's good for my body tho, and to lose weight, but still, it was tiring.
The performance day is also the opening ceremony for us. It was held in the hall and attended by the president University and all the lecturer.
In the event, exchange students divided into three groups. The vietnamese group performed national song, Indonesia 1 performed a poetry and song "Pambatangan" , meanwhile my group (Indonesia 2) performed traditional dance, and traditional song "Prau Layar".
For the closing performance, all the exchange students from Indonesia performed "Maumere" dance and invite all the audience to join the dance.
The cultural tour is an opportunity for all the exchange students to visit and experience historical an cultural places in Baguio Coty.
There were 4 places we visited. There were Botanical Garden, Wright Park and The Mansion, Mines View, and Bencan Museum.
We commuted by Jeepney together with Ma'am Sheila, Ma'am Soliba, and Sir Bryan.
We have a routine that always we do every weekend. Yup the routine was grocery shoping and shoping at Pasalubong. We liked to walk around every weekend to try something new. In the first week, we tried the Sky Ranch. In the second week, we went to Pasalubong and explored halal restaurants. And for the last weekend, we explored the Pasalubong and Night Market again. We never bored of shopping and strolling around Baguio City. Its always been nice!