Dubai: Day one

For the end of the semester/new year holiday, our family decided to go to Dubai. It was an adventure I would never forget (but in case i do forget, i'm gonna write down all about the adventure in this blog :p )

Day one:

I left Indo at 9 p.m. and arrived in Dubai at 2 a.m. (Dubai time). The time in Dubai is 3 hours behind the time in Indo. So it was an 8-hour flight. When I first arrived at the Dubai International Airport, I was awed by seeing how tall and big the people were. The men were really tall. Even I was considered normal height for women (whereas in Indo I was considered quite tall). Lots of the local men wore long robes (usually white), which they call dishdasha, while wearing that cloth cap thingymajig on their head which is held in place by the twisted black coil agal. It was traditional Arab clothing. Just like how women wore long black Abaya and some wore a veil that cover their faces and reveal only their eyes. Both the women and men are good looking (Arabic, oy -.-). So anyway, we went straight to our hotel from the airport to unpack and clean up ourselves. We even had the chance to take a little nap. Okay, let's skip the preparations and go straight to our first activity there.

The first thing that we did was visit The Dubai Mall. It was soooooo huge (well duh, it's the world's biggest mall!). There were so many stores. I think you can find every famous brands there. I got to shop a little of this and that :p There was also a huge aquarium inside the mall. They won the Guinness World Record as the world largest acrylic panel. The people who shopped there were stylish, wearing the latest designs. The local women were smart in mix and matching their clothes, which made them stylish but not revealing the skin and still covering their hair. It is safe to say that Dubai is a modern and global city. I saw lots of different people at the mall; arabic, asian, european, western, african, etc. Very diverse. Oh and while we were wandering and exploring the mall, my brother and my father went inside this fancy store which sells watches and other things. When they came out of the store, my brother told me about this cellphone he saw which was the most expensive thing he ever saw with his own naked eyes. It was a cellphone made out of gold, and covered with diamonds and other jewels. The cellphone had a basic rectangular shape, like an old cellphone, but was shining in gold and glittering in jewels and other fancy stuff. Guess how much it cost?? 700,000 FREAKIN Dirham which was approximately Rp. 1,716,400,000 !! CRAZY right???

After shopping for quite a while at the Dubai mall, we went to Jumeirah Beach. It was a very beautiful sight to see. There was a view of the famous Burj Al Arab. Then at about 3-ish, we went to the desert so we can go on our Safari Desert. We changed to another car, to a more suitable one, because we would be driving on the sand and the wheesl must be those special ones so we can ride up the sand dunes and stuff. There we were, sitting in the car. Told to wear our seat-belts by the driver. Little did we know (except daddy of course because he had done it before), that it would be the wildest car ride ever. I felt seriously like in those ACTION MOVIES because we were speeding, and drifting, and driving up sand dunes in the middle of nowhere in the desert! It was CRAAAAZY! A hell lot of FUN! Then we stopped at a camp site where we would have dinner (Arabic one, so lots of grilled meat like lamb, beef, chicken, and stuff). They provided lots of thing there. We could ride on a camel, drive a dune buggy (My brother tried that, but I didn't because it looked kinda scary haha), and others. For entertainment, there was some belly dancing and a traditional dance (which i do not know what it's called) where this person spins around for like 20 minutes non-stop doing tricks and stuff. Me and my sisters also got the chance to get a henna tattoo carved on our hand. The safari desert was soooooooooooooooooooo FUN! It was a perfect activity to end the day :)

Apples From the Big Apple

Apples are probably one of the many type of fruits that i'm not very fond of. It's hard and doesn't taste that sweet. I kinda hate it actually. So here's a story of a whole different type of apples:

My dad went to America for his business trip for about 5 days. He went to washington dc, Newark (in NY), etc. He had the chance to visit my aunty and her family. It was near her birthday so we got her a birthday gift with daddy as our messenger. When he came back, he bought quite lots of stuff (but not what i call "souvenirs"). He bought watches for dea and ninda and a book titled "The Elegant Universe" that i ordered. Also, to my surprise, mba yuli in america had bought me a gift (daddy said he forgot who it was for. It was either for me or dea and I insisted that it was probably for me). When I opened it, it was an iPod touch! Yes! An iTouch! The maid who used to work for us in America now can afford to buy me an iPod touch complete with the chargers! I was completely awed and shocked. There was a card along with the gift that said "many thanks to the kusumah family". I texted my aunty to tell mba yuli I said many thanks. So now i am all psyched with my iTouch and is now using it to blog :) i already downloaded quite a heap of free apps. Oh, and that's not all. Guess what daddy had bought himself? An iPad!!!! I was so surprised and extremely shocked with this one too. It's like an iPhone but completely bigger. An iPad is a tablet. I got to try it out and it was waaaaaaaaay cool and freakingly awesome man! Good thing daddy went to the US bc it made me realize that I LOVE APPLES :)

Hello friend

So I was bored and I went on omegle. I met some weird people and made fun of others. LOL. I also made an Indonesian believe that I was an italian-indonesian attending school at JIS. It was pretty hilarious on how he believed me so easily. So anyway, here is the best part: I made a friend with a korean guy. He is 17 years old. His name is Sung Hyun Ahn. He is a nice guy, he is not very fluent in english though. But he was definitely nice. It was nice chatting with him :)

LADIES' NIGHT Y'ALL ♥

So I was invited by my Dwiwarna friends to come to Ladies' Night. It was TOTALLY AWESOME. The whole thing was themed and the theme was "Carnival". There was a mini Ferris-wheel (as a decor) and other cute stuff. I was so amazed by it. We had lots of fun. We danced, we played fun games, we partied until midnight. All the girls wore pretty dresses :D But guess what? SOMEONE WORE THE SAME DRESS AS ME. When I saw her, I was all like "OH MY GAWD". But oh well, she was my senior. She looked cute with that dress too, a more bohemian touch. It was weird though, because I kinda had a feeling when I bought the dress that someone would wear the same thing. But I thought it was just a false hunch. I guess I was wrong. -.-
Other than that, I totally had so much fun. It made me miss Dwiwarna even more. I LOVE MY FRIENDS ♥

A Bitter End

So guess what ? I was totally surprised when my mom came to school last Monday and told me all of a sudden that I'm moving. She said I'm going to take the test tomorrow. So I was completely shocked when I heard it. I didn't know what to say to my friends. I felt so mixed up inside. But because the school is in Bogor, Dwiwarna was only 45 minutes away. I could visit my friends easily. So I was feeling sad, but not EXTREMELY sad. At least not until on Wednesday. Anyway, I went back home on Monday night to prepare for the test on Tuesday. Then, I went back to pack up my bags on Tuesday afternoon. And surprise,surprise...my friends told me I had to stay at least one more day. They didn't want me to move so soon. So I did stay for one night and went to school for the last time on Wednesday. I said farewell and gave a little speech to the 12th generation. We took pictures too. On my last night in Dwiwarna, I stayed up until 2:30. I wanted to write a letter for them before I leave. So I worked on the letter all night. Then, I went to sleep and woke up late. I finished my packing first before I go to school, so I was kinda late for first period. But it was okay. At recess and lunch break, I didn't want to leave the classroom, I wanted to soak in the memories for the last time. I found myself crying all alone in X-SBI class. But my classmates didn't notice it because when they came back from the break, I already stopped crying. Then, it happened. The school bell rang, telling us that school is over. My friends were already crowding at me. I said farewell to the uppergraders and went back to the girl's dormitory to get my luggages. Then, there we were. The parking lot. All the girls from the 12th generation was there and some of the boys were there too. My boyfriend also. Lots of tears started spilling. But you know what was odd? I didn't cry a single tear at that time. I didn't know why. I hugged and hugged to everyone..............................................then waved good bye for the last time.
Then, I started to feel emptiness when I got home. I cried. I kept thinking about Dwiwarna and how much I miss it already. At night, I sent my letter to Kukuh. And Kukuh gave it to the 12th generation. They said thank you to me and said how sweet the letter was. In the end, all I could think about at home was Dwiwarna :( I started to regret it

A New Year, A New Adventure

So here is my new year resolutions:
1. First of all, I want to become a more dilligent student. I want to study harder, especially with math. I hope I can practice math more often.
2. I have to improve my grades.
3. I have to find what I want to do when I grow up and what university I want to go to.
4. I want to become more patient and do more good deeds.
5. Finally, I want to make my parents and the people I care about to be proud of me :)