Learning Bahasa Indonesia

Before starting this post, let me tell you that I'm an Indonesian. I have lived in Indonesia for 16 years and have learned bahasa Indonesia for years too. I don't really remember how did I do bahasa Indonesia on elementary school, but what I now know is that I don't think that I'm good in bahasa Indonesia. You can believe it or not and it's not like I'm smart in English or something, my English mark was, indeed, better than my bahasa Indonesia mark. Can you believe it?
As for the beginning, my teacher (she is a bahasa Indonesia teacher!) once had ever said that learning bahasa Indonesia is actually difficult. There are so many things that have to be learned, and I mean it's A LOT OF things. She said that even someone, I don't remember exactly who this person is but my teacher said this person is a litterateur or someone who's keen on literature things, said that bahasa Indonesia can be classified as one of the languages that is difficult to be learned. Once I had ever thought like this, I feel like I'm lucky because I'm an Indonesian, since I don't have to learn a lot about this language from the beginning. For instance, I'm thinking as if I'm a foreigner who wants to learn bahasa Indonesia, I'm thinking like "Oh! I know a good method to learn bahasa Indonesia! I need to look more than my textbook. I'll go online (maybe twitter of facebook) and find Indonesians, follow or add them, then try to understand what they talk about." It seems like a very great idea right? But then when I, as a foreigner, do that, then I will surely make myself more confused. Why is that?
Well, now let's think about it! What if the thing I found on twitter or facebook is like "aku sih nggak suka banget" or "emang loe mau apa" or "cape banget deh!". How can I, as a foreigner once again, can translate it if I haven't even know what kind of person who typed it. Is that person Javanese or Ambonese, or the others? Or in which part of Java does this man live? Because different culture will type different bahasa Indonesia. Moreover if what they write like this "ak sih g suka bgt" or emg lu mw apa" or cape bgtz deh", how can I ask Google Translator to translate it for me? Though it's true that the most correct ones are in EYD, but I still believe that learning bahasa Indonesia via textbook is probably the best especially for beginner. And learning via social network, in order to know the daily language of Indonesian, can be learned later and slowly.
The other thing that makes me happy to be an Indonesian is that it's easy to learn other languages. Maybe it's not so easy for learning certain language such as English which have very different way of pronunciation. But I think for the other certain languages, it's been a benefit for being an Indonesian, such as learning Japanese. For an example, the word "anata" which means "you" would be very very easy for Indonesians to read it, but when we come to a foreigner, such as western, and ask them how to read it, I'm sure they can't read it correctly. For note, if you're not sure whether you've read it correctly or not you can check it on Google Translator.
So I think I'm happy to be an Indonesian but I'm not happy with this subject in my school. But I'll keep on trying to improve my ability in bahasa Indonesia =D

Holiday at Botanical Garden

Hi, bloggers! I'm back with another story. I'm now having holiday for 5 days and it's my 4th day. On the 1st day, my friends and I went to a Botanical Garden in Purwodadi. It's actually not our own plan, the school wanted us to go there to study biology especially Plantae. And so there we were.

It was a very huge and beautiful and green place. Every breath I took really full of oxygen since it's pretty far from pollution. We studied about extinct plants, pteridophyta, and spermathophyta there. They said they don't have the collection of bryophyta so we didn't study about mosses. But still, I felt so excited there because of the place was very nice and my friends were there so we had many chances to take pictures. Hahaha... Here are (only) few pictures I took from my cell phone since I took more pictures in my camera but I still don't have time to move it to the computer =)

Days in Senior High

Wow! I've been in senior high for around 2 months. I'm so excited because I could join many new activities in senior high, such as addition lesson especially in physics (I'm so excited about physics), choir, playing violin, etc. Actually I've played violin since I was in junior high, but somehow I feel some differences about playing violin in junior high and senior high. Different teacher, different tastes. My teacher in senior high has a very high taste of music, he loves music very very much. I also am so proud because I have such teacher who is capable to play many kinds of instruments and who is capable in arranging choir. And also I'm so excited because I can play with some talented friends. I hope we'll get other chances to play together again.

I Win It!!!

Well, where should I start? Hmm..... I think I should start from the activities I'd done during my holidays. Actually, I spent my holidays by having fun mostly, like watching movies, TV shows, reading novels, playing video games, and other things. But around a month ago, my English course teacher asked me to join a speech competition for celebrating Bung Karno month and I decided to join it because I thought what will I do at home? I might get better activities by joining this competition. So I started to find a title, the theme of the competition is "Winning Generation". I finally chose to use "Caring" as my title because nowadays we can find many people who don't wanna care about their surroundings or to other people. Care isn't always purposed to other people, but also purposed to other creature, like the trees or the environment.
Around 3 or 4 weeks later I'd finished my speech text and I was satisfied with the speech I made, so I started presenting the speech. At first I wasn't confident enough to do it because I'm sure the other contestants will present their speech much better than I do, but I tried to push myself to always train myself in front of the mirror, until the execution day came up.
The execution day was yesterday. There were many contestants from various schools. Some of them present their speech well. The contestants could choose the number for themselves freely, so I chose 12 because it's the same as my birth date, but actually I was the 2nd contestant who present my speech because the least number that was chosen by a contestant was 9. There were 3 juries, two of them are Australians and the other one is Indonesian but she has lbeen living in Australia for years. Actually it was pretty creepy to know that the juries were from Australia, I was afraid if I didn't pronounce the sentences well because they would easily know it if I made mistakes!
When it was my time to present mine I was so worried of the juries and the audiences, I was so afraid if I passed the time that had been determined by the juries, it's 5 minutes to present our speech. If we presented the speech more than 5 minutes, the juries will decrease the points we gained. But the show must go on, so I presented my speech in less than 5 minutes.
At the time I finished my speech, honestly, I felt confused about what had just I done at the stage. It's like I didn't remember all sentences I'd presented at the stage. Well, at least I had no longer burden on my shoulder because my time was done.
Around 1 or 2 hours later the juries announced the winner. I was so worried about the result, but however, I had to receive the result. I was sure that the other contestants would win it because some of them presented their speech so well. And guess what? I was terribly surprised when the juries said that I got the 1st rank! I really couldn't believe it!!! I was sooooo excited to know that I could win it!!! The last thing I could say was "thank you very much" to the juries and also to Jesus who had guided me till the end of my speech so I could do it so well.
Well, as I've said I'm so excited and satisfied, but I'm sure there still any other persons out there who are much better than me, so all I can do for now is just learning and learning so I'll be able to get new things that would improve my ability in speaking English. =)