Different people whom I met

As a girl who has never had a chance to live away from parents (except for my vacations to my grad mother’s house) living on my own for a month was a big deal. Living with three girls from three different countries, in a foreign land, in a stranger’s house with a family with whom I couldn’t have any form of verbal communication was strange for me. The way they eat, the items they eat (though it was only rice, noodles, egg, boiled vegetables for all 3 meals) their living style was all so different.

Before I get into all stories I will say about my house there, the people of the house, the participants whom I lived with. I lived in one Mr.Sukhir’s house. His parents, his younger sister, a young guy and a little boy and I still don’t know how he is related to that family. 3 participants lived with me, Melissa the Indonesian, I Ching, from Hong Kong, So-Jin South Korean. I shared my room with I Ching.

So-Jin was the most grown up kid I have ever met. So innocent and pure at heart. She was the eldest among us. If she had class if the school we all woke her up in the morning. On her days off we woke her up for each meal. But I don’t know what it was about her that no one felt it bothersome. She was princess #2. (oh yeah we had many princess and queens in our group and I was princess #3) and everyday during our meeting So-Jin used to draw cartoon faces of everyone. My job was to guess who it was.

Coming to the next person in my room, I Ching, she is the most matured 20 year girl I have ever met. Her clarity of thoughts, respect for culture, taking up responsibility for her faults were so deep within her that it would take sometime for a person to appreciate her. She was very meticulous and planned. I haven’t met anyone so planned about their future.

Finally, Melissa the girl from Indonesia. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about her is her addiction to take a shower… her routine was to wake up in the morning, take a shower, after work, take a shower, before meeting take a shower. Worst part is she asked every one of us to take a shower that many times, of course I Ching and I didn’t listen to her, but still… well, I know only that much about her, it was so hard to figure out what she thought.

So, there I was, with three girls who were so different from each other. Yet trying to somehow understand each other… it was interesting to live with people so different. It was more interesting to notice that we still tried to be nice to each other and had respect for the other’s feelings.

Mr.Sukhir was my host. (The name of the villager whose house we stayed in). And we called the lady of the house, house mother. He spoke very little English but we never spoke much. He had stores. We usually asked him to put credit (top up) in our sim card. The maximum conversation I had with him was, I used to give him the money and show my number, he would do the recharge and look at me questioningly and I used to smile and say, thank you I got the credit and I usually got a smile for a reply. One day, after two week of stay there, I managed to speak to my host family somehow without our translator. (Melissa, the Indonesian in our house translated for us). I bought an English to Indonesian book, it was similar to our “learn to speak Indonesian in 30 days”. So you can imagine. We somehow managed to have a conversation. And to my surprise I found out that the young girl in my house was married to that young guy. And like two typical teenage girls we both once argued about those two. She told me they were married and I wouldn’t agree.

The father of my house owner always tried to have conversations with us. And that day he told us to go back home safely and to take good care of ourselves. And he asked to study well. He said few other things that I couldn’t translate. I felt so bad that I couldn’t understand him. Getting such love and care from a complete stranger was the last thing I expected there. And I was so glad that we weren’t strangers anymore. At that point I Ching and I felt that language should never have been a problem. We should have tried more that one month to talk to him… well, am glad I at least learnt it now.