Originally posted on 17 Mar 2009 at 1:36 AM

Have you ever felt of having a sudden surge of writing something? I have, most of the times when I was taking a bath, hahaha (but I don’t have pen and paper in bathroom, don’t worry about that). But this time it is because of reading my friend’s blog (thanks to Adel,hehe) that sparks me. I wanted to write about this a bit long time ago, but I let myself drowned with all the tasks that I need to do. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to do now, but I think writing this is worth the price of reducing my already short sleeping hours.

This is a confession of an Indonesian exchange student who goes to Paris from Singapore after living about 90% of his life in hustle and bustle of Jakarta, an only child who never lives his life according to a stereotype that an only child is not independent.

It has been only two weeks, but I think I know perfectly what I’m going to face for the next 3 months and maybe more.

1. Cultural Entry

Culture shock, it’s what people are afraid of and maybe excited with. It’s nothing like your electrical shock. It sometimes went unnoticeably but it inevitably will bring to your face a subliminal (sometimes blunt) message of “Hey, it’s not your comfort zone anymore, don’t look for that here!! It’s your choice anyway!”

It’s nothing new for me. Moving from Jakarta to Singapore taught me quite a lot of things that no book of cross cultural studies can ever give. Believe me or not, I was almost completely changed when I was moving to Singapore. From a considerably popular person (haha, I knew that you are going to laugh on it, but never mind, it’s the truth anyway, hahaha) in my high school (at least among footballers community, if not within the girls, hahaha, the later is just kidding), to a very quiet, almost anti-social kind of people. Disliking what people do, how they done it in their way, why they do it at the first place, etc. All the complaints that a person can ever have, you name it, I might have mentioned it. However, to cut the story short, I managed to go back to almost my old me (without the popular within the girls part, hahaha, cause I was belong to a girl at that time, hehehe), in about 6 months.

Now, it’s another different turn in my life, but I won’t tell you in this point, hehe

2. Cultural Adjustment

I managed to adjust very well with this one now, at least way better than the previous one. Now I’m entering into another theory called The Emotional Roller Coaster Ride of Cultural Adjustment, which is divided into

a. Honeymoon (remember when you first see Eiffel Tower, Orchard Road, or maybe Monas and Kuta, this is how it feels)

b. Cultural Shock (remember the first time you thought that you were able to ride a bicycle and then you fell again after a few seconds of smooth riding)

c. Some Adjustment (remember when you try to adjust the photo frame on the wall, okay, not really that way, but you get the point right?)

d. Continual Problems (ha2, I once felt that the worlds are against me, even my closest team mate, so I more or less know best about this stage)

e. Feel at Home (you will only know how precious your home is after 4 months outside of it, and you know how comfortable that feeling is right?

Yup, you know all the theory now. I knew all of those way before I was going on exchange and I know what will happen to me here even though I was not expecting anything before. I got the university I studied in now by faith, I got the money I need to finance my exchange (90% my own money, 5% subsidy from SMU, 5% from my parents, but 100% of them came from God of course) also by faith, so it is not surprising that I went here by faith also without expecting anything.

Now, it has been 2 weeks here living in Jouy-en-Josas (about 25 Km outside of Paris), and I think I’m doing it well and supposed to be in Adjustment stage now, thanks to God. But looking backward and forward, I know that there are lots of things I need to learn here, and that brings me to a question that everyone considering for exchange will ask, “what do you learn most from your exchange?”

I believe, there are only 3 answers for me. The world, myself, and God.

To be honest, the second one is the one that I will tell to people for what an exchange programme is worth. Everyone is always talking about thinking outside of the box to find a solution for a problem because they can know the problem in its entirety objectively outside of it. The same thing happened to people going for exchange. You can only know about yourself if you go out of your comfort zone without no one to actually depend on except yourself and God.

It’s certainly not a holiday and you’ll be disappointed if you think exchange is about going on a long holiday because I think it’s too expensive to be considered a holiday.

It’s about you, yourself, your expectation, everything about you and your relation to people around you.

If you can handle all those things well, exchange will be one of the best time in your life, not only when you are done with it but also when you are in it.

Bonne chance.