What is this "exchange student" thing about?

People often think being an exchange student feels just like an immigrant student moving out of his/her country, or just like an international student being enrolled in a school abroad. Here's the fact: NOPE! I know an international student also has to have the ability of adapting to new situations, new teaching language at school, and sometimes to a whole different culture. However, an exchange student bears much more responsibilities; are we being a good example of our nation's people? Are we doing good on our assignments? Have we set a good example of a student? Do we behave well according to our host family? And the most important thing, did the message of the whole exchange student thing reach the people surrounding you? 

As our exchange program organization, AFS has to make sure things work well, especially when it comes down to the message we carry as exchange students. Therefore, AFS has a special week called International Education Week (IEW), this year on November 8th through November 17th. All exchange students with scholarship have to do at least one presentation about his/her country, and for exchange students without scholarship it's optional to have a presentation.

As a result, the AFS - EZ Pass Area Team (New York Area) decided to have a big presentation event in Hastings-on-Hudson Library, on November 17th. The plan is to have a sleepover on Saturday at our volunteer's house in Hastings-on-Hudson, Mr. Tony Mayer, whose family is also a host family for our fellow exchange student Katya. For me, this plan changed a little bit though, because I had a presentation at Yonkers Early College High School on Friday, November 15th, together with Katya from Ukraine and Tarik from Bosnia. Since we were gonna have a sleepover anyway, I told my school I'm not gonna attend the school on Friday, and I went to Mr. Tony's house on Thursday night after school. Tarik was also having an earlier sleepover there, so we practiced our presentations the night before.

The library we used for presentation.

Right before the presentation.

"Everybody has to take selfies every now and then, especially before the important presentation."

Left to right: Katya, me, Tarik. Look at my fabulous saucers! 

On the Q&A session, I gave out Kipas Batik (batik fan, a kind of fan with traditional batik motives) to people who asks questions. Too bad after Tarik recorded my presentation with my camera, it ran out of battery so there is no more photos in my camera on this presentation.

After the presentation ended, Mr. Tony told me that I got an A on delivering the message of the presentation. I was really glad to hear that, of course, because I was sooooo nervous and my voice pitch lowered so much out of nervousness I actually sounded like a little boy.

Anyway in this post I'm just gonna skip things that aren't presentation-like, I'll mention other things we did on the sleepover on another post later. So, on Sunday morning, we all went to the Hastings-on-Hudson Library. I was told to go first on the presentation since "your presentation was really good so if you go first other students will get fired up too", they said. I was okay with that (actually I was really nervous about going first but at that point I was like oh-well-whatever), and so I did went up first.

My presentation, Say Hello to Indonesia!

This is Kantaro and Taku's presentation from Japan.

Taku (left) and Kantaro (right) simulating Judo, a Japanese martial art.

Katya from Ukraine again!

Rachel from China!

There are many more presentation but oh let's just skip to this nice group photo of exchange students.

Another group photo!

Right to left: Katya (Ukraine), Aylin (German), Franzi (German), Rodrigo (Paraguay)

Mikel (Spain) and Franzi (German)

Franzi and me. LOL I know I look THAT short beside her...

Kantaro (Japan) and Franzi (German)

Cristina (Spain), Franzi (German), and Mikel (Spain)

Anyway, only Kantaro and Taku used their own laptop. All other exchange students were using my laptop for their presentations. As my laptop has Kubuntu OS (it's a Linux-based OS, I've been using it because it's a free OS, you don't have to pay to use it legally) for some people it's confusing to use my laptop, so even though my own presentation had ended I constantly came up to help those who needed help using my laptop. In fact, I kinda felt bad for other students since my laptop is dull and slow and it has a non-Windows OS. Not that I regret not using Windows but well you know what I mean lol. On Sema's presentation about Turkey, I was helping her with the sound, and suddenly Mr. Tony said to the audience, "We would like to thank Larasati for helping other students with technical problems," and surprisingly the audience clapped their hands. I was really happy, I thought it was a given anyway because it's my laptop so I should know how to do what, and so I should be the one who jumps up and help. At the end of the presentation, Mr. Tony mentioned it again to me, "We really didn't expect YOU to be the one who helps everyone. Thank you so much, we really appreciate that."

My answer to that was simple, "Well it was my laptop, and I think since we all are exchange students, of course we would help each other."

And yes I learned to help each other so much in Indonesia. Teamwork is everything!

Well, see? We get so much more than just adapting to new culture. We are learning how to be a good example of our nation's people, while staying to be ourselves. We learn not only the culture of the country we are staying in, but also the cultures of our exchange student friends. And on top of that, we relearn about our own culture by presenting it to people around us.

What are you waiting for? Type "AFS" in Google and apply to be an exchange student!!!