Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Segovia, Leaving Day

:(

Not cool saying goodbye to everyone. Saying goodbye to all the friends I'd made. Seriously, 1 week just wasn't enough, we were all just starting to really know each other and meet more and more people. One of my friends said "it's always like this, just when everything is perfect it has to end."  and yea, Segovia was perfect.

I really don't think I'll ever forget that week. Too much love to forget. But aayy it isn't so bad, it's not like we completely cut off contact, I'm still talking to some of the people I was tight with. And it's not like we'll never see each other again, there's always things that can be arranged, plus there's going to uni in the same country and meeting up again :)

Just, thank you IB and IE University, for bringing us all together, cause seriously that was an incredible experience. And thank you too Fairview International School for even making it possible for me to go.

So much love for the people I met.

#segovia2012


Segovia, Day 5

Last day :(
:(
:(
:(

As usual, started off the day with speakers. One of the friends I made spoke, his name's Ziyad El Mouniri if ya'll wanna check his work out (aayy there morocco!)

Today we got to go into the city earlier than usual, around 11, so we had plenttyyy of time to chill. I grabbed some lunch in the city and I got to finally have my Spanish hot chocolate (if you don't know what it is or haven't had it, oh how I feel for ya)! Soooooo gooooodddd :')

Once we got back to the university the 5 groups with the most votes presented their projects and we could ask questions and whatnot. After that, there was a break and then we had the closing ceremony - :( - and then dinner. AND THE DINNER WERE THESE SUPER MASSIVE PAELLAS <3333  one veggie, one pork, and one seafood. And seriously, these were omega huge paellas. I had the pork (I'd actually had pork everyday in Segovia, at every single meal hehe. Hard to find pork in Indo!) and dannggg it was delicious. Another Spanish-food-I-want-to-eat-in-Spain crossed off my list. After eating, we all learned to salsa, and ohmyyy you gotta move dem hips a lot. It was really fun though, especially when we danced with partners, cause I danced with one of my girl friends and geez we just kept messing up. After the salsa dancing, music was put on and we all just danced and jumped around with each other (for the last time :( :(  ). And then we said our goodbyes to people that weren't staying in the same hotels as us, cause most likely we wouldn't get to see them the next day (buses to Madrid left at various times - 2 AM, 5 AM, 7 AM, 9 AM, 11 AM, and 1 PM). Aaaaa man really sucked to say bye :(  but lucky for mee, most of my friends were in my hotel and there were a few people from the other hotels that I was friends with on the same bus as me for the next day, so I didn't have to say bye to too many people

Segovia, Day 4

Started off the day with a nature walk at the park near the university. We walked down to the park and did some stretches and played a couple little games, and after that we had to each find a spot in the park and sit there in silence for 15 minutes to 'become one with nature'. Oh and we  had to be at least 10m away from any other person. And god it was coooooold, that was a long 15 minutes. But it was really relaxing and peaceful too, got to observe everything around me and really take it all in.

Again, we listened to more inspirational speakers and their stories about how they got to where they are now with their organizations. Afterwards, we worked with our teams. Today we had about 6 hours (not all at the same time) with our team, because today was the day that we were going to present our projects to everybody else. So we had to finish our business canvas, and then shoot a video (ours was a little skit advertising what our project would do), draw out a storyboard - and may I just say ours was beast, it looked amazing - , and build an actual model of our project (which was the school we were planning on setting up in Cambodia). And once this was all done, we set up our booth at the project fair, and once it started we could go around and check out the other projects while some people from our team stayed at our table and explained our own project. I was one of those 'some people', but aayy I enjoyed explaining it, and it's not like I didn't get to see anyone else's projects, I walked around some too. People voted for the top 5 projects, and then it was dinnerrr.

For dinner my friends and I went into the city and checked out the shops again, and we sat down at a nice little cafe that had sandwiches and such. Have I said how beautiful Segovia is? The aqueduct is really nice to look at, especially once the sun is just starting to go down.

After eating,  my friends and I went down to the park and played football. And okay, it was a bit tougher than last time's game cause there were trees everywhere and rocks and these little spiky ball plants that fell from the trees on the ground. Aaaand I played barefoot, so yeaa hurt a bit, but aayy it wasn't too bad. Really fun just to chill and run around after working. We played till it got dark, then headed back to the hotels. Fun fuuunnn day :)

Segovia, Day 3

So today was culture day! Which I will talk about a little later in the post.

First we listened to speakers again. And today there were 2 speakers that I really liked, mainly because they were the same age as me. It really inspired me that they could have their own organizations that help others at such a young age and could already be making money. I just thought that was really cool.

Again, we worked with our teams on our project and we started forming our business model canvas, which is this easy to use diagram that we fill in, and it really helped my group to figure out the kinks in our project and straighten them out.

After that, we had a session where we learned to be b-boys and b-girls which was pretty fun too. There was one move where we had to kinda bend over backwards and get on the floor and then push ourselves back up, and geez I fell so many times trying that....

Then we prepared for the culture night, and I got changed into my Indonesian outfit. It was this batik dress that I wore jeans and wedges with. Aaaand since I was the only Indonesian at the conference, I had a table all to myself, so I spent most of my time going to the other tables with my friends and eating food from 'around the world'. I think my favorite was the pancakes with maple syrup from the Canadians ;)

Once we all cleaned up the place, a talent show was held, and there was a bunch of people that did singing and dancing and one guy even counted around 30 digits of pi. Really entertaining, good night.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

ai se eu te pego ai ai se eu te pego

So I'm home and I've finally stopped sleeping enough for me to get on the computer and get back into the daily routine of Jakartan life.

Again, I'll write about the last few days with each day having their own post.

Simply and honestly, I loved this trip. I teared up when the bus dropped off the last of my friends at their terminals (their terminals were before mine) and I cried on the plane home. And I'm sure I speak for everyone at the conference when I say I wish it lasted longer, because that was one of the best weeks of my life.

#segovia2012

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Segovia, Day 2

Today was the funnest day so far. We started off the day with speakers that talked about their own projects and how it was they reached success. They were great to listen to because it got me thinking about how I'm really going to accomplish my project as a team, like how to be realistic. We met with our teams afterwards, had a break, and had another team meeting, and wow my team made a lot of progress. I forgot to mention it in the last post, but our project is centred on youth empowerment in Cambodia. We got our topic narrowed down and created the persona of our target audience (a 9 year old girl with many negative factors in her life) and discussed what her needs are and what insights she has. In the end we had quite a few challenge questions we had come up with.
After all the team meetings, everyone took the buses down to the pool where we were going to learn capoeira, Bollywood and have a barbecue. And this was soooo fun; first we watched the capoeira do their dancing and then they taught us, and it was really different from things I've seen so it made it quite fun to do with my friends. Afterwards, instead of learning Bollywood, me and a couple of the girls went to go play football (soccer, not American football). I was confused at first when I was hardly sweating, but then I realized that even though Spain is hot, it isn't humid like it is in Indonesia, so that's probably why I wasn't sweating. After football we had the barbecue, and maaannn the food was good. I love how there is so much pork in Spain, because back in Indonesia it's a bit hard to find pork so I really don't eat it often. So I'm eating as much pork as I can while I still can!
What I really loved about today was how at the pool it was a lot easier to meet people, like how it was an event where everyone was mixing together. In the previous couple days there hadn't really been anything like that, so people were always sticking with their little groups of friends from school instead of meeting new people. Only thing that sucked about today was how I didn't get to swim, cause apparently I only brought my bikini top and left the bottom over in Jakarta :(

Segovia, Day 1

We kicked off the day with two keynote speakers that talked to us about empathy and different things we need to become a good leader, like humility and hubris. These guys were awesome speakers; they totally know how to talk to 250 teenagers at once. They were funny and really engaging, so I had no problem paying attention. After the speakers we had a break, and then we were assigned to our Global Action teams. Each of the teams did a team building activity where we had to come up with a product or service in which we make the conference better for everyone. My team had the idea of giving people compliments, so on our poster people could sign up or sign their friends up to receive a compliment everyday.
After that activity we had lunch, and then we had two more speakers talk to us about how we make an impact on the world. We had another meeting with our team afterwards, and in this session we started to think about which topic we wanted to do for our project and begin to narrow down the challenge question. We didn't get to our challenge question, but we had zoned in on a more specific topic.
It was dinnertime afterwards, but we had the option to go into town and check out the city and the shops. Unfortunately all the money changers close at 2 PM, so it was way too late to change, but the shops were still open so I could see what I wanted to get for my friends. We were there for a few hours, which was really fun. At around 10 PM we went back to the hotels, and me and my roommate spent hours and hours gossiping about our lives and whatnot, and ended up sleeping at 2 AM. And ucchh that was such a bad idea, I was dead tired the next day and had slightly swollen eyes.

Segovia, Arriving Day

My flight was pretty okay; I slept most of the way. I arrived in the Madrid airport around 2:20 PM and there was a man from the conference waiting for me. The next bus wasn't going to come until 4, so I grabbed some lunch and met other students that arrived around the same time as me.
Once we got to Segovia we were assigned to our rooms, and I had to rush to wash my face and brush my teeth cause we were leaving right away to the university. And wow, the university is just beautiful. First thing we did was take a tour, and there is so much old architecture that makes to university soooo different from others. It's got walls and floors that are hundreds of years old and it just looks amazing.
After the tour we had the welcoming session and dinner, and after dinner we watched the Euro finals in the lunch hall. By this time I'd already established people that were my kind of people, so we all watched together. And damnnn, Italy got their behinds handed to them. Sorry Italy fans, but that was prettttyy bad. FT Spain 4 - 0 Italy
After the game we went straight back to our hotels (it was around 11 PM) and I met my roommate. And I just love love looove her. Canadian, so speaks perfect English  - everyone here can speak English, but some have got an accent that makes it a little hard to comprehend what they're saying. But yea, we just get along well. We didn't talk too much cause we were both dead tired; I got to the room, did introductions and all that, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and passed out on the bed. Good day, good day.

Still Here

These past few days I haven't had time to blog at all; I'm so 24/7 busy! It's the morning of Day 4 now, so I'll make a post for each Days 1, 2, and 3, since insanely long posts aren't fun to read.