I'm in love with volunteering!

Friday 26th July, it was our first day of volunteering. We required to volunteer in the Farewell BBQ Party for ESL Summer Class. The voluntary work was counted 5 hours, so it was a good start for us. As we are scholarships with style we volunteer also with style  . Check some pictures of our volunteer style!

Volunteer Style

The BBQ party took place in Golden Gate Park, Hellman Meadow particularly. We arrived at 11 am, it was a pretty difficult to find the spot but we managed, thank you Google Maps Cecile and some other guys were there earlier, we were a bit late. Anyway then we offered the help, I helped to prepare the salad, prepared the table, other guys helped to do the BBQ. Then we helped prepare the plates, napkins, forks, bread for hotdogs and hamburgers etc.I even helped to set the volley net and court, it was hard because it was very windy, it kept falling and falling. Then we changed the direction to the wind flow, we succeded yay!

Owh Ana from Brazil already arrived as Tari told you before. We love this girl, she is s funny and crazy hahahhaha but she is adorable  . She entertained us so much. So glad that she became our housemates. Now are house is complete, there are six adorable girls which are Tari, Me, Milka, Rossie, MP, Ana. I love them all, hope we will have a lot of good time, share a good laugh for the next 10 months. Even though the house has no carpet,  I’m sure that the six of us will keep it warm This is the girl, she wants us to call her Baby 

Baby and I

Both Ana and MP are models, they are so pretty! Lucky to have them in our house . Help me and Tari to be models for our school’s work please 

I didin’t take many pictures during the picnic because we were kind of busy to help serving the food as part of our voluntary work. I helped to serve the plates to some International students and to Brazilian students. This is a very nice volunteer work, we help and we eat and we got some food to bring, perfect.

We played a games and it was fun! I felt good after doing volunteer work, I’m looking forward to the next volunteer work. Helping others made me feel happy, and that is called the spirit of volunteering 

This is the pictures of the CCIP girls on our way to volunteering

CCIP San Francisco Gang

More Fun Things To Do At Weekend, San Francisco

Time does fly! It's my second weekend in San Francisco! Last weekend was about a quiet day as we were adjusting our new life and getting used to the weather. During the week, we felt very cold and tried to survive with this cold summer with our summer style clothes.
Yup sounds silly, we expected that summer would be much more warmer than this, we knew that San Francisco is very windy but at least we could feel the sun, in fact we didn't get any chance to feel sunny day. It was foggy the whole week.
Anyway, I don't want complain about the weather, I'm sure we will get used to it, it's just a matter of time.

Therefore, we decided to feel the sun and go to the warmest and sunniest place in San Francisco. As we know that San Francisco has 8-12 different climates and it can change rapidly during the day. We went to Embarcadero which lead us to the Fisherman Wharf, one of the most popular spot in San Francisco. Unfortunately, we couldn't manage to get there because some of us were really tired to walk to get there. Man, you have to get used to walk, this is the USA, it will involve a lot walking.
Tari managed to find on SFfunandcheap that there were farmer markets on the Ferry Station, so we decided to see the farmer markets since it was held on the warmest part of the city.

Ferry station San Francisco

Ferry Plaza, Embarcadero

Sunbath :)

The fruit and vegetables are fresh, some of us bought some vegetables and fruit that we couldn't find in the supermarket. I love this place, it is warm and sunny here, I suppose to come here some time in the weekend. We kept walking to Fisherman Wharf, enjoying the scenery, the place was packed with many locals and tourist. This place was really happening!

Embarcadero

Pier 39

Inside Ferry Plaza

Embarcadero

Although we couldn't make it to go to Fisherman Wharf, it was still a very beautiful day. It's really a blessing to place us in San Francisco because there are a lot of interesting places that we can visit at the weekend :)

Ahhhhh really looking forward to it.

ESL summer classes at City College San Francisco

Finally we got our test result to place us in different levels of ESL classes which consists of reading, writing, grammar and communication class. I was placed in the highest level of all classes together with Munira from India and Bongadi from South Africa. They both use english as their second language, they do speak and understand English very well. As an Indonesian, I don't use english as my second language as I have the javanese and indonesia as my first and second language, then comes the english. My english was getting worse when I started to study Spanish, I kept mixing English and Spanish everytime I spoke. So, being placed in the highest level was a surprising thing for me though, I haven't use english as much as other students do.

All teachers are really nice, only my grammar teacher gave a different look to all new students that joined her class, she kept telling us that her class was the most advanced gramar class in the ESL, she was afraid we couldn't catch up with the material. Wow, were we just being underestimated by her??  just because I'm from Asia I don't know english, really? Man, I have been studying english for more than 10 years, I took english courses for quite a long time and I use english in my office.
However, I hope that she doesn't really mean what she has just said.

Here are the fun part, check out our campus style! You know we are scholarships with style :D
Being smart and fashionable are very important!

Marie Paule Style

Tari's style

Me

Me

What is unfortunate is we only have ESL classes for two weeks, the class will end on 26th July which is next friday. Anyway it is good for getting use to the english language. I'm really looking forward to improve my english before I start my program.

We are lucky to have ESL classes at the Ocean Campus (main campus) because the view from here is very nice, actually San Francisco landscape is really stunning! 

Nice view from our campus

Oriana, Me and Munira

Roslina, Milka, Oriana, Me, Munira and Tari

I haven't got any chance to get to know the city, I would love to, probably I will try to get around this weekend. I'm really looking forward to it. Last weekend and these couple of days are about settle down with school, home, new life etc. Hope everything will be just fine :)

First Two Days in San Francisco

Saturday 13 July

First weekend in San Francisco, CCIP students planned to have some lunch and groceries shopping together with our program coordinator Ken this noon.
We went to Stonestown shopping mall for shopping yaaay! I found Forever 21 store here, OMG only walking distance from our house, isn't greaat? :D
We took some pictures that day

CCIP San Francisco-The girls

Small park next door

SFSU

Rumah Ibadah wajib

After done some groceries we were heading to downtown and tried our first Muni ride, one of transportation system in San Francisco, it was really exciting, SF has good transportation system.

San Francisco Downtown

Metro Powell Station

We could easily find branded store such as old navy, Zara, Forever 21 (three stories),  H&M, LV, Gucci, Armani etc, this more live shopping avenue similar to Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona, Orchard Road in Singapore.

We went to H&M and Forever21 also to T-mobile and AT&T to buy some simcard, I was so upset when I found out my smartphone Lenovo didn't match with the simcard. I was sad because my boyfriend bought it for me before I left, he knows that I need android phone there :(

Feeling upset then I went back home, I was thinking to buy used Iphone 4 with reasonable price, I dont want to buy android like Samsung or LG because I already had android phone.

I'm so saaaad, I have no US number yet, I have to save money to buy used Iphone, untill then I'll be depending so much to the Wifi connection.

San Francisco I'm coming to you

Thursday 11 July 2013

Here's coming July 11th, my arrival date to the US.  Feeling happy, sad, mixed up. Happy to finally get a chance to study in one of the best city on US, San Francisco, but at the same time feeling sad because leaving my lovely family and dearest boyfriend, as we planned to get married the upcoming year.

Anyway, I went AMINEF office for pre departure briefing at 10am in the morning. I have my luggage packed at home and my mom will bring them up and we will go together to airport between 3-4pm in the afternoon.

After finishing pre departure briefing, I went to pasar festival to cut my hair, and OMG it was too short :( well can not complain since it's not my favorite salon anyway.

I met up with my boyfriend at Tosari bus stop then we went together to Ratu Plaza to meet up my Mom and Dad then heading to the airport. I was fully sad along the way to the airport, can not imagine that I have to separate for 10 months with my boyfriend who I always see almost every day and spend the weekend with.

Got to the airport pretty early as we prepared to deal with the bad traffic jam, fortunately today was smooth, almost no traffic, thanks god I have more time to chat with family and my boyfriend.

But what I can I do, clock is ticking, it s my time to leave :(

My boyfriend and I

I was crying when I left him, got on my plane and try to not think about him. In about 2 hours I landed in Singapore for long transit (6 hours). I came together with other CCIP participants who will be going to SF, Arizona, Boston, Houston, we decided to get a comfy sofa to get some sleep, we managed to get up at 4am, perfect time to start check in to the airlines, we flied with United Airlines.

4 in the morning in Changi

We flied from Singapore to Hongkong, it was 4 hours of flight. Then we change the plane to SF, the flight was 13 hours, it was pretty exhausting for me. I was a bit nervous because I have found out that my name in the US visa a bit different with my DS2019, I kept praying and hope everything would be just fine and fortunately it did. I passed the immigration smoothly, I was very lucky. The immigration officer named Calderon greeted me, talking to me about SF, school and wish me had a great time in SF. I didnt get through custom check even I declared I bought some indonesian spices, Calderon let me pass and direct me to the arrival gate, thank you so much sir. I really appreciated it!

It's weird I didn't feel too excited when I arrived in SF, it was because of the tiredness or I couldn't figure it out. Ken and Stephen picked us up and take us to the house where we would live for the next 10 months. We stayed at Park Merced, about 30 minutes from down town by metro. The place is nice and quiet with the beautiful neighborhood, I kinda love it.

In front of our house at Park Merced

Me and Tari Bedroom

Kitchen

I am so grateful that the house is very nice although a bit empty, lack of furniture :)

I think it will be a nice house to live in for the next 10 months yaaay

I gonna unpack my stuff and tell you more about San Francisco in my next post