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