Interview by VOA

At 7 PM we got together at the hotel, Mas Tri and Mbak Rosa came with …. gulai and gado-gado. Wooww… yummy. “You can imagine, 2 weeks with strange food,” some of them said. It was really fingers liking good.

But that was food for the body. Mas Tri and Mbak Rosa also brought food for the mind of those TESOLers. Mas Try interviewed everyone of their impressions of their first visit to the USA, joining TESOL Conference, and also about the activities of their language centers. I was listening to each of the interview, amazed with the different impressions they had over the same experience. One said that she was amazed by how the culture gave priorities to the elderly, how the handicapped were always given special access. The other was impressed with the automated machine in almost everything. Some commented on how the historical sites were preserved.

Listening further to the interview, I observed the different styles of everyone in using Bahasa Indonesia. One used the ‘prokem’ language, another quoted so many verses of teachings, still another used so much hyperbolic words. There was one who got nothing to say, and another one who was so carried away with the excitement, and another who just answered a sentence for a question, also another one who seemed to exaggerated everything. I learned so much from observing everything.

The interview was not planned in advanced, actually. It came up in our (The Triyonos and me) communication while I was already in Tampa. I thought it would be a good idea to do say when Mbak Rosa brought it up. So, Thank you Mas Tri and Mbak Rosa, we got two bonuses in DC, the gulai and the gado-gado, and the interview.