Greek Coffee

I went to Dhita's room today. She's a classmate who's also staying in Rusun, one floor beneath me. We were holed up for hours in her room together with another member of our group, Lita, to finish our assignment; making a flipchart on coronary heart disease.

I knew that Dhita is very well off and she travels a lot. But it never really sank in until today.

I was working with Lita at her laptop while Dhita was at her own computer, hooking up to the internet to search for materials. At one time, she started reading out loud from a site she’s visiting. A Hi5 profile page I think. I looked at the screen where she was pointing, indicating the thing she was reading. My mind went blank for a second. Are those even words? Then I realized I was looking at sigmas, lambdas and omegas. Whoa, Greek!

Turned out, she was in Greece a few months back, and she can read and speak Greek fluently. I was very impressed. She already knew Greek well before the trip, but didn’t they say that Greek is one of the most difficult languages to learn?

She became very animated then, telling stories of Greece and showing pictures of the local attractions.

“Cantik sekali! Pokoknya, kamu harus ke sana satu kali sebelum mati, lho,” she gushed.

To complete the Greek experience, she served me a cup of Greek coffee and some sort of Greek baguette or hard bread. It was quite nice actually (and quite strong. I’ve become an owl, so I’m writing this until I get sleepy).

Oh, how wonderful it is to be able to travel all around the world and immerse yourself in new cultures and surroundings.

“Hek eleh… nak travel jauh-jauh belajar culture orang konon. Mau belajar budaya Indonesia aja belum bisa!” the devil inside me whispered.

So far, the furthest I’ve been away from home is here in Makassar, and I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t exactly embraced or made an effort to get to know the local culture better. The only Bahasa Makassar that I know is “Lekba mako ngandre?” and I’m supposed to mingle with the locals throughout my clinical years.

That few hours with Dhita today sudah bikin aku semangat lagi! I should work on my Indonesian tongue, and brush up the other languages that I’ve learnt while I’m at it.

Before returning to my own room after finishing the assignment, I requested the Greeks songs Dhita played for us earlier.

“Hahaha! Sudah ku bilang pada mu, Juliet! I will turn everybody Greek!” said Dhita gleefully to Lita .