Pensieve: October 2013

Hello World...

Finally, I got my life back. Hahahaha. Joined pre-departure training (PDT) for three months at IALF, was pretty much took most of my time. So I didn’t have much time to post anything on this blog. Since I’ve been practices a lot speaking and writing English during PDT, so I’m gonna posting my thought using English. Err if you find any grammar mistakes, I’m sorry, I’m still struggle learning it. *peace sign* :D

After received “love letter” from AusAid, I must join PDT in order to improve my English (in general) and (to be specific) improve my IELTS score. My first thought was this is just an English training, so nothing I should worry about, but it turns out that I jinx it.

On my first day, I attended the orientation and found out that I’m on 3M7 group. This group consisted of 15 people from various Governments office and I’m the only one that working in NGO. Our teacher is Andrew Riley, he’s energetic young British guy with a big curly blonde hair.

So we are “forced” to use English language as our daily convo. At first, Its quite hard because not only I should speak clearly and using the right structure (SPOK mode on) but also its difficult to express my thought, concisely.

We expected to accomplish our final assignment which is 1500 essay and give a 15 presentation in class. Although, I love writing and also I’m a blogger, but its very hard to writing in academic style. My writing style considered as popular writing, there are no rules about the structure, just write what is in your head, make it simple and easy to follow. But in academic writing, there are so many rules that should be followed even to make a simple essay.

We also learned about the cultural exchange. Our lovely teacher, Barbara, explained the Australian culture, packing tips, and how to overcome culture shock problems. Her class was very useful especially to those who had no experience going abroad. We also have Rina, our librarian, who taught us about plagiarism. Plagiarism has many layers and if we wrong in quoting references, it might considered as plagiarism. We also learned how to master Microsoft Office from Dedy, our IT staff. He taught us a lot of tricks on how to use many kinds of software that will help us in the future. Another teacher is Simone, She taught us about study skills, how to manage your time, and even breathing techniques to release stress.

I really had a great time at IALF, despite the lectures, I also met my new family: Mas Nugie, Fahd, Wulan, Sawie, Mas Nanang, Dhani, Mas Auli, Papa Arfan, Mas Weka, Ima, Dhini, Mba Cicil, Mas Donnie, Mas Doris, and Andrew.

This is Andrew, our teacher. At first, we were shock because he kept saying "rubbish" while give his comment about our poor writings. But, time after time, we get used to it because we think its a common in his country using "rubbish" word to express something. He also very funny and very good teacher :)

this is what we did almost every day, took lots of photos!

This is our uniform, design by Fahd! and lady in black is Alana, she is 3M8's teacher. We invited her to taste Mas Dony's Cake.

I got surprise! Wulan brought some donuts on my birthday!! yeaaayy me :')

We also had costume themes! Once a week, Sawie choose the colour and everyone should wear the same colour, no excuses! But Mas Auli didn't packed colour shirt when he left Pangkal Pinang, so he always wore a different colour.