BUBW Conference

Well, 2 months ago I got an email that my St. Louis’ sponsored students cluster will go to San Diego for some kind of conference about religious understanding. I was sooo hapy hearing that. At that time I was so happy that I got to go the the western part of this country, to a beautiful place called San Diego :)

Well, the reason why we went there was because we did some sorts of presentation about our country back in November last year. And we did enough number of presentation, so AFS choose us to go :)

We went to San Diego on March 3^rd until March 7^th. One of the good part about it is because I got to skip school for 3 days ! yaay. And it will be so fun because I will travel with 6 other friends from St.Louis.

So we arrived thereon Wednesday night and we had some pizza social. We introduced our name, what country we come from and what place in the US we stay. So I figure out there are 57 participants and they come from 22 different countries. That’s just awesome!

So, we are assigned to a room to sleep and I was in the same room with Trevi from Indonesia, Dilan from Turkey and Victoria from Ukraine.

So the next morning, we have some session from some wonderful speakers and then I figure out that Imam Bashar, a scholar imam who really concern about sending a message of peace, put this conference together. It was really inspiring for me to see somebody who put his mind into this kind of issue. In the afternoon we go to Balboa Park, one of the state parks in California. It was a beautiful park. We went around the ark and we went to the Science Center. There, we watched an IMAX movie about beautiful places in the world. I felt so dizzy, because the theatre is like planetarium, so I fell asleep for half of the movie :p Well, we went back to the hotel and our conference place and we had several presentation from Germany, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kenya and Malaysia.

On the next day we had a visit to house of worships. We visit ed a cathedral, and they had a very beautiful pipe organ. Then, we visit a synagogue and the Rabbi showed as their holy book, Torah. So Jewish people do not have Torah in their house. It is huge and it is like a roll of parchment. In the afternoon we visit a mosque/Islamic center. The imam and the sister had a very good presentation and I had a quiet afternoon prayer. It was a long day but I think a learn a lot about different religion, it was really heart-breaking to see many people fight and kill each other in the name of religion. I think everybody should attend this conference so that they can be open minded. That day was ended with dinner cruise in Pacific Ocean, it was really cool and really cold !

Well, on the last day of the conference, we went to San Diego SeaWorld in the morning and just have fun over there. I saw some arctic animal which I thought was really cool :p

After SeaWorld, we have a closing ceremony. My Indonesian friends and I performed Saman dance combined with some other dance. I was so proud that I could bring Saman and perform it in other country J. I think we did a pretty good job with it even though we just have few days to practice.

So by that being said, we ended my wonderful trip to San Diego. At first I though it’s gonna be awesome merely because I will go to San Diego. But I realize that I get more than that. I meet more new friends from all around the world. They are all very inspiring people, who wants to learn and understand other culture. Being in this conference make me realize how much I don’t know and realize there are tons of things still out there to be learned.

Ciao ! Peace !