Having international friends with different cultures and accents is quite fun yet challenging experience.

Surprisingly, Spanish and Dutch English accent are more or less familiar just like what I heard from Hollywood movies. But, Cameroon, Niger, Chinese, Pakistani and Vietnamese accents are the most difficult for my Indonesian ear to catch at first.

One day, my CCF friend, Kak Tabitha, visited Eindhoven after her internship in Venice, Italy. She said sometimes she couldn't understand what my Pakistani friend was saying. One time when my Pakistani friend and I were talking, I replied him with Urdu words I knew. Funny thing is, Kak Tabitha tought I could speak and understand Urdu while actually he was talking in English.

Then there's my classmate. He asked me about a famous children song from Indonesia. The first song which came up in my mind was Balonku. So I recited the lyric and translated it afterward. The special part of the song: "Meletus balon hijau, dor! Hatiku sangat kacau" which I translated as "The green balloon just exploded, dor! My heart is ruined" made my friend wondered how devilish the Indonesian's children songs are.

Then again when I was having a chit chat with Kemal's Italian friend about foods. We were talking about kerupuk. She said there's something like that in Italia which only exists in Chinese or other Asian restaurant. But what the Italian people called kerupuk is literally mean Cloud of the Dragon, which I don't have any slightest clue on how they came up with the name.

Also, living in Netherlands which means having many Indonesian friends, made me speak Indonesian and sometimes Javanese quite a lot. One day when we were having lunch together while I was getting ready for a part-time job interview, I asked my friend, Dony:

Me: "Don, enaknya ntar rambutnya bagus dikuncir atau digerai?" 

then my friend who heard it, curiously asked: "What was Nisa saying?"

Because Dony was too lazy to translate it since he's not really sure the English word of "dikuncir" and "digerai",

he just translated as "Am I beautiful?" instead.