bitter.sweets.of.life

I still recall when most of my friends were amazed when they heard that I am going to study in US, I don't know for sure what they thought but they have no idea how hard studying here. At the first couple months, language barrier became one of the problems, it was not about the English proficiency but about the accent, most of us, international students, have a strong accent regardless where we come from. Day by day, we became more and more familiar with those people, and we faced another challenge, school work. One of the differences between the system here and in Indonesia is people here will give more assignments and works, particularly in Computer Science which based on "doing" not only "reading".
Last semester, I was dying because of how time consuming my classes are, finished one project and got another one, it won't stop. I admit that it works, those things made our skills sharper. On my high school, I used to be happy when weekends came, but now whether weekends or school days are the same for me, I spend my beautiful weekends with laptop and books, doing the homeworks and creating projects. Once again, those are good things.
Another thing which is interesting to share is the cultural thing. I didn't only share with Americans, but also others like Brazilian, Egyptian, Turkish, South African, etc. Why? because I found not only American who is living here, there are so many immigrants. Most classes I take, I found another foreigner, some of them are a citizen of US and some aren't, a visa holder like me. It's fun to tell them what kinda things you have in your country and to listen how they live in their country.
Right now, I always think what will I gonna do when I head back home, it still so blur. I can just work and earn some moneys, but I don't think it will enough, I mean I won't stop studying, I'll be stopped some day, not now obviously. In the other hand, I need to implement skills I got here, it will be pointless if I don't use my skills, it means I break the purpose of this program. I think I got addicted with studying abroad, I wanna find more program, more scholar.
Homesickness is one of the most suffering things I've been through, you got lots of friends here but it won't be the same, there are some family roles which is almost disappeared. When I opened my eyes in the morning, I started to wonder where the voices of my brother and sister's fight, where a cup of tea which my mother always made, and where the sound of my father's foot steps. I missed that kinda simple thing. My adviser told me that we are now different, we are not the same like when we met them at the first time, we transformed to mid-western, even though a little bit, we changed. So when I get back home, I will face another culture shock, indeed.