Sunday, September 30, 2012

The Perks of Being Wall Flower

Great, another book is finished!

Slowly but sure, i got my reading pace back on track and I started to read several new books for the #50bookschallenge project. I finished this book by the beginning of September, I guess. It's a quick-paced reading, so...

Anyway, I'd say this book, "The Perks of Being Wallflower" is pretty light yet complicated and mysterious as you've being brought to Charlie's letters for someone whom he didn't know at all (I guess he was writing those letters for us), and that is such a great way to tell story.

It funny how his high school life seems to be like a huge television where he became the spectators, and throughout the book, all the people from his surroundings started to grab him, pull him inside to the television and became one of the actor.

One good thing about reading this book is that you don't really have to think really much throughout the book (I'm currentlyreading The Firm of John Grisham right now and the story made me speculating even when I'm not reading it) and it's light--like I told you before.

The writer (whom I forgot) made an exceptional work on making it exactly like reading letters from a freshman clerk. I like how Charlie (main character) revolved around his two best friends, Sam and Patrick, and the intrications within them.

Anyway, they're going to show the movie based from the book by the end of this year. Logan Lerman is playing Charlie and Emma Watson as Sam (I haven't googled about who's playing Patrick).

If you're a fan of light-psychological teenage novel, you should read this one, since I don't favor romance teenlit.

...or am I considered pretty late  since I just read this book recently?
Hem.

Dina P. Sari
9.22 PM GMT-7

One Month and 25 Days

Greensboro Map - (c) duke.edu
... Or so.
I'm not really really fond of counting, but yes, this feels like a new chapter, a new identity in a new land, so I guess I should be counting.

Shortly, here am I, sitting on my princess-like bed on a 3x3 meters bedroom with yellowish lamp dimming romantically, literally. It's 30th of September. The very last day of my favorite month, September. Why? It's simple, it's my birthmonth. And I guess September is the most classy, elegant month out of all, but of course... All people think their birthmonth is great. You have your opinion, then.

Anyway, yes, this feels like a dream, if anyone ask whether I want to pinch myself, and YES, I do. Because it doesn't feel real, at all.

For anyone who doesn't know what's happening right now, RIGHT NOW I am an exchange student from YES scholarship program to USA, and currently being hosted by a wonderful fairy-godparent of America in Greensboro, North Carolina.

And if you try to look back to the past one and a half year, this life indeed feels like fairy tale. A possibility that doesn't cross your mind. A dream that seems afar yet when you're there... It doesn't feel any different. Which scares me, a lot.

I guess it's nearly two months. Yes, you feel like you're in a espionage movie, where you moved to a new place and start over, as a new person, with history you'd like to forget. And no, I don't want to forget my history, since I'm not in an espionage movie.

Things are different, that's the first thing I can tell. And you barely can tell more, since you don't even know how to tell more. Indeed.

I'm used to live in solitude, since I lived like that for the past two years, and it does seem a bit awkward to suddenly move in to a family, a whole lot different family with yours, with a new sister you have to understand with, and accept.

Back then, you thought that you only need 'this' amount of courage to be able to live such a faded yet real life in other's country. It feels like fun. It feels like dream comes true.

It is indeed a fairy tale, since the progress is indeed like a fairy tale. Sad, rough, hard. Some people, though.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that you can find reason from peace and solitude. And another one, you can find reason when you're away. Away from your familiar surroundings. Away from the things that determine yourself. And indeed, being far away from your familiar made your realize stuff. New things. The depth of your personality.

Being an exchange student doesn't mean you get all the happiness. I am lucky, since I'm used to live by myself. I'm used with the solitude, in fact I feel awkward with the group. Some people are craving for  the familiar, and I'm not.

Let me share you a secret. Smart people may have passed the tests to be an exchange student, but only the GENIUSES that can survive. It's a survival test. What you had before is nothing compare of being an exchange student. Mark my word, a genius.

Have you ever seen the famous paragraph of an exchange student?
"How do you know what dream is, when you never achieved one?"
Yes, that is just so true.

Being an exchange student is like a dream come true. It changes you, not by a year, but since the first day you stepped on other's land, you've changed. Everybody changes. And for those who said you changed... They just don't have a mirror to see their daily changes.

Be an exchange student. It may not make you feel superior, but at least you're superior from your old self. You stepped further.

And believe me, being an exchange student has nothing to do with being wiser.
Just be. Like I started this journey, one and a half year ago.


Dina P. Sari 8.35 PM