Read Between The Lines: Counterpart

My COUNTER-part

In CWY-JCM youth exchange program between Indonesia and Canada, every participant will have their own counterpart. My counterpart is Yeniffer Pang-Chung, a girl from Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Most of Indonesian who has the point of view that foreigner, or Canadian is the person with pale skin, blonde or brunette, and has colorful eyes, then they have to realize, my counterpart has more to offer than that stereotype. She was born in Panama, and moved to Canada, I truly believe she has the true Canadian personality, she is the type of Mature-Canadian-Woman.

I called her counter-part, because I believe my counterpart is the other part of me, which is cannot be explained, but she has different background, different personality, different point of view, and different way to solve a problem. Fortunately, my counterpart is just, great. I don’t know whether it is because she is older than me, or she has much more experiences than me. Whenever we had problem, I used to catch the wrong point, the incorrect way to solve it, but Yen always made me realize that the key of any relationship is to trust.

I never told her, but the first time I met her, I was afraid, a little bit intimidated when she asked me, “How old are you?”.

“I am nineteen, what about you?”, I replied.

“Twenty four, you guys still babies”, then she smiled.

The statement was not only for me, but also for the other girl that talked to her at the airport. Unfortunately, I felt something ‘ouch’, suddenly my biggest fear came true. I want to escape from the judgement that I am a KID, but this girl just said something really intimidating, and It is true. Now I realized I am not childish, it is because I am still a child, so it is fair because I really did not know anything to deal with those problems. I did not have a lot of experiences on how to work on a relationship, that is why most of the time I did actions that people consider as childish. It’s just, lack of experiences, if I did have, I will not act like I did before. Well, it is not an excuse, I just trying to explain what happened in the program. It already happened, and I have to move on and learn from the experiences, that I got from my counterpart and friends in the group.

For the rest of the program, Yen and I shared the same house, the same room (only in Indonesian Phase), shared the problem and fears, shared thoughts, we fought, we solved our problem, we had fun, we fought again, we cried, we said see you again, and now, we’re apart. It is just a distance, but I realized, someone will be so meaningful if you lost them. Well I do not lose her, we’re just in a far far away distance, and I did not see her as often as in the program. Six months together, I found my friend for life.