Yes! Beneran deh, rasanya aku gabakal ngelupakan ini seumur hidupku.
Yah... walaupun cuma perjalanan 2 hari 1 malam ke Balikpapan, tapi yang membuat 'perjalanan' ini spesial adalah the fact that my friends are with me! Yes! The whole angkatan, my lovely 28sunrises, we went on a trip together.

Even though the story of how this trip happened is quite long and quite complicated (as my mother and the other parents arranged it, how they made the money, how they got permission and stuff), I am so utterly grateful that it did. Well, I guess here it is. A summary of what happened.

So about 3-5 days before the trip I was basically being all bored at home by myself. I have already done UN and it's like, "Wow, the struggle is over. What now?" (I think I'm gonna blog about UN too, wait for my post!) I felt as if I was the most clueless girl ever still trying to figure out herself and... well, I felt bored. I couldn't wait for Saturday (the day me and my whole friends departed to Balikpapan). And Alhamdulillah, the days zoomed as fast as an F1 racing car.

The day finally arrived. I have already packed my bags and stuff and I'm ready to go! (But as soon as I got on the bus I realized that I didn't pack any kantong kresek to hold dirty clothes lol) As me and my friends meet and we talk as if we haven't seen each other since World War II, we then got into the bus and well... went to Balikpapan straight ahead!

A video of us at the bus (hey, that ryhmes!):



Before we arrived at Balikpapan, we stopped for lunch at a Sunbear (beruang madu) enclosure. It was a cute place. The bears were cute, the cats there (even though they say that it's a bear enclosure, they have places for dogs & cats too) were cute, the playground and all were cute... but my friends didn't think that the dogs were cute. I thought that dogs are cute. Just... their slobber and their fangs(?) and their poop & pee are not cute. My friends were afraid that they will get bitten.

Anywho, I took pics there. I guess... well, here they are!


































As soon as we arrived in Balikpapan, we went to eWalk, a famous mall in Balikpapan. At first I didn't think that we would go there. I mean... I'm sure most of us had been to a lot of different malls already, then why go to another one here? But yeah, we did. And I didn't regret going there, either. I bought bubble tea there (man, I missed the flavor of that thing) and yeah, we shopped until we dropped. We had a lot of fun.

After we woozed ourselves around eWalk, we finally arrived at the hotel that we were gonna stay in. I have to say, I was not really fond of the hotel. It looked so... creepy. There were lots of reliefs everywhere, statues, paintings of what maybe was a European piece of art? (Well I don't really know how to describe it) But the rooms were so-so, and it was deservable knowing the price.

As I was resting in my room with Audrey, the phone rang several times. And when I picked it up, they immediately hung up. People were prank-calling. We were prank-calling each other, haha. even though it felt like a bother to me, it was fun.

That night, we went to Beach House, had dinner and did some games. I was kind thrilled to be seeing a game called 'Treasure Hunt' in the trip's schedule, but it turns out the game is nothing like I imagined it. I was imagining a game with a hidden treasure, where we had to find it with clues that are given. But no... we were given blank papers instead and was told to prepare our stationary and wrote down things about our friends that we liked on that paper. After that's over with, Pak Rizal collected the papers and read the writings on it out loud (we didn't think that it would be read out loud). We were laughing about what are friends are saying about us and I guess, it turns out that... we don't need to search for no treasure.. our friends are our treasure.

Next, kita tukeran kado. Hehe, udah lama banget kita ngantisipasi yang ini. Asiknya soal tukeran kado yang ini, kita sama sekali gatau kita bakal dapet kado dari siapa dan ngasih kado ke siapa. Kan nomer undiannya berdasarkan nomer absen UN tuh, terus begitu aku ngambil undian, aku kaget banget begitu aku tau aku dapet angkanya siapa. 28. Angkanya Audrey!!!

Dan anehnya lagi, aku sama Audrey beli kadonya sama-sama. Jadi aku tau dia ngasih apa, Audrey tau aku ngasih apa. Haha, mungkin emang udah takdirnya begini kali ya?... anywho, I ain't complaining about Audrey's gift because I thought that it's awesome!

After that, we were said to write a letter for a teacher. Yep, a teacher. I had to pick one. Well, I had to, so I did. I picked Miss Bee. I poured all of my feelings (sort of) in that piece of paper, the things that I'd love to say to her, but too embarrassed to say it directly. So... yeah. I didn't know that some people will be randomly picked to read their letters aloud in front of anyone. I didn't know if it was bad luck or good luck, but... I got picked. Yeah, it was kind of an emotional night.

As soon as I arrived from the hotel that night, I couldn't help but smile to myself. I just feel so grateful. I am a very lucky girl indeed.

The next morning, we got up early, took our baths and had breakfast. After that's done we went straight off to Pantai Manggar. To be honest, I had bad memories with that beach... but to be honest with you again, as soon as we arrived there and as soon as I saw the beach, it was like flowers were blooming inside my heart. The sand was great, even though the rain poured on it a little. It was clean, there was a little amount of trash. All in all, it was great.

We were made into groups and was told to make art out of sand. I was in a group with Audrey, Farras, and Wawan. At first, we were kind of clueless of what we were gonna make, but then we got an idea to make a flower. And we did. Here's a pic of it.

Look at us! Being all happy on the banana boat hahaha :] (creds to Ina for the pic)

After we had LOADS of fun at Manggar, we cleaned ourselves, ate lunch and went straight to the bus and straight home.