A Letter to Hillary Clinton

Ini adalah tugas untuk kelas Global Leadership Development Program saya. Kami disuruh menulis surat kepada Hillary Clinton tentang program yang kami ikuti ini yang mengantarkan kami sampai ke Amerika. Jika kalian baca, mungkin hanya hal-hal baik tentang amerika yang saya tulis disini. Bukan karena saya tidak menemukan hal buruknya, tapi lebih karena saya fokus pada hal-hal baik saja.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520


Dear Mrs. Clinton

I am a Community College Initiative Program (CCIP) student from Indonesia. Currently I am studying at Highline Community College, Des Moines, WA under Information and Technology field. I come here by CCI Scholarship which is funded by U.S Department of State. I have been here since August 22, 2010.

I am writing to express my opinion about the program and about what have I learned from my classes and from American culture generally. This letter is also a requirement for the final assignment of my GLDP (Global Leadership Development Program) class, which is purposed to develop student’s leadership quality and introduce American history and political system. By being involved in this class we are prepared to make chance in our community back to our home country next year.

First I want to start by telling that there are some stereotypes about America in the mind of Indonesian people, depending on their educational background, political view, religion, age, interest, etc. For those who have a low education America is nothing but a rich country where people eat hamburger instead of rice and everybody shoot their gun each other on the street every day. For the higher educational background, America is an economical developed capitalist country, people has a freedom to speak or do anything they like, technology is advanced, and the government is busy to keep their country to be number one in the world.

For those who worship democracy America is an Idol because it is a good example of economically and politically stable country as the advantage of advanced democracy, while for those who don’t believe on it America is a good example of the bad curse of democracy where the government has too much interference from the people.

For most Muslim America is a country who are tend to hate Islam and often attack Muslim countries in the name of “war against terrorism” without knowing the truth about Islam, and people of America has a stereotype that Islam is identic to terrorism. Thus, coming to America is not safe for Muslim because they will not be able to practice their religion.
While for teenagers America is a cool country where parent understand their children and people can kiss at the street, go to party every day and do free sex in college, just like in American Pie. At the same time, for parents America is insulting country because they keep producing movies that change their children’s moral and traditional culture values. 

As an ordinary Indonesian I also have the stereotypes. I came here with naïve understanding about America that I get from information in media or what I see from movies and read from books. Actually I really like America and have wanted to go here since I was in elementary school, but I do have some bad thinking about America too. Especially because I’m Muslim, I was worrying about my safety here. I heard a lot of stories about what happened to some Muslims in America that they got abused or even attacked.

After being here for three months, all of the stereotypes I have before totally changed. I then realized that the image of America in some media is often bias or cannot be generalized to all American at once. I barely find people who hate Islam here; on the contrary I find a lot of Muslims peacefully practice their religion. I can see no problem of being Muslim here. Even though sometime I find people ask me several question related to my religion or people who are watching me practicing my religion, I realized that it’s more because of curiousness instead of hatred. Thus, I have a chance to explain so that they get the true fact about Islam. I see that as a mutual advantage, because I learn the truth about America while I can tell the truth about Islam too. Since Indonesia is the biggest Muslim country in the world, I think this issue is really important to develop mutual understanding between countries. That is one of the most important thing I experience in this program.

Not mentioning huge technical skills I get from my class that is really useful for my future professional life, in this program I also learn many things related to American culture and view that some of them are a polar opposite to what happen in my country. Let say some simple culture like queuing habit, obeying law, not littering, respecting other’s privacy, or even the culture of saying sorry and thank you. Those are not found in my country. It’s simple but I believe it is one of thing that affects the advancement of America. A great country should be started from great people. Those all become some of best things I learn in this program.

Individualism, that often becomes issue when people talk about American culture, for me is more because of people want to respect others and don’t want to trouble. I can see that because I have found some American that are seemed to be individualistic at first but turned to friendly once we know each other. It’s just the matter of culture, as American also often think that Indonesian people don’t really respect other’s privacy and likes to interference other’s business while in fact we just try to be nice and friendly. Now I have my explanation when I come back to my country and people ask me about it.

In this program I meet people from several other countries with different language, culture, value, and habit. We try to understand each other and learn to value other’s opinion. We learn to see something from other’s shoes. It develops our tolerance and understanding of other, thus it increases our good personality. That is a great experience for me that is not a chance for others.

For some reasons I mentioned above, I would like to say thank you very much for giving the great opportunity for me to join this program. I believe this is a great way to maintain mutual relationship, not only between America and Indonesia, but also with other countries around the world that are in this program. Therefore, I would say this program maintain the peace in the world.

Finally, thank you very much for spending time to read my letter. I hope this program can be continued or even enhanced both in quality or quantity.



Sincerely,
Agusmantono

NB: Mungkin banyak kata-kata muluk dalam surat di atas. Jujur, ada beberapa bagian yang rasanya saya ingin membubuhkan simbol titik dua + dash + huruf "p". seperti ini :-p
tapi tentu saja saya tidak melakukannya, sebab surat ini pun tidak akan benar-benar sampai ke tangan orang yang dituju kan? Pura-puranya aja nulis untuk beliau. Paling yang baca juga dosen saya sendiri he he he