A Farewell ‘Party’ for Hanneke

Why do I put apostrophe in “party”? Well, parties are mostly always full of music, flickering lights, dress code, food and of course, drink. But the party that was held last Saturday, June 12 was a far cry from what so called party. The party lasted only about 45 minutes since it was Saturday, the busiest day of the week, and it was held in my office—teachers’ room. However, the–what-so-called-party took place more than our expectation.

It was about 2 PM when some teachers from Srondol came to teachers’ room (fyi, LIA has three branches that are located quite far from one another. They came bringing food—bread mostly, since we assume that Hanneke wanted to taste other kinds of food—without any drink. We gathered in teachers’ room, sitting around the table. Ms. Sari, the AOO opened the farewell party by saying thanks to Hanneke for being with us for almost four months. So far, she has learnt t lot to be a teacher even though she is only 21 years old. She said Hanneke has been a part of LIA Semarang Candi teachers so she could drop by anytime she comes to Indonesia, especially Semarang.

All teachers who attended the farewell got their turn to express their opinion about Hanneke. Most of them have good impression on her; she easily gets along with all teachers, she even could memorize teachers’ names perfectly (I once asked her how she could memorize local names. She told me that she wrote all teachers’ names with description, both characters and physical appearance). She never rejected all invitations to classes. Whenever she’s in class, she could handle all questions—even It sounds stupid questions, such as “Are you married?”. She looked a bit upset, though. She asked the student back, “How old are you?” “I’m twenty.” said the student. “Are you going to get married when you are 21?” Hanneke asked her back. She shook her head immediately.

For me, I saw Hanneke as a unique person. Unique, why? Another friend of mine, Ms. Ardi, seemed to agree with me since she said that Hanneke is a very friendly and nice girl, far different from other Europeans she acquainted. One thing that sometimes bothered my mind is her being friendly to anyone, is it really her character or because hospitality is her subject when she was in school. Well, above all, she is awesome. One thing for sure, we all are going to miss her so much. Farewell party does not mean a real goodbye. There are technology and social networking that can keep us together.