Garden Of Europe

Hey, on this post I'd like to tell you about a place that I really want to visit.

So first let me tell you that I am a big fan of flower. Yup. So can you guess what place that is on my bucketlist?

It's.... KEUKENHOF.

Here we go.

Keukenhof or "Kitchen Garden" in English, is also known as Garden of Europe. It is one of the biggest flower garden in the world. Keukenhof is located in Lisse, Netherlands. Based on the official website of Keukenhof garden, there are approximately seven million bulbs of flower planted there. They cover an area of 32 hectares or 79 acres.

The history of Keukenhof, the name of meaning "kitchen garden", goes back to the 15th century. Countess Jacqueline of Bavaria, Jacoba van Beieren (1401-1436) gathered fruit and vegetables from the woods and dunes for the kitchen of Teylingen Castle. Keukenhof Castle was built in 1641, and the estate grew to an area of over 200 hectares.

Landscape architects Jan David Zocher and his son Louis Paul Zocher, who also designed Amsterdam's Vondelpark, redesigned the castle gardens in 1857. That park, in the English landscape style, still forms the basis of Keukenhof.

In 1949 a group of 20 flower bulb exporters came up with a plan to use the estate for a permanent exhibition of spring-flowering bulbs, signaling the birth of Keukenhof as a spring park. The park opened its gates to the public in 1950 and was an instant success, with 236,000 visitors in the first year alone. In 2016 the 67th edition of Keukenhof is taking place, with the Golden Age as its theme. During the last 66 years Keukenhof has grown into a world-famous attraction.

The Keukenhof features a variety of different gardens and garden styles. For example, the English landscape garden features winding paths and unexpected see-through points (designed by Zocher in 1830, the garden architect of the Vondelpark in Amsterdam, among others). The historical garden is an enclosed garden where you can see many old types of bulbs. The nature garden consists of a water garden where shrubs and perennials are combined with bulbous plants. The Japanese country garden is a non-traditional garden in a natural environment. The majority of flowers that are planted are tulips, but there are also other flowers such as daffodils, hyacinths, roses, chrysanthemums, and lavenders.


So.. there you go. It's one of the place that I want to go to. I hope one day I can really be there amazed by the flowers.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keukenhof
http://www.keukenhof.nl/en/discover-the-park/what-keukenhof/
http://www.holland.com/global/tourism/article/keukenhof.htm
http://cheeseweb.eu/2014/04/facts-about-keukenhof-gardens-tulips-netherlands-2014/
http://www.keukenhof.nl/en/footer/about-keukenhof/

MEGANTARA 2016

Assalamualaikum guys, I'm back!

On this post I would like to tell you about my experience two weeks ago. Actually it was a spectacular experience.

So here it is, on Saturday, tenth of September, my beloved school, SMAN 3 Bandung held a Festival of Art, Literature, and Culture named MEGANTARA. I had the honour to be one of Event Organizer.

So here's why I got into the committee:

When my school held the extracurricular demonstration, they also introduced the Student's Organization (OSIS), then the chairman of OSIS, Kang Ghazy asked who wants to be in the Student's Organization. I raised my hand because I want to. Then the members of Student's Organization gave the ones who raised their hand a bracelet. A bracelet which was the ticket for us to be one of the event organizer. It was two months less before the event.

I registered myself the next week. There weren't so many divisions that opened the registration, so I chose the decoration division. The division was lead by Teh Avira. On the first meeting of the decoration division, I introduced myself and we started working.

þ

Me and my friends

On the next meeting, the decoration division introduced their subdivisions, we got to pick one of the subdivisions. The subdivisions were: Stand, Gate, Stage, Mural, Tower, Tunnel, and Ticket Booth. I chose the Stand subdivision.

The decoration worked very hard everyday, some of us stayed at school till evening. Some of us didn't do our course/lesson, and other sacrifices. But we all know that it was all going to be worth it in the end. We, the stand subdivision made a lot of decorations. We had to make 10 minigates according to the top five biggest islands in Indonesia, murals that represent places in Indonesia, and landmarks or famous building in Indonesia. We worked on it until D-1.

The Crowd

Kalimantan minigate

On the D-1, everything was crowded. I panicked a little bit. But as a team, the decoration managed to solve the problems, On that day, I went home at 11.30 pm because I had to make sure that every little parts of the stand was there ready to be displayed.

The next day was the big day, IT WAS D-D!

I woke up at 4.15 am feeling excited. Then I prepared myself and stuffs that i needed. I arrived at Lapangan Bali at 6 o'clock. Then i rechecked the stand decorations, making sure that they were all ready to present the best side of Indonesia. After that, I changed my clothes into the committee shirt, then all of the event organizer prayed for the success of the event. 

As the opening of the event, there was a parade done by kindergarten and elementary school students. The parade ended by the opening of MEGANTARA. 

The parade

Minigate to Jawa stand

The open gate time was 11.35 am. So me and my friends didn't do anything much until that time. We chatted, took some pictures, bought some food or drinks, and other things. 

An hour before the open gate time, the decoration division got a trouble on the gate so we had to fix it. Thankfully we got it done in no time.

11.35

The open gate time. There weren't so many visitors that time so the unbusy committee should take off their shirt and pretend to be visitors. Time passed, about four hours later the visitors increased.

There were a lot of fantastic performances, there were traditional dancing, rampak kendang, angklung, wayang, choir, theatre, and there was also a fashion show which the participants was some of my friends. They presented the unique of Indonesians traditional clothes. My favorite performance was from Tiloe's Theatre and from Kelompok Vokal 3.

Around Maghrib time, Lapangan Bali was full of people. It was so crowded that it could damage the decorations, so we had to protect it, and due to that, I missed some of the performances. But that was okay since it was my responsibility.

As the night got late, people started to left the Stands since they want to see the main guest stars, so I could watch the performances, I watched TsT!! They were incredible. And then... the main guest stars performed!!! They were RAN and The Changcuters! I had a lot of fun when they performed.

Then... the event ended. SUCCESSFULLY. I was so honoured to be one of the great people who made this event happened. I hope next year the festival can be more fantastic than this year's.

World Tournament and Techno Festival

Hey there, it's Shofia again. It's been a while since I posted my very first post.

Now for my second post I would like to tell you about what I did on Saturday, 20th of August 2016.

So first thing first. Saturday is my school schedule for Physical Education. But two weeks ago, I didn't do Physical Education lesson. Why? Because the Student Organization made an event, one interesting event called:

World Tournament and Techno Festival.

I woke up that day feeling a little lazy. I'm still not used to go to school on Saturdays. Alright let's continue, after I was done getting ready, I went to school, sorry, not exactlt to school but to Lapangan Bali. I arrived at 6.30 AM and  my friends had already arrived there. We were greeted by the MC, Teh Muliany. After that we listened to some short speeches from Kang Ghazy as the Chairman of the Student Organization and Mr. Dhoni Taufik as our Physical Education teacher.

After that we were divided to groups according to our class. Example, I'm from X IPA 6, me and my classmates were in one group and we were going to compete with XI IPA 6. We were going to play Post Game. In this event, we had to speak in English from the beginning until the end.

So from the Lapangan Bali, me and the other participants gathered in our school corridor to take our clue and map. After, we gathered with our groups (X IPA 6 and XI IPA 6) to go to the first post: the right side of Lapangan Bali. 

FIRST POST

The game that me and my friends played here was "Flappy Bird Tag Race". In this game each groups had to send 10 people of the group to play. The game rule was pretty simple, each player will play for 15 seconds then he/she have to pass the phone to the next player. The scores of every player was added and the highest result will win and receive a piece of puzzle.

My group lost in this game. 

Flappy Bird

SECOND POST

The second post was at the left side of Lapangan Bali. Actually I forgot the game name. So basically in this game, the two groups had to compete to take each King of the Group hand scarf.

Once again, my group lost in this game.

THIRD POST

The third post was at the Basketball Court of Lapangan Bali. The game was a technology quiz. So, each group had to send one member to play the game. The player of this game had to guess one technology thing based on the statements given by the event organizer. 

My group member who played this game was Otniel, and guess what? He won! And my group finally achieved our first puzzle piece.

FOURTH POST

After the third post, me and my group looked for the next clue on the map. And we found out that the next post was at Tongkeng Park. So we walked a little far from our school area. After we arrived at the park, the event organizer told us about the rules of the game. The game was kinda Robot Making Competition. We were given some ingredients such as cardboards, bottle, etc. The most creative group won.

And again, my group lost in this game because we were a little bit messed up. But fortunately, the event organizer gave us a chance by throwing a plastic bag of water to the aliens. (It was just another event organizer). We got two pieces!

FIFTH POST

After the fourth game, we checked the map to find the next post. The next clue referred to Photography Park. The game in this post was "TWISTER". Each group should send two of their members to play the twister game. My group sent Geavani and Faris to play the game.

The Twister Game

The players result was draw. Which means each group achieved a piece of puzzle.

Those were some of the posts that we went to. After, there were about five more posts that we had to go to. The posts were "Human Chain Challenge", "Samyang Challenge", and some other quizzes, but due to the duration, my group didn't do two games.

At last, we had arrived at the closing of the event. But before that, each generation (3'2018 and 3'2019) must compete to finish to puzzles that we got from the games. Honestly I didn't do anything to finish the puzzle because the place were too crowded and i thought i may not be helping, so yeah, I let my smart friend finished the puzzle

GUESS WHAT...

THE RESULT WAS AMAZING.

3'2019 WON AS THEY FINISHED THE PUZZLE FASTER THAN 3'2018

I was so happy yet tired that day.

Thank you, OSIS SIE 9 & 10, you made my day♥