Tak kenal maka tak sayang”

This is a popular saying from my beautiful country, Indonesia. It means, if you do not know about something, then you cannot be in love. With that sentence in mind, I’ll let you know more about me.

I am Lita from Indonesia, I am 17 years old now and I am currently living in Sweden as an exchange student. I am an author of two novels. The first novel called “Viva Friendship” which I wrote when I was 11 years old and the second called “Alma” which I wrote when I was in junior highschool. Both are fiction and generally about friendship and adventure. I really love writing. Anything. I write or type a line of words which comes in my mind on a piece of paper or on a phone. Whether in English or Bahasa Indonesia. I do really love reading, listening to music and also singing but singing to entertain myself only. I love to join social organizations too. In my home city, I join some of social organizations. One of them is Tadulako Children Forum. We do lots of things related to children’s rights in our region (Central-Sulawesi). We make socializations, national children’s day, and others. I love cats and I really like blue color!

My motivation to join AFS program are my dream and my father. I have had a dream to study and go abroad since I was a little girl. It is all because of my father. My father went to Australia in 1999, a week after I born. He got scholarship and studied there about 2 years. When I was a little girl, he always told me about his experiences when he was in Australia. Since then, I have had a dream to go abroad, to learn more about other cultures, to build a great relationship with people there, to get many new friends from different cultures and mainly to get amazing experiences that I can bring and apply to my home country soon.

What I want to learn during my AFS program is every positive little thing that happens around me in my host country, Sweden—and how those positive little things will affect to my future or even my home country’s future. Being an exchange student means being an ambassador of your home country, being an icon that everyone will see you as ”a country”. What I want to share with and teach others is not how to be a great ambassador because I am still learning that, but more about how to survive as a minority, how life is in Sweden as an exchange student and how I introduce Indonesia here and many other surprising little things that happen to me during my exchange year. Tack och vi ses! (svenska)

Lita Asghira Prasetyo, exchange student from Indonesia to Sweden