The 2nd Meeting of Indonesian Community In Florence

It's a beautiful sunny Saturday of January 26th, 2013. We decided to have this 2nd meeting on Saturday to accommodate our 2 new friends. As students, their weekdays occupied with schools, thus to have a meeting in the weekend was the best way to be able to have them joined. I met Mia, one of them about two weeks earlier in the church service that Sunday morning. I remember our Pastor greeted her at the entrance door as she entered. I heard she mentioned she came from America, but from her accent and when I took a glance on her face, I was somehow sure she is Indonesian, and I was right. So glad to finally have met another Indonesian in Florence. She is young, pretty and lively; so I wasn't surprised when she mentioned she's going to study fashion design in Florence. It suited her.

About two days before January 26th, another Indonesian contacted me. She said she found my contact through Expat blog. She said she was interested to join the meeting. I couldn't be happier than that, to have found another Indonesian in Florence. I replied back to her and gave the detail of the meeting. It was confirmed that we would have extra two pretty people in our community.

So we were finally set to meet up in front of Santa Maria Novella Church at 11 am that Saturday. I was the first who arrived at the piazza. Many people were sitting around or just enjoying the warm morning sunlight. It was indeed a lovely day to be outside. I parked my bike, my favorite transportation in town. Locked it with two locks for extra safety, I heard many bikes were stolen here in Italy. So I better be careful with my nice bikey. I looked around, and saw none of them yet. It was five to eleven. Then I began to walk toward the monument in the middle of the square, and I heard Mia called. We hug and greeted each other.  I told her about another new member today. She was excited to hear about Tya. It was sunny but a bit windy, the wind made us feel cold.We chat and wrapped our jackets tighter to resist the wind, soon one pretty young lady came closer and greeted us. It was Tya the new member! The conversation became merrier as both Mia and Tya found out that both of them actually came from the same town, ibukota Jakarta and both have studied in the USA . We talked cheerfully in slightly "Jakarta" accent mixed with American English, and I saw Yawa came with a nice smile on her face. 

I was so glad to introduce Mia and Tya to Yawa, Mia who study fashion design soon was also thrilled when she found that Yawa is a photographer. Photographer is surely needed in fashion industry! About 5 minutes later we saw Erna walked toward us. As usual Erna looked fresh, pretty and cute. We introduced each other and began to ask about each other, tried to get to know one another better.First and foremost, we had to pictured the moment, five Indonesian ladies met up in the center of Renaissance city, Florence, Italy!

We finally walked together to the pizzaria nearby, the Tira-Baralla, which was about 5 minutes walking distance from the piazza SMN. Yawa with her experiences and as the one who has lived the longest in Florence among us was really impressed us all with her knowledge and her multi-languages ability. She speaks English, French, Italian fluently, and of course, Bahasa Indonesia! Not to mention her talent in photography, she has blown us away.

The lunch at Tira-Baralla was splendid, the food, the drinks, but above all, it was our new friendship and the lovely atmosphere we created among us. We all enjoyed meeting each other, spoke a lot in mixed languages, and shared what we knew between each other. Our new friend Tya is a real fun girl, she has a great sense of humor. Having her around was surely made our meeting merrier.

After the lunch, Mia told us about EUR 1.- yummy gelato. For sure we would not want to miss yummy gelato for only EUR 1.- So we all accepted the challenge, to eat ice cream in the cold weather, after our hearty meal. Haha, siapa takut??!!

Day went by quickly, Tya had to leave earlier as she had another meeting with her friends in town, and later around 2.30pm, me, Yawa, Erna and Mia walked together to the dome of Florence and took some extra photos before we all finally said a temporary good-bye to each other. Thank you all my lovely Indonesian friends, you all have made my day!

This post is also an official welcome to Caramia and Dwitya as new members of Indonesian Community in Florence.