Feel Warm in Feezing Boston
By: Suhandi Hasan
Tags: Study Abroad, Winter, Scholarship, Lpdp, Boston

I just landed in Boston; on my phone screen, a notification from google popped up "welcome to Logan International Airport." After a 14-hour flight from Doha, a 4-celsius degree air blew me and whispered winter is already here. It was so cold, colder than the temperature I felt in Ranukumbolo three years ago. Passing the immigration check, I looked for strollers to put my luggage on, and I spent a few minutes finding one. As I tried to get a stroller from its station, a girl shouted to me, "hey, it is mine, you have to pay 6 dollars for it." I said, "Oh, okay, I am sorry." Suddenly, I realized I had just touched down America, a land of capitalism. It was not a bad alarm, after all.

Walking out the door to the arrival corridor, my Indonesian friends waved at me and said, "Welcome Home." It made me forget what happened inside the terminal. Then, they took a photo of me and sent it to our WhatsApp group to tell others that I was safe and sound. As I only carried luggage and a backpack with me, they told me not to take uber but train instead. So, we took a shuttle bus and train to get to their apartment in Allston, where I would spend ten days living with them before moving into my rented apartment. As we headed Allston, they told me that "in this city, public transportation was convenient yet confusing." And it is. There was a red line, blue line, and some others; it was five lines in total.

Luckily for me, before touching down in Boston, I spent three weeks in Jakarta, where I got my Visa and took the PCR test. During my stay in the capital city of Indonesia, I commuted using Transjakarta. It was frustrating for the non-Jakarta residents because the route was like a blood vein. Every time I wanted to get home, I had to ask the officials to make sure I was on the right track. However, when seeing the map of Boston mass transportation, it was nothing to compare with theTransjakarta's. The only problem for me who came in December was the weather. I thought I had worn a "proper" outfit, a winter coat I purchased from Indonesia, but it couldn't even get me warm.

As I asked my friends what the most attractive part of the city is, she pointed to the unique and mesmerizing buildings. Some oldest and most historic buildings are kept and stand firmly. Even the downtown area (from Beacon Hill and part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway) offers iconic landmarks, historic markets, hotels, and restaurants. Lately, I found Boston is called the Athens of America in the article. Besides, this city is often referred to as "The Hub of the Universe" to imply that the city is the center of everything commercial and intellectual, according to Oliver Wendell Holmes, who authored a series of articles in the Atlantic Monthly The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. The State House stands atop Beacon Hill and has dominated the city's landscape for nearly one hundred years. For this reason, Holmes likely nicknamed this building as the Hub of the Solar System.

The Bostonians are racially more diverse than I think. While predominantly white for most of the 20th century, Boston had modestly-sized Black, Asian, and Latino neighborhoods. There was ethnic diversity within the White population (Irish, Italian, Eastern European descent). I often heard people who commune with the same ethnics speak languages other than English, but indeed English became the lingua franca and official language in Boston.

Despite the freezing weather hitting me every time I went out, I could still feel warm by looking around. Moreover, on this holiday, my fellow Indonesian students (LPDP Awardees)studying across the states came and enjoyed Boston. It seems that the city is too mesmerizing to be missed out on just because the weather is temporarily not friendly.