HUNTING TOURIST IN JOGJA

June 16th, 2008, we went to Jogja. Our purpose was practicing English with foreigners. So, we went to Borobudur temple and Prambanan temple and started to “hunt” foreigners there. We met foreigners from Holland, America, Belgium, etc. Met foreigners was an unforgettable experience. You should know, that meet and talk to foreigners is different. If you meet and talk to a foreigner, you will find that speaking in English with a native speaker is totally different with speaking in English with our teacher at school. We must listen carefully because foreigner speaks quickly. And, when they speak quickly, it’s little bit hard to catch than when our teacher speaks quickly. But, with one minute adaptation, talking with a foreigner will be easy. Hunting tourists is a good and popular program for English skill development. Some school and universities make this program as an annual program. They visit places where they can find foreigners such as temple and beach and other tourist objects. Hunting tourists is also an alternative for educative picnic. So, organizing a Hunting Tourists Program will be very fun and more educate. But, although it seems fun, hunting tourists needs a good preparation. If we want to “hunt” foreigners in tourist objects, ensure that we have sufficient “basic knowledge” about how to face foreigners. So that why, before we go to “hunt” foreigners, we should have been understood well about Cross Culture Understanding (CCU): how to start a conversation in the first meeting, how to greet, how to respect the foreigner’s privacy, etc. And of course, for a Hunting Tourists program, it’s better for us to have a tour guide or tour leader to connect us to the foreigners (as a “bridge” that connects us to the foreigners). Or, if it’s possible, we bring a tour guide who will give us a chance to be a guide for the foreigners. If so, we also have to be able to explain to the foreigners about the place(s) we visit. It means that we must have sufficient knowledge about the history of places, exact location, distance from or to other cities, facilities, how to reach the place, etc.(By alumni at LP3I: Iko Agus, Khadis, Rizki Purwitasari).