Chapter 1 Part 3 "Chair Mate"

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I arrived at my faculty and headed straight to class. As I enter, I see a lively, rowdy classroom filled with the voices of the students chatters.Yes, it has been just two weeks since the first semester lectures begins. However, I've seen people make clique groups, engrossed with chatters of their own world.cI still haven't got a clique but I've had one friend, he's a student from Russia who got a scholarship to study in this college. His name is Ilya Kozlovsky, his father an ethnic Russian muslim revert while his mother is a Kazakh muslim, his face is slightly similar to someone from east Asia. The back story of how I befriended him is quite funny, basically during the orientation time, we were told to draw a character based on our own personality and according to what was in our mind at the time and then exchanged it to the person next to each of us. I created a manga character and added a chat balloon to the character I made with Cyrillic alphabetic characters.

In the writings I made I wrote

добро јутро, ја сам карим, Драго ми је (Dobro jutro, ja sam Karim, drago mi je ((Good morning, my name is Karim, nice to meet you))." he made a character as well and writes. ""Доброе утро! Меня зовут Илья Козловский, oчень приятно (Dobroe Jutro, menja zovut Ilya Kozlovsky, ocen priatno (Good morning, my name is Ilya Kozlovsky, it is nice to meet you).".

When I saw him able to reply in Cyrillic alphabetic characters I'm astonished, then he smiled and gave his fault."Assalamualaikum." I was shocked he gave me a muslim greeting so I replied "Waalaikumussalaam." then he started questioning me.

"That's a Cyrillic script you write there, but the language is different, what language is that."

"Bosnian."

"Ah, Serbian-Bosnian-Croatian yes?"

"Yes."

"Are you a Bosnian?"

"Yes, but I'm half native, my father is a native."

"Oh, no wonder you have brownish skin."

"Is that a problem?"

"No, I'm a mixed too."

"Oh?"

"Yes, my father is Ethnic Russian and a Muslim revert, my mother is a Kazakh."

"Ah, that is why you can read the Cyrillic characters."

"Yes, what is your full name if I may know."

"Karim Dawala Sokolovic."

"Nice to meet you Karim Dawala Sokolovic."

"Yes, nice to meet you too, Ilya Kozlovsky."

And that's where my friendship with Ilya began. Ilya is an easy going and cheerful person, and also he seems agile because his body is slim.

The lecture has begun, the docent started to gave early material explanation of Western art history chapter in front of the class with some power point slides that he had made then he gave us a task when the hour of the course is almost over, the task is a group assignment and we are asked to make a group in which we could freely choose the member are free to choose and because of Ilya's hospitality, there are three people who want to join our task group, alhamdulillaah.

The time of the lecture is up, break time arrive, after exchanging Line ID, WA number and Instagram account me and Ilya headed to the library to look for the book that we need to and make the summary of the materials in the book to be presented with point point slides for next week.

Me and Ilya walked to the library while sometimes chatting using the mother tongue of one of our parents. Ilya spoke in Russian, meanwhile me in Bosnian, strange but real I could understand about more than half what he told me even though he is more able to understand what I was saying. Well, it is natural because the language of one of our parents is Slavic language family so the similarities ia quite a lot.

We arrived at the library, we went inside, filled the presencion form in the computer library to borrow the locker key, put our bags inside the locker and took two library's carry-on bag to bring the equipment we need such as laptops, books, pencil cases and the like.

We entered the library and searched for vacant table and seat to sit and put the library's bag on top of the table. I excuse myself to Ilya because I want to start looking for books while Ilya is looking for online article or online books.

"Ilya, excuse me for a minute, I will seek for the book that we need."

"Da, Karim, do svidanya (good bye)."

"Hey, I won't go that long."

"How should I know if either you get lost or not between those book shelves, if you get lost and gone, I won't have to be bothered to say my farewell am i? Besides you told me that you are a forgetful person, so I doubt that you can even find your way back here."

"Your imagination about me is just too much man."

"Just in case."

"Damn you then, do viđenja (good bye)."

"Ahahahah!"

Yes, another thing about Ilya is that sometimes he will tease you and make a joke about it. It's a little annoying but in another sense, he did not tease and make jokes to make someone to mad at him but rather to break the ice and the tension when meeting people and make them befriended each other, I like that. He also knows the boundaries so he will not hurt the feelings of people.

I walked off to the central computer information searching for the title of the book that I was looking for and where the book was being put. After I found it, I walked towards the row of shelves where the book was being put. It is placed on the top shelf, alhamdulillaah my body height is 182 centimeters so i can reach it but when turn my body back, I was surprised by the presence of a certain someone. She who has always appeared in my dreams lately, it seemed like she was in a trouble trying to pick up a book that she wants to take, where is Vinno her fiance? He doesn't seem to be here. What should I do? Should I help her?

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*Trivia

 Russian Dictionary

Do svidanya = good bye

Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian Dictionary

do viđenja (do vedanya) = good bye

The video down here is a word play between two people, one speak word in Russian and the other in Croatian.

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