English and Study Skills 3

10.601

Term 1 2013

Lecturer: Samad Zare

Assignment 1:
Descriptive Essay – The Wonderful Borobudur

Due: 24th May 2013

Bramantino Armiento
2124205

August 24th, 2006, was the day that I will never forget. It was the day when I visit the monument printed on my history textbook cover page. Along with my family, I was guided through into a huge stone-made ancient monument that lies in the eastern java. A beautiful shiny day in the morning with lovely dawn chorus lead me passed across the pathway to the central field where the monument stood on. The planted trees lined the pathway akin to the skyscrapers of New York, swaying slowly to the light wind that had picked up. It took a quarter of an hour for my tiny feet to finally reach the spot where I could catch a sight of what I had been waiting for. Then slowly, I walked down closer to the monument with confidence as Neil Armstrong step his feet down on the moon. Not far away after, I felt the sensation of being in Egypt because of the shape of the monument that looks alike the ancient pyramid yet unroofed at the top. That was how my journey started; indeed, in the greatest Buddhist temple in the world – the magnificent Borobudur Candi Borobudur – that’s what the locals called the temple as - blew me down once and still it is a fascinating place I have ever been to. Down from the bottom, I could see clearly the structure of the building with a height of 16 ft taller than the statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. With total of nine platforms, six of the first lower are square and the rest upper three are circular. As what I remembered, our tour guide said that each of the platforms has each own meaning, which represents Buddhism cosmology heaven, earth and hell, but I could not remember any of the details as those went in one ear and out the other. “Say Cheese!!” That’s what I heard once Mr. Joko, our tour guide, was taking a shot of my family right in front of the most attractive tourist site in Indonesia. If I looked at the photo again in my family album, I was like a dog with two tails in front of a man made mountain metaphor in the shape of mandala. Though, not only Mr. Joko who said that. I could feel the same two words were going off my ear again and again by the other camera guys who were taking picture of the other dog. All at once, I was raring to go up step by step on the stairway to heaven with a hope to find a hidden treasure. I assumed myself as an archaeologist in the Indiana jones movie and so I went aside to each platform to see what is in it comprehensively. All of a sudden, the moment I stepped aside to the first