Personal Note:

It is easy to realize how addicted to caffeine you are when you cut yourself cold turkey in order to assimilate better into a new environment. Malaysia is a 12 hour time difference from Pennsylvania so our schedules have completely flopped. My fellow Fulbright Scholars caught a glimpse of that addiction when my eyes got a little watery when I realized we were being served coffee at the University. (It’s not a full addiction – I can stop whenever I want). My luggage also did not reach Malaysia yet, so I was left with the two outfits in my carry-on and the wonderful generosity of my travel companions. However, my Malaysian friend Nisa (who really likes shopping and fashion) took me shopping and made sure I bought “good material”, didn’t “overpay” and that my outfits would be suitable for wearing on campus. Despite the cloudy haze due to lack of caffeine, not having my luggage and traveling for three days… these are my observations.

Things we learned/noticed on day 1:

• Rice is for breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, and snacks. We were smiled at when we said we only had rice about once a week and the Malay said that they have it at least three times a day.
• “Free Style” during pictures means funny picture. A common Malay move is to hold their pointer finger and thumb together, which means I love you. They also enjoy the peace sign. (Flashback to elementary school.)
• Durian fruit flavor lasts a long time in your mouth and comes in the forms of a McFlurry (yes, of course, there is McDonald’s here), popcorn, and the regular fruit. And apparently, there are more ways to enjoy this fruit that we will discover later on this trip.
• The bathrooms have the showers located directly in the bathroom. No shower stall, no shower curtain. There is a step into the bathroom and a drain to keep the water going into the drain and not into the hall. (There are a lot of steps in the rooms to get from room to room.)
• There are prayer rooms in the shopping mall since some of the people here pray at least five times a day.
• All of the classes at UTM are in English.
• They give you a spoon and a fork for meals rather than a fork and knife.
• Monkeys go into peoples’ houses in the evenings to steal food – when we saw the monkeys, of course, we wanted to get closer, but our Malaysian friends told us to come back.
• It is insanely easier when bikes have an “assist” mode on them, especially for going uphill. (Come-on America — where are these bikes for us??)
• They also have VIP McDonald’s drive-through passes (Maybe we don’t need this trend brought to America…)

Impactful Group Moment – Why are we here?

We had a meeting at the University Teknologi Malaysia that consisted of our group from the States, our Malaysian counterparts, as well as the Dean of the University (that graduated from The Ohio State), and the Vice Chancellor.

The Vice Chancellor was discussing the University and the mobility (foreign exchange programs) and said that he could tell an “increase in student maturity, communication and worldliness when students have mobility”.

It was interesting to me that he noticed that and made a direct correlation of traveling through exchange programs, even if they are only for a week or two, to having better students. However, only about 10% of the students participate in those types of events. It was discussed that it was an issue to get students to do exchange programs in the United State as well. Since people can see a direct positive correlation between world travel and student maturity, how can we increase the number of people participating in exchange programs?

Pictured: Dr. Muhmmad Sukri bin Saud, UTM Dean, School of Education;  Dr. Daniel Foster, Penn State Agricultural Teacher Educator;  Dr. Nur Husna Abd Wahid, UTM Lifeskills Teacher Educator;  Dr. Melanie Miller Foster, Penn State Global Learning Specialist;  Dr. Wahid bin Omar, Vice Chancellor/President UTM

Another question posed to us, “What does it mean to be a Fulbrighter?”

As I am sure that we all have our own internal answer to this, that will probably grow and develop as we go throughout this trip; some thoughts that were shared was that as we are educators, it is our duty to get these experiences so we can share them in our classrooms and communities. It was determined that our job as current agricultural educators and as pre-service educators is to…

“Bring Teach Ag to the World, bring the World to Teach Ag“

Pictured: Most of the Fullbright Scholars and their Malaysian counterparts after a tour of campus via the motorized bikes

 

Jeanne Case

Fulbright – Hays Scholar – Secondary Agriscience Teacher

@_J_Case