It’s been nearly two weeks since departing Kaula Lumpur Malaysia. We spent a total of 28 days in Malaysia traveling to schools, cultural sites, and agricultural industries. Within those areas, I’ve learned something new.
Every school we visited treated us like celebrities. Instead of a red carpet entrance, we were greeted with authentic live music performed by the students. At each of the schools, students would give us a grand tour showing us their classrooms, gardens, greenhouses, and projects. The amount of pride and preparation that were put into our arrivals was unbelievable. It goes to show that the staff and students were just as excited to see us as we were to be there. After each of our teaching episodes, we would have a Q and A to answer any questions about America and us. As we were sharing our differences, the students listened with open curiosity. The more we interacted, the more similarities we found between each other. Differences at first are the easiest to see, but to find the similarities, we need to engage in meaningful conversations. I learned this through our Q & A and downtime we had with our UTM students.
We visited a ton of cultural sites from living with host families to visiting a cultural village. My favorite part was staying with our host families in FELDA. A memorable moment was interacting with my two host children; they were four and two. Both didn’t speak English, but that didn’t matter we used a lot of hand jesters. Even though it was hard for them to communicate with me, they still tried their best, which I appreciated. It’s not easy being surrounded by people who speak an unknown language to you but these two kids tried their best to make me feel welcome. Traveling through the countries every person we met went out of their way to make sure we felt welcomed and of course well fed. The people of Malaysia are the most humble and welcoming people I’ve ever met.
Before coming to Malaysia, I did a little research about the palm oil industry but to see it in practice was pretty cool! But other areas I didn’t know much about were the pineapple and rubber industry. In my research, I found out that the Palm oil tree originated in Africa and was brought over by the British as an ornamental plant. As we toured the pineapple plantations, we found out that the most popular variety of pineapples is MD2 which originated in Indonesia. It interesting to see how plants from other cultures played a massive role in Malaysia’s agriculture.
All in all, this has been one of the best abroad experiences. If you want to learn about the world, you must travel and see it. A textbook or the internet can give you a lot of information but to truly understand a culture you must try to live it.
