My experiences in Malaysian trip, 2017

By Ani Barua, IBC BA 2nd year student

At first I would like to express my gratitude to IBC founder Shifu Ven. Wei Wu and others who gave me a great opportunity to visit different parts of Malaysia along with other IBC student. Without their great support and good arrangement, it wouldn’t be possible for me to treasure and enjoy this marvelous trip. During this trip we visited so many interesting places and participated in many meaningful activities with our group members. Trip was very interesting for me since it was first time to visit Malaysia, join in an International Conference and camp for young children, meditation retreat, and visit old folk home, columbarium, Kindergarten and visiting many recreational and historical sites.

There was an IBC International Young Buddhist Scholars Conference on Dec. 16 and 17 at Than Hsiang temple sponsored by Than Hsiang Foundation. It was really wonderful to see the presentations of various young Buddhist scholars who came from different parts of the world to present their research findings and share their knowledge with audience. It encouraged us to prepare ourselves to present papers in such conference in future.

After the conference we went to Kuala Lumpur (KL) on December 18. We visited the most well-known PETRONAS Twin Tower, the most favorite tourist spot of the Malaysian capital. In KL we participated in the camp with little kids of Tham Wah Wan Kindergarten. In that camp, I not only taught them but also learnt many things from the young kids, their teachers and parents. One more thing, I really admire at their well manners and behaviors. They are still very young but they do their own works by themselves which I have never seen before. And they are also very smart and intelligent students, better than me anyway. In this KL camp we had activities such as making crafts, drawing modern arts, chanting, meditation etc. We also had lots of fun with these little kids. On Dec 21, we returned to Than Hsiang temple, Penang. In Penang we visited various places such as Gunung Jerai (mountain in kedah), street arts (George Town), kho clan, Kek Lok Si temple, University of Science Malaysia and so on. It was my first time to see the old folk home and I was so happy to meet all the senior citizens at the old folk home. We found them they are living in old folk homes happily and peacefully without any problems. When we were in the old folk home we made some funs to entertain and make them happy. We played several types of games, sing song and also dance with them. We found that they were also very happy to join with us. After all, we are like their children.

Again we participated in the Than Hsiang Children camp and it was as wonderful as they arranged everything in proper ways. It was a new experience for me to learn how to arrange Children Camp for young students in a meaningful way.

I hope in the future, I will try to do some similar social and educational activities for my country based on whatever I learned from this Malaysia trip.

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