Ready to Explore!

Andari Amalia Syahrial

Tuesday, 7th August 2018

Before leaving us in the dorm last night, Mr. Amarin told us to be ready at 10:00 am in the morning for the orientation day at NPRU (Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University). We quickly got ready and wore our formal clothes. We felt excited to meet our supervisors and buddies, but at the same time we felt very nervous!! Exactly at ten o’clock, Mr amarin waited for us on the ground floor and accompanied us to the orientation room. There, we met our buddies which some of them I already knew. I knew Sa from Mathematics Major, she brought us an iron early in the morning. I also met Bank and Minh which we knew them from their LINE group. We briefly introduced ourselves and went into the presentation room. We met with some other buddies from different departments, and I just noticed that Mr. Pruek Prongsamrong, our coordinator was there. Around 30 minutes, the presentation started. The ceremony was opened by our lovely lady, Dr. Surattana Setchanwit who is also part of the coordinators of this program and focusing on Science Major. She gave us a short speech of welcome, and a short explanation of the program. So, each of us was given a handout about the schedule for the whole program, including our excursion day and holiday. We noticed that in this month of august, Indonesians at least have two compulsory holidays, which is on the 17th (Independence Day) and 22nd (Eid al-Adha Day), and these days were not scheduled as holidays. We requested for 2 days off as we explained the reasons, and they accepted it. After the short session of  asking-answering questions, then we all exchanged some souvenirs from each different province style, one is from Gorontalo, and another one is from Jambi. Later, we introduced ourselves formally to our buddies and took some pictures for commemorations.

One thing we noticed here that even though they are not muslims, they are very considerate about us, such as finding halal food, watch out for the praying time, ask permission to go to temples, and so on. We are surely lucky to be part of this  group, to be chosen to go to NPRU, and to build relationship with these people. They asked us about our needs such as iron, rice cooker, bread machine, water boiler, stove, frying pan, and even water!! They gave us all of these things and we can use them as long as we stay here. This is incredible. We just couldn’t thank enough these people for their kindness, and their supports has motivated us so that we can do our best for this program.

Around 12:30, we were back to dorm and took some rest. Some of us still felt jet-lagged, too tired from moving and decided to sleep for the whole day. I and Uci were the only excited ones to go and see people around us. We were unsatisfied and wanted to explore more of the whole buildings of this university. We made a plan with our buddies from English department to walk around, and we promised to meet up at seven eleven store at 1:30 pm. As promised, we met them at the exact time and they helped me to buy my phone card and refill my internet data. I spent money for almost 700 Baht for everything. But the system here is different from the ones in indonesia. In Jambi, they usually sell some different packets of data, like 1 GB, 4GB, 500 MB, etc, and they are sold in different prices. The higher the data, the more expensive the price is going to be. And once the data is used, then we have to buy some more again. But in here, they put the price according to the length of how much we are going to use. The price is depended on 3 days, 1 week, 1 month, and once we pay, we can use them for unlimited use until the scheduled date has lasted. It is almost the same as we set up a wifi, but it is set on the phone. Which is why we were easily using the internet everywhere and it was fast connected. We were also given a university private username and password when we want to connect to wifi at university.

And so, after I had my new card, we started to explore the buildings around. First thing we saw was the dorm buildings from different faculty, such as nursing, education, chinese, and lecturers. Some dorms are placed inside the university and outside the university. Inside the university, we have 24 hours convinience store (seven eleven), some restaurants and cafes which are opend until 7:00 pm. Students are allowed to go outside of university, but in case that they are not allowed to take in their motorbike into the university. Students have to park their motorbike in the parking lots at the outside gate. As we walked around, we found some important buildings from each faculty. One building that took my interest was the language and art building. It is mainly used for students who majored English department. And other buildings such as science and technology, education, humanities and social science, management science, nurse, and the demonstration school. NPRU is considered as the number one of school in Thailand that is good in quality and learning system based from the research. As for the last building, we went to a language library, and my buddies called them as UFO House, because the building looks like a UFO. We went inside and found some english books for children. There were also some figures that represent ASEAN countries, and other countries as well. The library is very well equipped, clean, and quiet. People have to register first before they come in. We looked around at some books and pictures from the shelves. We had a short break from walking too much and little chat about the city.

Our buddies asked to go out and do some shopping together at Big C market that day. Finally, we decided to agree and meet up at 5:00 pm. We went home and got ready to go shopping. We planned to go by motorbike together with our 5 buddies. We went into the shopping market while looking for halal food and bought souvenirs. In the market, I saw a lot of flowers and plants in a small pot, guessing that it would be for celebrating queen’s birthday and mother’s day for the upcoming events. I have been looking forward to the events, and I hope it is coming soon.