Roll it, spread it, square it, it’s just flour; fill it with chicken for the cooked meal of the hour – That’s one of the ten riddles that was given to the twenty-one Korean students from Kookmin University (KMU) and 9 students from the School of Mechanical Engineering (SME), who participated in the Summer School Explorace at the Pasar Malam Taman Universiti.
The 7 teams had to obtain the local food described in the form of simple riddles within the hour given. The interesting part was that it must be a Korean student who had to request to purchase the food from the vendor involved by using Malaysian Language. Each team was given RM25 to buy the 10 food items having to list the cost of each and returning the balance at the end of the Explorace.
The venue to meet at the end of the Explorace was given as an address which happened to be Assoc. Prof. Dr. Norhayati’s house at Taman Sri Pulai. Everyone enjoyed themselves and the different food that they bought were then shared where some of them had never been tried by the Korean students yet throughout their 2 weeks of Summer School programme, Dr. Norhayati also made the effort to cook ‘jemput-jemput pisang’, with the bananas from her garden.
Students from the KMU, Seoul, Korea have annually participated in the Summer School, A Global Learning Experience in Malaysia (AGLEIM) in January of each year which is during their winter season in Korea. For the year 2020, the summer school activities involved laboratory exercises (with lab reports), technical talks and a weekend visit to Kuala Lumpur, among many other activities.
Most importantly, the students from KMU and UTM get to know each other quite well by staying together 24/7 for the whole 2 weeks. This friendship could extend for years, as reported by previous UTM students. The summer school also exposed the Korean students to the Malaysian culture – understand, appreciate, respect. What one does not like in one’s culture could be what is desirable in another, and vice versa.
The Summer School AGLEIM is open for undergraduate students from any engineering fields from all countries, the KMU students have been a regular in the summer school program since 2015.