Saying YES to Malaysia

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Welcome to our blog! -Sejal

on July 30, 2018

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Hi! My name is Sejal and I am going to be living in Johor Bahru, Malaysia for the next 11 months. I wanted to be apart of this program because I love learning about other places and perspectives as well as challenging my own levels of comfort. Malaysia is a very different culture from what I am used to so I am excited to get to live so differently from my life in North Carolina. I am using this blog to update family and friends as well as to hopefully give an idea of what YES Abroad is like for others hoping to apply. To get the Kennedy-Lugar YES Abroad scholarship I had to apply in December of 2017 and then I interviewed in January as well as collected doctor and dentist information. After that, I had to wait until early March before I found out my status for the program. I learned that I was a finalist on March 10th. After an excited instagram post, I confirmed to YES that I would be attending and started the process of MANY documents to obtain a Malaysian visa as well as ot...

Ramadan and 17th Birthday! (Sorry for being so late)

Long story short, I got caught up with life and I did not update the final two months of this blog. But here I am now! This is part one of the last two months. May and June were the best months of my entire exchange mostly because of Ramadan, Hari Raya (Eid), and my birthday. I really felt connected to my host family in these last two months. I began Ramadan with my extended host family, my favorite cousins from Singapore. I had originally come to Singapore to take my SAT that was not offered in Johor Bahru and my host grandfather who had traveled with me extended our stay for the first few days of Ramadan. I was determined to fast for the entire month because I did not know when I would have the chance to again. Every morning, I would wake up with Syafiqah (or rather I would wake up and Syafiqah would sit in bed until someone dragged her downstairs to eat) and eat a pretty simple breakfast of a couple pieces of chicken, rice, and a smoothie. I then would promptly he...

Happy Eid! (S)

On Wednesday, August 22nd (my dad’s birthday, happy 48th dad!) my family celebrated Eid al-Adha in Mersing, Johor. Eid al-Adha is one of two Islamic holidays celebrated worldwide and is also known as the feast of sacrifice. There are many different ways that families celebrate but two consistencies are that the men go to the mosque to pray in the morning and there is a ceremonial killing of a cow. The meat from the cow that has been sacrificed is normally given out to people who do not usually have access to meat in their daily lives due to the expense. After these two ceremonial tasks are completed the rest of the day is very relaxed and filled with eating all sorts of food. Also note the Durham shirt my younger host sister is wearing in the group family photo (Go bulls!). Some of the amazing food we ate during the day. The traditional rice is cooked into cubes in the basket-like holders I am holding in the image above. During the day we mostly a...

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