The cultural familiarization activity for students (especially foreign ones) has become a need for every university as a form of dialogue and cultural interaction with the local community.
This has been acknowledged by Kantor International dan Kerjasama/ International and Cooperation Office (KIK) of Parahyangan Catholic University (Unpar) as part of service for foreign students in this case trying to facilitate the cultural familiarization activity dealing with the indigenous culture of the West Javanese.
“This is our service to international students, especially exchange students. As KIK, this activity is part of our service, according to Chris Stephany, KIK staff, when interviewed by the Unpar publication team.
Chris who has been involved in the organizing team for the past few years, supported this activity as a means of gathering all foreign students of Unpar. In addition it can serve as a communication bridge between the foreign students who originally came from differing countries with different cultures.
Like the previous year, KIK has once again hosted a cultural familiarization activity as a routine agenda for foreign students. They were invited to visit Saung Angklung Udjo and house of Batik, and this time around it’s the Rumah Batik Komar.
The activity was followed by 12 foreign students from Australia, Japan, Korea and Timor Leste consisting of student’s exchange program students, semester-based, regular as well as students in Unpar’s master’s program.
When visiting the Rumah Batik Komar, students were invited to become acquainted with batik as Indonesia’s traditional attire in a sharing session with mr Komar, the owner of Komar’s Batik House. They also witnessed the process of batik creation. first-hand Moreover, they had the opportunity to create their own batik works.
The activity was followed by a mid-semester learning evaluation sharing session led by the head of cooperation section, KIK, Ratih Indraswari, S.IP., M.A. the sharing session was meant to discover the progress of students’ learning and to identify the challenges faced by foreign students while studying at Unpar.
The visit to Saung Angklung Udjo (SAU) made the activity even more interesting. There, the students had the opportunity to see the demonstration of angklung (bambo made tuned percussion instruments) production and actually tried to make basic angklung individually. At the end of the session, they played angklung together and watched SAU performance of traditional, Indonesian and foreign songs.
“In the future, we will explore other places, because we have become used to visiting big Batik places, we can try to visit medium enterprises, that are numerous but the facilities may not be sufficient for foreigners to visit. It can also be a ceramic craft place. Angklung is not merely general performances but there were other performances, such as schools that teach angklung playing”, added Chris.
“or perhaps sightseeing by bandros bus?”, he enthusiastically added when asked about ideas for future cultural visit.
