Hello, my name is Risa Okabayashi.
In November and December, Sarah, a Ph.D. student from the Graduate School of Business Management at Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia, came to our seminar! I would like to share some of the most memorable experiences from those two months.
On November 8th, we had a yakisoba party in our seminar. We realized that the sauce we were planning to use contained pork, so Sarah, Kanon, and I decided to make salt yakisoba without using the sauce. The salt yakisoba we made with a bit of creativity turned out to be delicious, and we were happy to see that Sarah enjoyed it.
On November 16th and 17th, we went on a seminar retreat to Awaji Island. We toured around Fukura, enjoyed a BBQ in the evening, participated in evacuation drills, and even went on a whirlpool cruise. We made so many great memories during those two days.
Since there were not many opportunities to use English in our daily life, and neither Sarah nor we are native English speakers, we were a bit concerned about whether we could communicate effectively at first. However, when something wasn’t clear, we tried rephrasing or used gestures, and we were able to communicate well with each other.
Although the two months were short, I am happy that we could share so many experiences together. Sarah said, “If you ever come to Indonesia, I’ll show you around,” so I definitely want to visit someday!
