By: Hilya Maylaffayza

Visiting Malaysia at a cost of 0 rupiah is an extraordinary gift that Allah gave me in 2023. After going through various selections at the faculty level, thank God, I, Hilya Maylaffayza, was finally chosen as a delegate to represent the Faculty of Adab and Humanities (FAH) in the Student Mobility Outbound 2023 program. It is not an easy thing to pass the selection of this program, especially in my faculty, FAH. I joined this program with 11 friends from different faculties. UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta delegates 12 students from 12 faculties in UIN Jakarta. All of them are paid in full or the cool language is fully funded.

Student mobility is essentially a program initiated by the international office of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta. Of course this program is very memorable for me. For the first time I managed to go abroad for an extraordinary agenda, this brought me to many new perspectives. Meeting multicultural and multi-religious people in real life is something that is hard to imagine in my mind. Visiting a neighboring country for some people may be a normal thing, but for me this is an extraordinary opportunity. Traveling around the world by airplane, meeting friends across countries, and learning about new cultures is very exciting. I am a first-time airplane traveler. Honestly, when I arrived at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, my heart was racing. I imagined something that I shouldn't have imagined. Time after time continued to roll by, until it was time for my team and I to fly to Malaysia, precisely at 04.15 WIB on October 24, 2023. On the plane, I took out the tasbih that my parents had entrusted to me while chanting sholawat and other holy verses. I slept on the plane until the plane finally arrived in Malaysia.

Getting to know the lecturers and the whole family of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) made me fall in love with Malaysia. My team and I were very well taken care of. We were served typical Malaysian food and accompanied to tour Malaysia from the first day until the last day of our return. The food in Malaysia was identical to curry, coconut milk, and chili (chili) which is not too spicy. I am not a lover of spicy, even can not eat spicy, but spicy food in Malaysia more or less tolerated by my stomach and tongue. Not only learning about food, this student mobility program also managed to invite me to contemplate His universe. I analyzed many road conditions in Malaysia, the local population, the trade system, education, and many other things in Malaysia.

Armed with the reflection of some of the above, my mindset seemed to change about the world. The expanse of Allah's earth is vast, and I and my fellow readers must visit it one by one. Thanks to this program, I realized that being a tawassuth person is very important, because I cannot impose an ideology in the midst of a multicultural and multi-religious society like in Malaysia. In addition, the implementation of rice science has found a bright spot thanks to this program. No matter how smart and talented we are, we are all Allah's creatures who serve as khalifah sahaja on His earth. Thank you, student mobility program, thanks to this program I managed to find myself in a different version. There are so many changes in mindset and behavior that I feel after becoming an alumni of this interesting program. Hopefully I can be a medium for others to also get to know the wider world. Wish me luck!

(Hilya Maylaffayza)