Pratama, Rasyid Indra from Indonesia -2013 admission
There are many ways to get along with homesickness when living abroad. One of best ways is by keeping in touch with people from your country. Here in Kyoto, I am very lucky to meet many students from Indonesia. We, Indonesian students in Kyoto, have lots of activities to do every year such as cycling, fishing and organizing big events. And this year, on September 24, 2013, we held a cultural event named Malam Indonesia 2013 (Indonesian Cultural Night 2013) in Kyoto International Community House. In this event, we would like to introduce the cultural richness of Indonesia to the Japanese people. Also, we donate the profit from this event to to develop libraries in Papua.
This year, our theme is Sumatran culture. We showed variety of dances like Likok Pulo, Tor-Tor, Piring and Zapin, a famous music instrument made of bamboo (angklung) and well-known Indonesian martial arts: pencak silat. We also had a bazaar selling food and souvenirs from Indonesia and Japan.
As the victory loves preparation, we had practiced for our performances every weekend since 5 months ago. I had to work hard, as I am not an expert in dancing or playing angklung.
The D-Day!!
It was the time to show up the results of our hard training. Everybody was ready with their costume, I was quite nervous at that time, but it was not a big deal. From the stage, I saw that the seat was full, lots of audiences!
Applause from the audiences enhances my spirit to show our best. All performances succeeded, in the end, we invite audiences to dance together on the stage.
The tickets and bazaar were sold out; enthusiasm from the audiences was very great. All the hard work has paid off. Now, we are preparing our next big event, an International Conference in Kyoto University on October 19 -20, 2013.