Tales from Abroad is an ongoing section in which Gustavus students share the highlights of their study abroad experiences.

Iwas originally interested in going to Malaysia because everyone I knew who had done a study abroad had gone to a European country where the cities were pretty similar to the cities here in the United States. I thought Malaysia would offer an experience less touched by globalization and more unique to the places I would normally visit. Malaysia turned out to be completely different, but not in the ways I expected.

There are the physical differences: Malaysians drive on the left and here we drive on the right, when we left Minnesota and arrived in Malaysia we experienced a 100 degree Fahrenheit change, and while the Gustavus campus is overrun with squirrels, the campus I studied at in Malaysia had monitor lizards the size of small children instead. Because of all of these differences, being in  Malaysia became a spectator sport. My friends and I would go to bars and vent about the weird professors, the cats in the cafeteria, or the lack of Pandora and Spotify.

But not every difference is as laughable as finding geckos in the bathroom. In Malaysia there is not equality of race and religion under the constitution, which leads to tense interracial and interfaith relations between subsets of the population. Participating in class was hard because my first reaction to anything could be condensed to: this is wrong because I’m an American and this isn’t how we do things in America. Being able to discuss Malaysian politics without turning into an ethnocentric jerk was surprisingly difficult.

For me, this changed with our home stay weekend. During the semester, we were staying in dormitories, but for one three day weekend we were driven out to a rural village and placed with a host family. My family consisted of a matriarch, her husband and sister, her five kids, and her first grandchild. They were relatively comfortable in their village and the kids were all in the process of leaving the nest.

The weekend was the first time I really had been given an opportunity to ask Malaysians personal questions, or talk with people who weren’t scared to butcher English as long as I wasn’t scared to butcher Malay. On campus, it was hard to strike up conversations with students, and if someone did talk to me it felt like I never received a personal answer. Seeing the equivalent to suburban life and experiencing an informal society was when Malaysia stopped being the equivalent of a double decker bus tour and started feeling more accessible.

The saying “You start growing when you leave your comfort zone” is what encouraged me to study abroad. I fulfilled my goals of finding experiences that were completely new. I would encourage anyone to study abroad and if you have questions drop by the CICE to talk with a peer advisor!

-Kris Reiser