Ouachita offers adventure to Indonesian exchange students

F or many, going to school to start a new year means packing the car with too much stuff and hitting the road for three hours until we arrive at Ouachita. For Kezia Nanda, Mariska Makmud, Olivia Basrin and Gina Karina this isn’t the case. They flew here. They flew here all the way from Indonesia.

International exchange students from Indonesia, (front) Mariska Makmud, Olivia Basrin, Gina Karina and (back) Kezia Nanda get a taste of American life at Ouachita.

They are taking part in their school’s version of study abroad.

“We’re in an exchange program, so we’re going to be here for the fall semester only,” said Karina.

After this semester they will jump back on a plane and finish their studies at their home schools.

“It was my father’s dream for me to go to an American school and he always talked to me about America,” said Nanda.

There are a lot of things different here, not just because during the fall you see people planning their days around flag football or Arkansas’ endless amounts of trees turn into every shade of every color. Indonesia is made up of several thousand islands. That offers tons of beaches to everyone who lives there.

Do they miss the beach? Nada said, “yes!”

Ouachita prides itself on being a liberal arts school, we as students learn a lot about variety of things.

“American schools have a major-minor system, which I think is really cool, because it gives us a change to study another field,” Karina said. “In Indonesia, we only study on the curriculum for one major. To graduate we do a final project similar to a thesis.”

One thing that does expand past the borders of America is basketball. Nations all over the world play it, and Indonesia is no exception.

When asked what they did on a typical Friday night, the answers we this simple, “OBU-Basketball”, Nada,  “Play basketball”, Karina.

Ouachita is the place that most of us call home. Ouachita may be a town that offers little to do besides an occasional trip to Wal-Mart. But Ouachita is the place in which Gina Karina, Kezia Nada, Olivia Basrin and Mariska Makmud are having one of the biggest adventures of their life time.The Big Brother/Sister club started the fall semester with a kick-off party Wednesday, Sept. 17.