I joined “First Step Program in Bangkok” for 10 days in early March 2021. Although it was held online because of COVID-19, I leaned Thai cultures and histories with students in Malaysia or Indonesia through the program offered by Mahidol University much more deeply than I expected before. I really enjoyed it and had various good experiences there.

In this program, we watched videos in the morning and took lessons using Webex in the afternoon, also on the last day we made presentations by each group.

I learned a lot of things about Thailand for example greeting, outfits and festivals. Especially, the sessions about Thai food, Thai Boxing and Thai dance are very enjoyable because we could share the same time and feelings even online. One of the best impressions for me was Thai food. In the live class, the students at Mahidol showed us how to cook it and they tasted it in the screen. It looked so delicious that I decided that I would go to Thailand someday.

Meanwhile, I was deeply impressed by my classmates from other countries.

First, I was surprised at their language capabilities. They spoke fluently and looked very confident in themselves. On the other hand, I was very nervous when I spoke because I wasn’t able to make myself understood in English. However, thanks to the friendly atmosphere I could get used to writing comments in chat box day by day, and finally I could enjoy speaking at the last class. Without this program, I would be always shy and wouldn’t have any courage to express my opinion in English to others.

Second, I was amazed at their rich knowledge about own countries. They understood their history and culture, however, I don’t have enough knowledge about ours. Through this experience, I decided to get more information about our county. I also realized that we should have more pride of our country. The understanding of self-culture and -society makes the understanding of others surely easy.

The things we were able to experience were limited since the program was just only about 2-4 hours a day, even though it was so meaningful for me. This is because I communicated people from other cultures, learned a lot of things. All these experiences changed some of my thinking. If I will meet people who have different backgrounds, I will try to explain our culture or sense of value. And I will also try to understand their culture exactly. In this way, I want to broaden my horizons.