AUGUST 2018

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on August 16th 2018. it was a 15 hour flight so as expected i was exhausted however really excited to begin this brand new experience. From the airport I traveled to my accommodation which was booked for pre-arrival, next to Taylor’s University.

My two roommates for the apartment were two friends from MMU, we came on the Exchange program together.

Once I settled into my accommodation the following few days consisted off sorting out everything for Taylor’s University , such as my timetable and the welcome exchange program. this was where I met plenty of new people who were on the exchange program and made a few friends in the process.

when I arrived, the celebration of Eid was on August 16th, and being a Muslim this would be my first Eid withou my family. Me and my friends went to one of the main Mosques in Kuala Lumpur and then spent the day in the heart of the city embracing the culture and Eid experience away from home.

Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Mosque

SEPTEMBER 2018

A large number of exchange students organised a trip to Pangkor island, Malaysia. The trip itself was amazing and was a great to get to know more people, nine of us stayed in an apartment. Pangkor was a beautiful island and I’d recommend it to anyone who travels to Malaysia in the future. This was also the first time tried snorkeling and it was amazing.

Other than that I spent the rest of September sorting our my workload for University and began my timetable. I also tried Japanese food for the first time at a restaurant near my apartment, this was one of the best meals I’ve ever had!

OCTOBER 2018

This was the first month were the majority of my first assignments were due, I had 4 assignments due this month, one was a video where I had to choose a country and talk about how religion affects business , I chose the UAE as my country. i managed to complete all my assignments on time,. There was also a Super car show event near Kuala Lumpur where a few of the exchange students and myself went to check out, it was pretty cool!

I also tried out for the Taylor’s |university Futsal club which was something I really wanted to do prior to arriving since I knew how popular the game was on this side of the world. the trials were fun and I ended up making it a routine to play football on campus each week with other students, making new fiends with people who shared the same passion as me.

NOVEMBER 2018

I had one week off at the beginning of the month from University so i decided to make plans to travel to Singapore with a few friends since that was one of my life-goals. I ended up celebrating my 21st birthday in Singapore and it was an experience i will never forget, it’s such a technologically advanced place and overall mind-blowing.

I also had my first formal presentation with one of my classmates for Business communication, which was to talk about an info-graphic we produced on Homelessness in New York City. I worked with a student who was from Guatemala , now living in Malaysia, and we became pretty good friends after working with each other.

DECEMBER 2018

This month was exam season for me, they began in the first week and my final exam was on December 20th. I more or less stayed in my apartment for the majority of the month until my exams. I really liked how the teachers were very transparent in terms of what to learn for the exam and made it much easier to learn what i needed to. This helped massively since I was learning topics I knew were coming up on the exam.

After my exams were finished my first semester at Taylor’s University was officially over and it flew by., I met so many incredible people who i will definitely stay in contact with as the majority of exchange students traveled back home and were only here for a semester. I traveled to the main city to see what Christmas was like in Malaysia. It wasn’t as eventful as Eid or as i imagine Chinese new year would be however plenty of people filled the streets with a few people performing. Also New years was round the corner and i went back to the main city on new years eve to celebrate the beginning of 2019 with a few friends, we watched an awesome fireworks display!

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JANUARY 2019

I had a total of 3 months off from University and this was where my main travelling began, i had already booked a flight back home to England to see my family for a few weeks however before that i had a trip organised with a three friends to go to Langkawi, an island north of Malaysia. Probably one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, the wildlife here was amazing,

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Once the trip to Langkkawi was complete I traveled back home to visit family for a few weeks. I left on January 18th and stayed there until the first week of February.

FEBRUARY 2019

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This was probably my favorite moth in terms of travel, i returned back to Malaysia from England then after two days i traveled to Dubai for a short holiday with my Mum and Sister, which was great to see them one more time before i returned back for my second semester. Once i came back from Dubai then made plans with my roommate to travel to Thailand and we decided to go on February 18th, so i traveled to FOUR countries in this month alone, Enlarged, Malaysia, UAE and Thailand. I was living the dream, as one could say! 🙂 I also had the chance to be part of the experience to see how Chinese New year was celebrated on this side of the world, they decorated all the Malls as well as our apartment building. There were also plenty of fireworks happening!

MARCH 2019

I was still in Thailand until after the first week of March, when I returned back to Malaysia i was extremely tried from all the travelling i did. This was a pretty slow month in terms of i really got nothing done, I managed to make a few football sessions with people from university however that was pretty much it. I was honestly just chilling with friends, we went out to play pool or either to the cinemas, which i found to be extremely cheap in comparison to home, around £5 for a ticket!

APRIL 2019

My second semester was now underway and I had to mentally prepare once again after such a long exhausting break from any work. After having a previous semester the transition into this semester was smooth and there were no issues at the beginning, lectures were great as were tutorials, the assignments cam in thick and fast however in comparison to the first semester.

MAY 2019

May was the month of Ramadan for me, this was the first Ramadan i was going to have without my family and to begin with it was a fairly difficult experience because i just wasn’t used to it, however being with my friends who were fasting made it much easier. In terms of University, a lot of people there were also fasting so lectures and teachers were aware of this, lessons were shorted to an extent and you could leave slightly easier than usual because the weather was also really hot. Being a Muslim country they were much more considerate for people health and it made me feel conferrable knowing the majority were fasting too. usually back home I would eat home-cooked meals to open my fast however I wasn’t very good at cooking so I would order food on most occasions. One really cool thing outside my apartment were that every Tuesday and Thursday, there were food trucks which helped a lot.

JUNE 2019

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i had around a ten day break from university at the beginning of June and I decided i would travel to a few places on my bucket list during that time, I went to Hong Kong and Vietnam with a few friends again. being situated where I was it made it so easy to travel to several different places for a fairly decent price. Hong Kong was an incredible place, albeit expensive however it was something I really wanted to experience. The people were so friendly in both countries, in Vietnam I went to a place called Ha Long Bay which was truly incredible, it’s basically hundreds of little islands and the views were surreal.

Once I pretend home it was back to completing my assignments again, the assignments over the two semesters were fairly straight forward, I had an assignment where we had to create our own business stall in University and sell products of our choice, our group chose to sell stationary and we had to delegate everyone into segments, I was in the sales and marketing section and had one of the days to sell at the stall. it was something unique since i have never been part of an assignment such as this. i learned a lot during this assignment in terms of finance, sales and marketing, and human resource management.

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JULY 2019

I completed all my assignments and l am currently revising for my exams. My first exam starts on July 13th and my final exam will be on July 25th, Four exams within that period.

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