Foreign students who had the chance to study at MM FEB UGM Yogyakarta was welcomed by an outdoor activity called “Academix Culture” on Saturday February 20, 2016 in Pentingsari Tourism Village, Sleman. 6 incoming exchange students from Germany, Austria and South Korea together with student buddies and 14 students of Batch International 67 learnt some kind of local culture and various teamwork games.

Departing from MM FEB UGM by bus at 7.30 am, the participants arrived in Pentingsari at 8.30 am. They were invited to enjoy the local traditional snacks provided. A Javanese dancer came to present a welcome dance. Later, the event was started with ice-breaking games.

The participants were divided into 2 groups, each headed to Batik, Javanese Gamelan, Javanese dancing, grass Wayang and Janur (yellow young coconut leaves) creation locations. At the Batik area, each participant was given a piece of cloth for practicing batik. Starting from the basic pattern provided, the students were free to add any pattern they liked. Afterwards, they proceeded to batik wax covering and coloring. The other group of students were still enjoying and focusing on playing the Javanese gamelan. At first they had seemed to be awkward and having trouble to adjust the tones, but after three or four attempts they began to get in harmony and the Javanese song started to be melodiously played. In the meantime, students looked really serious in following the flexible gesture of the dance instructor who patiently guided the basic dance movement, and continued with creating ornaments from janur. Right before lunch break, the two groups competed to build a straw tower.

After lunch break, the competition got more lively with “tom and jerry” game and blind ball game. The participants were also asked to play “A Ladder” time trial competition. This game utilized steel pipe in the form of letter “A”, which is big enough to be climbed by one person, tied with a number of ropes on the top as  controllers, which was held by the group members. Each group competed to control the “A Ladder” as fast as they can from the start to finish line, which was approximately 30 meters. The competition was ended by the water estafet game which forced each group to move a bucket of water located on a high pole to another 10 meters away pole using only some timbers.

“Academix Culture” was concluded by group photo session and gifts awarding to the winning teams at 15.00 WIB. The participants returned to campus and arrived at MM FEB UGM at 4 pm.