echo Written by: Christine Sitambuli & Wu Wen Qi
Edited by: Supriya Sivabalan
To be loved is a beautiful thing, but to give love – that’s an even more glorious act! This is why many people were drawn to the Sunway Friendship Week that was held from the 27th to the 30th of August 2019. The week was made to ‘foster and celebrate all friendships, especially between the international and local students of Sunway University. The event was kicked off with Dr. Elizabeth Lee’s opening speech in front of the university foyer where she spoke on friendship. Her inspiring speech was then followed up by many marvellous performances by the students of Sunway. The performances included a pop dance, seasonal drums and the arrival of our school’s beloved Sun bears as well as the mascots of Sunway Lagoon.
With that, begins the long awaited give away of friendship passports. With the partnership of Sunway Lagoon, all Sunway students were privileged to be eligible for a free 6 month pass to Sunway Lagoon. The distribution commenced at 10.30am but the queue was already long since 9am. This really goes to show how eager the students were in getting their passports. The counter was stationed at University foyer and by 10.30 a.m., but the line was all the way up to the college boulevard!
Besides that, there was a booth at the walkway between the university and the college which had the sign “‘Pen Buddies”. The “Pen Buddies” booth is similar to the ‘pen pals’ columns in newspapers. At this booth, both students and lecturers alike could submit details about themselves, as well as their numbers on a form and be acquainted with new friends once their forms were drawn!
During the week, both the college boulevard and university foyer were packed with people and booths as the friendship week was also in conjunction with the clubs and societies carnival. This meant that societies and clubs had the chance to recruit new members and increase their popularity amongst the students. There were also various performances and game stations at the carnival. According to a participant in the game stations, her favourite game was the one at PCV station, which was a drawing game. She enjoyed drawing to the weird, yet funny requests picked from the jar of words. One of them was “the Eiffel tower in a tutu”. The thrill of drawing something so absurd within a short amount of time really brought out excitement within her. She also mentioned that the collaborative games were the best.
Moreover, the student council also organized a movie night where participants, whether local or international, got a chance to chill and make new friends. There was even a sharing session by former Sunway students which comprised of a local and international student! After the wonderful informative sharing session, the games commenced where the newly made friends had the chance to strengthen their bonds even further through a friendly game of water pong and flip cup tic tac toe. After the games, the participants had the luxury of sitting in bean bags to watch the movie “the perks of being a wallflower”. Most of the participants went home with smiles and lots of new contacts on their phones.
Another amazing event that the council held under Friendship week was Viva la Friendship. During viva la friendship, there were a series of ice breakers and team games which successfully bonded the 48 participants together. The games night had several activities – including ice breakers such as group juggle which was about passing around a ball while introducing themselves and mentioning fun facts about themselves. Another ice breaker was switcheroo, which was about switching seats with people who match with them according to a certain category (example: wears green, has long hair etc) while the people in the middle who don’t have seats try to steal the seats.
There were also team games including; country pass – a teamwork-based attention game which required teams to be named as a certain country as they try to catch the other teams off guard in hopes to eliminate the other countries, don’t drop it – a game in which participants lie down on the floor as they pass a plate with a single ping pong ball in a horizontal line, if they drop it they will have to start all over from the first person, in this game, participants only won when the ball reached the last person at the line. The last game was ‘who’s the best’. In this game, teams sent out representatives for categories (best catwalk, plank the longest, cringiest pick up line) to compete with each other to see who could be deemed as the best. It was shown during the team games that even though they were in different teams, they were also supportive of each other. New friendships were found, and all the participants got along well together and stayed in touch.
- A beautiful, cultural performance by one of our very own Sunway students!
All in all, Friendship week was truly a blast and certainly enriched all students’ campus experience! There is no doubt that many of us went home with a new friend in mind. The warmth of making a new friend is akin to having a cozy night at home – snuggled up in bed with a warm mug of tea. The positivity that spread across campus thanks to Sunway’s Friendship Week initiative is truly commendable. We look forward to more events like these! Kudos to the Sunway Student Council for their incredible effort in ensuring the success of Friendship Week. Here’s to newly formed bonds and experiences.
