This past Saturday, on Oct. 31, the Andrews Society of Indonesian Students (ASIS) club hosted a game night in Johnson Gym. The club encouraged visitors to wear costumes of their favorite animated characters to the event, and to spice it up, the top three costumes would win a prize. Students arrived dressed up in costumes ranging from Appa from “Avatar” to even Dr. Doofenshmirtz from “Phineas and Ferb.” This game night was also a celebration of Indonesian Independence Day which originally was on Aug. 17, 1945, making this year the 75th Independence Day celebration. Due to the pandemic, they were unable to properly celebrate their Independence Day on Aug. 17, so the members of the ASIS club decided to celebrate on the 75th day, Oct. 31.
Radja Butarbutar (junior, aviation maintenance, business management), the social vice president of ASIS, said, “This event helped us to introduce people on the campus to the games that we used to play since we were little. I want people to know about our culture more. These types of games are rarely played in the US, and we wanted to show people that these are the games we play back in our home country; this is how we play our traditional games.”
The ASIS club set up many different games for people to participate in with their friends. One of which involved taking two stools and racing another person to the other side of the gym while on top of the stools, moving them one at a time. There were also other games such as racing one another whilst balancing a ping-pong ball on a spoon that was being carried in your mouth.
Hannah Sabangan (senior, nursing) said, “My favorite event of the night was the game where you had to tie the string around your waist and drop the pencil in the bottle, but all of the games were really fun. I really enjoyed that they really thought about the games that they included, since these were games that they play on Indonesian Independence Day, so they put a little bit of their culture into it. These are games that I never played and it was an awesome experience.”
Overall, people enjoyed learning about traditional Indonesian games, and just being able to spend some time having fun with friends whether it was racing them across the gym or taking photos at the photo booth decorated with red and white balloons, the same colors as the Indonesian flag.
Dara Atmadja (junior, biochemistry) said, “I wanted to support the club because there are very few events this year and I wanted to be able to come out and have fun with my friends. It was fun to enjoy some traditional Indonesian games that you play in elementary school so it was nice to have this throwback.”
While this event has passed, be on the lookout for the next ASIS event over the next couple of weeks.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.