''Thank you to kids and teachers for being so friendly. We'd love to say we really love and enjoy being here today.''
Then she stepped to the side to orchestrate a three-song performance, including a waiata they had learned the day before.
The performance itself, at Dunedin North Intermediate on Tuesday, was the finale of a 10-day trip to New Zealand, during which the group of 20 student English-language teachers from the College of Education in Kuching travelled around learning about New Zealand methods of teaching.
Anis Abdullah, the co-ordinator of the Kiwi Experience Project at the college in Kuching, accompanied the students on the trip.
She also helped to co-ordinate a ''twinning'' programme that allowed two cohorts of 60 Malaysian student teachers to complete half of their Tesol degree at the University of Otago.
The programme officially ended in 2013, when the last of the students graduated from the university.
''I would've loved for the twinning programme to continue, but the Malaysian Government felt that local Tesol programmes are adequate,'' she said.
She hoped to organise another exchange programme that would allow Malaysian students to study at Otago University, possibly at masters level.
Sharon Young, who co-ordinated the now-defunct twinning programme from the university's College of Education side, was similarly disappointed by the end of the programme and said she would be ''excited by the prospect of a masters level twinning programme''.
Ms Abdullah said when she proposed the 10-day trip to New Zealand in 2013, the students were sceptical because of the money they would have to raise.
''We started with a simple project, which involved taking bikes from my own home and renting them to university students.
''By the end of the week, we had about $3, which sounds like nothing, but was enough to motivate us and show us it was possible,'' she said.
She was convinced the 10-day trip had been worthwhile. She had seen how beneficial studying in New Zealand had been to the students who had participated.
''Now, as English teachers, those students are very proficient in the language, they're creative, and innovative, and not afraid to take risks - they've already [taken the huge risk of] going so far away from home,'' One Malaysian student on the trip, Habib Sayyid Azzim, said he had learned a great deal from even this short trip to New Zealand.
''[The trip] has been mind-opening, allowing me to see a different perspective on teaching,'' he said.
''There's more of a focus on the students, and teachers don't rely on fear to make the students behave.''
He hopes to return to New Zealand soon, perhaps as a student.
