One of the signature events for our International House Learning Community is their Chinese New Year Celebration. Today on the blog, I-House student Logan Ward shares about his experience.
Chinese New Year Celebration.
Last month, the International House Learning Community hosted a Chinese New Year Celebration in the Morrison Tower lobby.
The International House Resident Advisers, Joseph Lee and Yilu Sun, took a group of nearly 20 residents – both international and native – to Saraga Market at 1:00 pm in order to purchase some the necessities for the party. Items that the group set out to buy included hot pot (a traditional Chinese meal form) ingredients such as lamb, tofu, vermicelli noodles and Chinese cabbage along with Chinese dumpling ingredients like celery and ground pork. Residents also had the chance to do some shopping of their own and bought many Asian products such as seaweed and rice cakes.
After the group returned, the RAs set out to recruit more I-House residents to decorate the lobby for the evening event. The decoration team decorated the lobby in total red and gold – the traditional Chinese New Year colors – with lanterns, streamers and other decorative items.
This is when I got involved with the celebration. I helped press the dumpling fillings together in a bowl (for a reason that I will explain later) and begin bubble tea – commonly known as boba – preparation. I, along with some other residents, set out the dumpling fillings on the tables so that participants could work on making their dumplings. This was an interesting task for most of the participants, because many had never even eaten Chinese dumplings let alone made some themselves! I got to fold a few in order to learn how, but had to go back to the kitchen so that we could start boiling them.
One by one the groups handed in their dumplings for boiling. While this was going on some other residents started cooking the hot pot – which was also a big hit among the non-international students. I also boiled the tapioca pearls and water for bubble tea. We prepared two kinds of tea – black and green. Bubble tea is my specialty, so I really enjoyed getting to share that with the residents at the event.
I have to admit that cooking in the kitchen for the event was quite stressful, because everyone was doing so many different things all at once; however, I thoroughly enjoyed being apart of the event and I know everyone who came did too. Afterwards, a lot of the residents stayed in the lobby and played a fun Chinese game called Mahjong (one of my favorite games) and the laughs and conversation from the party continued.
This event is one of the main reasons I love being a part of the International House Learning Community: sharing a culture and learning culture are my two favorite things to do. I love the I-House Community and am so glad I decided to get involved.