I went with Catherine, Diamond, and Rebecca to this Chinese lantern making event where we met up with Jenny and Monica in the back. I had brought dumplings so I sat through the rather long PowerPoint on the Lunar Festival and subsequent wait in relative comfort. They took a while to get started, passing out paper and staplers but then taking forever with the scissors so Diamond and Rebecca left and I felt a little antsy to leave too. I had helped run a club almost exactly like this in high school (complete with cultural PowerPoints and paper crafts) so I felt bad about wanting to leave when I knew how hard it was to put together a meeting just like this and stayed. Which was good because it was great. I made my own ugly lantern and stuck a couple stickers on it then put Catherine’s on top with the sticker paper to complete the masterpiece.

Some stranger saw me widen my eyes at his paper not-a-lantern and he put it on top without really talking to us.

A happy person put some more. I was just there, kind of amused by the turn of events because I had just stacked my lantern with Catherine’s out of sheer boredom but excited-girl was so excited and bouncy, saying we were going to win first place. 

We won third. Got pocky, shared it with Catherine and stranger.

Then a huge line was formed as the leader of the club brought out the food: dumplings, pork buns, and egg rolls. I didn’t eat any though, my dumplings had been great; I was very proud of myself, maybe too proud.

This experience really brought me back to when I tried to teach teenagers how to make origami flowers or when we did hearts for white day. There was so much struggle but it was worth it in the end-being able to put it on a college application. Also the personal satisfaction and leadership skill aquired. Yeah.

I had fun, would do again.