My third year at OU, only the 2nd time I have found out about the AASA Lunar New Year Celebration at the last minute. Somehow it crept up on me despite the fact that I always go and I started talking about Lunar New Year in December. At my friend Fiona’s house over break we discussed the year of the horse, which is her sister’s birth year. Her mom read us some nice Chinese proverbs about the horse, but we pressed her to find good ones about the monkey, which is our birth year. Whereas the horse proverbs read “When a horse arrives, instant success”, sayings referencing monkeys seem to have lower praise. Some memorable ones for me: “Monkey head monkey brain” and “When the tiger leaves the mountain, the monkey calls himself king”.

Fiona celebrated at UMich already, and sent me this picture a few weeks ago. She said she spun a wheel and answered a riddle to win it an Asian Student Association activity.

I am here to write this blog post for all my dutiful fans ( my friends know about this blog but very few of them have looked to find it, they feigned outrage when I said none of my posts were public anymore.) and for future me, who would find it easier to write about events sooner after they happen.

My friend Savanna and I planned to go, and at the last minute I convinced my friend Logan to come as well! It was great to have them with me to mill around.

Every year I get here super early and just have to wait for the food and performances, so I went up to the Tapioka magazine booth again. At the booth we pestered Erik, the creative director and later MC, about the magazine. Last year the guy at the booth was really confusing, so it was only in the last 5 minutes of talking to Erik that it was clear the magazine was not actually in print physical copies. Also I don’t think he had read it himself. It is really cool that students can come together to make something like that, and he said they did get money allotted to them from the AASA this year to print and distribute some magazines, which is cool!

After half an hour, we got food, sat down and I noticed the girls behind us were speaking German. I summoned all my courage and the deep knowledge that if my mom were here, she would have 10000% have made me talk to them, and turned around and asked, in German, if they were German. This sounds stupid but it is a super easy way to indicate that you speak it, and it IS always possible they are from Austria or something! I talked to them a bit, asked why they were here (study abroad), what they were studying (to be teachers), and they said they had met one of the German instructors, Frau Preuss, also because she had heard them speaking German and came up to them. It wasn’t the longest or greatest conversation because the room was loud and I had to turn fully in my seat to speak with them, but I’m glad I did it and I never have to wonder what could have been…

We stayed for the dance and musical performances, unfortunately there were pervasive microphone technical issues, but the performers were all great! I never entered in a raffle, and I vow to make sure I do and to be able to stay until the very end next year. Happy Year of the Horse! Instant success!