Lunar New Year Celebrated with Games, Activities

The Lunar New Year was celebrated on Thursday, Jan. 26 with games, food and entertainment. 

Alex Tran, president of the Vietnamese Student Association, explained the background of the Lunar New Year.

“Lunar New Year is the traditional New Year of the Southeast Asian countries. Each year has different animals, and this year is the year of the rooster,” said Tran. “It’s a time family comes together and hands out lucky money, and you play a lot of games. Usually, we take the whole week off for celebrating.”

Eventgoers were encouraged to complete all of the activities to be entered to win a prize. Here are the activities:

Vietnamese Student Association (VSA)

Bau Cua: A Vietnamese gambling game played with three dice. Placers put bets/raffle tickets on pictures of animals and a calabash gourd. The dice are then rolled. If one of the dice has the picture you chose, you will back what you bet. If two of the dice come up with the picture, you get back double the amount; if three dice, you receive triple. If none of the dice have the picture you chose, you lose your bet.

Kawasaki Reading Room

Wish tree: Eventgoers were invited to right a wish they have for the upcoming year on a paper leaf, and then place it on a tree branch.

Fortune box: A bowl of tiny fortunes for the New Year were out for people to take.

Sigma Lambda Beta Fraternity

Shuttlecock: Shuttlecock is a game similar to hacky sack, but instead of using a foot bag, a plastic disk with four feathers is used.

OASIS

Chopstick Challenge: This game tested players’ chopstick skills. Players had one minute to transfer a pile of different-size pompoms from one plate to another.

Lambda Phi Epsilon

Bingo: The fraternity passed out bingo playing cards.

Sigma Psi Zeta

Fortune Telling Sticks: To find their fortune, eventgoers shook a tube full of sticks with numbers written on the end of them. The first stick to fall out of the tube was the fortune they received.

StudentsDiversity and InclusionOASIS