Josephine here again!
So yesterday (Sunday at 1:30PM), I woke up with a sore back and two chipped fingernails. Usually, if I wake up in such a sorry state, I would be in a cranky mood the rest of the day, but surprisingly, yesterday, I didn’t mind it at all. Why? All for the love of TAO, and the success of the Lantern Festival!
I’m so happy to say that hard work does indeed pay off in the end. The TAO board and staff members have been slaving away for the past weeks to plan out this huge event. Even the rain couldn’t defeat us; even with the Lantern Festival held indoors in the Pacific Ballrooms, we still carried on and weren’t disappointed at all with the end result.
At 4 in the afternoon on Saturday, the day of the event, we began setting up.

I have to say, as pretty as the lanterns were, attaching them to the lightbulbs was a pain. We had to pry open metal rods, then push the metal pieces to close up. Not so easy. That was how I ended up with two broken nails and one sore back.

There was just so much to set up. By 6PM, we still were doing finishing touches when the first of the Lantern Festival attendees started arriving! But, soon after that, we were all ready to go and people were enjoying themselves with the food (almond tofu, riceballs, lu rou fan, mi fen, etc) and activities (chopstick guns, knots, calligraphy, etc) while enjoying performances by Diana Li, Charlie Chang, UCSD’s lion dancing, and watching TAO UCI’s debut of its TACL Census 2010 Contest video submission.





People also had the chance to buy their very own TAO shirt at the TAO table! Unfortunately, we ran out of some sizes and had to disappoint some people. Sorry!

So many people showed up; it was more (and better) than what we expected!But because of that, we ran out of food, so those who came in late did not have a wide variety of food to choose from. Sorry (again) about that; we’ll be better prepared next time!
As the event came to a close, we gave out raffle prizes and sold off some of the beautiful lanterns hanging around the room.


I’m still floating on the feeling of success, even though it’s two days after the Lantern Festival already. Such a feeling of accomplishment won’t go away easily, especially since I know the entire TAO staff and board team worked so hard to ensure the success!

And thanks to all of you who showed up…you contributed to this achievement and success! Thank you thank you thank you! I really hope you all had lots of fun! Of course, a huge THANK YOU goes out to all the volunteers. This would not have been possible without all of you!

Honestly, words cannot truly describe the Lantern Festival. Overall, if you didn’t come out to this Lantern Festival, YOU MISSED OUT. NO JOKE. But,please do come out to the TAO event this coming Thursday (2/11)! It’s TAO’s speed-dating (and speed-friending) event that you’ll definitely want to check out!
Until next time,
Josephine
Photo credits to Mendel Lin and Herman Chang.