The Vietnamese Student Association hosted a Vietnamese New Year (Tết) meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 25 during Cardinal Hour after gaining seven new members from Club Photo Day.

The meeting introduced the new service projects partnering with Sunflower Mission, an organization striving to help promote education in Vietnam since 2002 by motivating students to join the program and help students in Vietnam grow. One of the opportunities, English Initiative, gives students a chance to make a new friend and practice their Vietnamese when paired to mentor a college student in Vietnam through a video call. Junior Sammy Vu is one of the proficient speakers participating in the event.

“I think it’s an interesting way to build my Vietnamese conversational skills,” Vu said. “I’ve never taught someone a language, so I think it’ll be a fun experience.”

Junior and president Sebastian Nguyen is a seed member of Sunflower Mission and has participated in multiple events. His goal is to bring cultural awareness and new friends to the community.

“I have been with Sunflower Mission for six years and even went to Vietnam with them to build schools,” Nguyen said. “They haven’t been able to host many events because of COVID, but I’ve sung at a few of their galas.”

Lunar New Year was celebrated Jan 22 – Feb 1 and students celebrated with their families over the weekend by passing out red envelopes of lucky money (lÌ xÌ).

“For Tết, my family and I went to church in the morning, passed out the lÌ xÌ and then went to Kim Son to eat,” Vu said. “The days leading up to Tết we ate bánh chưng and pickled veggies like radishes and carrots.”

Some students went to the temple instead of church to participate in other traditions.

“I went to the temple to pray with my family and wish for a good year,” freshman Dylan Tran said. “We also sprinkled rice and salt around the house, a tradition used to remove any bad spirits from the house.”

The meeting also introduced club T-shirt options to its members. A design contest ran for four weeks prior and a prize of choice was offered as a reward for

participation. Freshman Mckenzie Le submitted four designs.

“I made four designs: the lotus flower because it’s our national flower, boba because who doesn’t love boba, pho because it’s such a well-known Vietnamese food and Siracha because everyone knows the iconic bottle,” Le said. “I didn’t design the shirt with the motivation of getting a prize. I just love the club and am happy that I could do my part in contributing.”

A variety of traditional candies and sweets from Vietnam were also offered for members to try like soft, chewy sesame and peanut candy, colorful candied coconut ribbons and tropical-flavored taffies like coconut, pandan and durian. Some members said they hadn’t tried these candies before and others haven’t had them in five years.

“I tried the chewy durian candy and it had a really good flavor, but my favorite was the mango gummy with jelly inside,” freshman Keith Luo said. “I look forward to trying new traditional snacks each meeting.”

VSA meets on Friday during the first half of lunch in room 2603. For more information, join VSA’s Remind @bhsvsa22.