German Club and the German National Honor Society (GNHS) came together to host the school’s first-ever Fall Festival on Nov. 14. The German program raised over $2,000 to attend competitions such as Houstonfest and the Texas State German Contest, the largest German competition in the country.
The idea for the festival was born out of the need to fundraise, as both competitions have entry fees as well as bus and hotel costs to attend the state contest in San Marcos almost three hours away.
“The idea started with us just wanting to give out food to raise money,” senior and GNHS President Alejandra Giron said. “Later on, it kind of converted into an actual festival, because it was basically the equivalent to us having a bunch of different clubs coming and having games and food.”
German teacher Hannah Henry and both clubs’ members had four weeks to plan an event that they anticipated over a hundred people would attend. They met twice a week during Cardinal Hour in Henry’s room to plan the logistics and figure out who would donate cooking tools and prizes for the booths. According to Giron, the hardest part was the short time period.
“It was just a struggle having to get admin approval for all the paperwork and planning,” Giron said. “By the time everything was planned out, we only had a week left to advertise. We were super last minute trying to push out posters and pictures on social media for marketing.”
The lack of marketing time wasn’t a large problem in the end, as over 300 students, faculty and Bellaire residents attended the festival.
“I’m honestly surprised how well the event went,” Giron said. “We got a lot more people to come than we expected. They were also really engaged — they were trying to win prizes, play, get food. Everyone looked like they had a good time.”
The most anticipated event of the night occurred at 7 p.m. when AP US History and European History teacher Grace Srouji was pied in the face under a special condition.
“One of the students in German club asked me to do it,” Srouji said. “Originally, I told [Giron] no because I didn’t want to be pied over and over again. So I told them I would accept one from the highest bidder.”
Juniors Luca Chambers and Miley Nguyen pooled together and bid 91 tickets, the equivalent of over $40, to pie Srouji. Though coming in with the intention to pie his teacher, Chambers ended the night with whipped cream all over himself.
“When I first first saw the pies, they was just a regular [amount of whipped cream],” Srouji said. “And then I saw the plate that I would be receiving, there was so much more whipped cream on this plate. [Chambers] was struggling to carry it. After he threw it at me, I gave him a big old hug to make sure he was just as covered in it as I was.”
The day of the festival, over 15 German students went around to classrooms explaining that one mystery AP US History teacher would be pied in the face. It was revealed that the teacher was Srouji right before the bidding began.
“Ms. Srouji actually came up to me after the pie-throwing and asked me if I really hated her,” Chambers said. “It’s nothing like that. I have a lot of respect for her. But of course, as a junior taking a very work-intensive class like APUSH, I jumped on the opportunity to pie her.”
In addition to participating in “the best part of the night,” Chambers was a volunteer for the Italian National Honor Society booth, one of 15 cultural booths selling food from around the world.
“I enjoyed the festival both as a customer and a volunteer,” Chambers said. “The activities like face painting and bowling were cool. One of the best things in my opinion was watching Bollywood and eMotion perform their dances. For their first time, it was great.”
While attendees enjoyed the performances before the sunset as well as 23 activity booths ranging from face-painting to badminton outside, the 272 volunteers were running around behind the scenes.
The volunteers were pulled out of class at 2 p.m. to help set up and did not leave until cleanup ended at past 8:30 p.m. For Henry, the highlight of her night was seeing her students so committed to a “great event.”
“The German program is built on a very special sense of community,” Henry said. “Seeing my students on the event day so committed to making sure the event ran smoothly is something that I don’t think a lot of teachers get to experience amongst their programs of students, and particularly teenagers that are genuinely interested in wanting to help a cause.”
Former German teacher of 24 years Michael Rossow said the festival was a “wonderful attest” to the World Languages Program.
“It means a great deal to me seeing the program come together to support an event like this,” Rossow said. “I was very impressed and overjoyed to see how my predecessor Ms. Henry came up with the idea and then made the tremendous effort to develop a working plan and rally her students as well as her colleagues within the department to the cause.”
After Rossow retired two years ago, Giron was scared the German program would slowly die out. Seeing a successful turnout proved that her fears wouldn’t come true.
“With this event, it reassured me that the program is actually getting bigger and bigger,” Giron said. “It meant a lot to me to show the next generation of German kids that you can throw big events and make money to keep the program alive. It was great knowing that all us nerdy German kids could come together and do something of this magnitude.”
To get involved, visit German club’s Instagram @bellaire.german.club.
