As many of you might know, the iSchool at Pitt hosts a social hour every month. Since we are always trying to make every event bigger and better than the last, we went all out for our October Social Hour! The theme? Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival of course! So what exactly is a Chinese Mid-Autumn festival? In China, it’s the traditional day where they express their thanks to the moon and celebrate the Fall harvest, alternatively it is known as the Moon Festival.
Tag: social hour (Page 1 of 3)
The fall semester’s Social Hours have centered around the many cultures that make up our iSchool. September’s theme was a celebration of the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. October’s theme was Oktoberfest. For this month’s Social Hour we partnered with ANKUR-Indian Graduate Student Association to focus on Diwali, the Indian Festival of lights.
In honor of Diwali we decided to challenge students to create Rangoli (Traditional Indian decoration usually created with flowers) with nontraditional materials.
Nontraditional materials = sprinkles and lentils
I had another fun weekend, and it was a special weekend too! Diwaloween!! (Diwali + Halloween). It had such a great time with my friends! On Friday, we had a Diwali/Halloween Social Hour (Shayla will talk about this more) with lots of candy, pumpkin rolls, samosas, and Rangoli!
On Saturday, I went to Diwali Night, which was hosted by Ankur – Indian Graduate Student Association. It was a great night of performances from singing to different kinds of dancing. I was blown away to see that so many classmates were so talented! I also wanted to go the whole nine yards and wore a friend’s salwar kameez. I felt a little silly, at first, but the more I walked around, the more comfortable I felt. I was glad that I was able to be a part of an important part of my schoolmates’ culture 🙂 Oh, by the way, the food was so good; especially because they had my favorite dessert, carrot halwa!!! 😀
Finally, on Sunday night, the iSchool went to Hundred Acres Manor, an awesome haunted house in Pittsburgh. Everyone thought that I’d be the most scared, but I WASN’T!!! HA!! I actually laughed through half of it. But, I will say that it was still fun. They had a lot of really cool graphics and illusions that will really throw you off! I’m glad I got to end the weekend with some Halloween fun! It’s really one of my favorite holidays and I haven’t been to a haunted house in years! I’ve also always wanted to try a maze too, so that was definitely the icing on the cake.