Celebrated annually on the 15th day of the 8th month in the Chinese lunar calendar, the Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most important holidays celebrated across Asian countries. Hosted in the SNUG on October 4th, this year’s Mid-Autumn celebration is the hard-earned fruit of the Office of International Student Support, the LC Parent Association, and International Student Ambassadors (ISA). Per tradition, this festival is a day of family gathering, reunion, and community.
“The [Mid-Autumn] Festival was my first big event, so I was quite nervous,” Ms. Caitie Cotton, Interim Director of International Student Support, said. “I was really making sure that we do the international student community right, for this is a really big holiday for a lot of our kids.”
Ms. Cotton attributes this year’s particular success to the dedicated members of the Loomis community. She expressed her appreciation for the time and energy that the community offered in ensuring the smooth-running of this event. “I think we [International Student Support] share a lot of responsibility with the different affinity groups on campus,” she notes. “We actually have a community of Chinese families that live in the local area. They help out and step up every year to help with the planning of the event.”
Indeed, the LC Parent Association played a major role in both the design and catering of this event. “The parents were actually kind of the biggest supporters. They took care of most expenses…all the decorations you saw, and the food as well,” Ms. Cotton pointed out. Ms. Gigi Hodes, Modern and Classical Languages Faculty, added to the conversation with a lighthearted detail: “They [parents] also made a special boba flavor with Loomis [homemade] maple syrup and honey. It was called Pelican Pearls, and that obviously flew.”
Members of the LC Parent Association shared their delight at the myriad of positive responses to the celebration. “I really enjoyed myself as well. Seeing the kids happy made me pretty happy,” remarked Stella Hu, mother of Ethan Zhou ’27 and an associate of the organization for three years.
Extending beyond the mooncakes and lanterns, the Mid-Autumn Festival committee added traditional games to enhance the celebration’s authenticity. “We had stations run by ISAs with different games,” Ms. Hodes explained. “There was a coloring station with different characters and cartoons related to the Mid-Autumn Festival. We had like figures of the moon and children celebrating with their families.”
The meticulous planning allowed for the atmosphere of togetherness to permeate the Mid-Autumn celebration. “Our ISAs also made a really great playlist for the event that was full of Chinese and in general East Asian celebratory music,” said Ms. Hodes.
In addition to operating the actual celebration itself, the ISAs also widely promoted the event. “We put up a lot of posters around campus for our work job, and that helped spread the word,” explained JC Liu ’28, an ISA from Guangzhou, China. “The event itself was open to everybody as well, which was really nice because we got to share Chinese culture.”
