Finding Asian friends on the West Coast isn’t a difficult thing to do since we’re closer to Asia and have large Asian communities.
Finding Asian friends in the Midwest, however, is another story.
So, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that going from my high school (which has Asians making up 55% of the student population) to the University of Iowa (with a whopping 5.1%!) was a bit of a culture shock for me.
Spending the past 18 years of my life in cities surrounded by people like me, it was definitely weird to see not one, not two, but ZERO Asians in the span of 5 days. It kind of felt like I was detached from my own background, not having a community I truly felt like I belonged. Not that my friends aren’t great, but I needed some connection.
Which is why I was overjoyed when I met my Asian friends on my floor for the first time. And when I heard about all the other Asian-related student organizations, I was beyond excited to check them out as well. I threw myself into their events and general board meetings (GBM), determined to be involved in the university’s Asian community. As a result, I had quite an eventful September. Here is a brief but not-so-quick overview:
Asian Pacific American Cultural Center (APACC)
@uiowaapacc on Instagram
The first event I attended was the APACC’s Kick Off event. I got a little lost trying to find the venue, but I eventually found the alley to the house. Walking in, I was a little nervous to talk to people, knowing that most of the people there were either upperclassmen or students from either Iowa or Illinois (it still feels weird telling people that I come from a city two time zones away). But one thing was different here compared to the previous three weeks in Iowa: I didn’t feel like I was an outsider. I’m not kidding when I say I felt way more at ease just by seeing all the cup noodles and chopsticks at the dining table. Just these alone gave me enough courage to talk to other people. We ate cup noodles and bingsu (I still can’t believe they had a whole bingsu bar), were introduced to a few of the many Asian-related organizations on campus, and played some fun games while getting to know each other. I had a lot of fun and made a lot of new friends (who unfortunately mostly live on the west side of campus), and even got a Polaroid of some of us in a picture!
A few weeks later, APACC started their Film Fridays, and I went to the first one. I had stuff to do before Film Friday started, so I got there a bit later than I wanted to. It was basically a typical movie night; we watched Joy Luck Club (1993), ate snacks, and hung out together. There’s not much to write about it other than it was really chill, and the vibes were nice. Oh, I forgot to mention that we watched YouTube Rewinds after the movie ended, including the 2017 and 2018 ones.
Vietnamese Student Association (VSA)
@uiowa_vsa on Instagram
The Vietnamese Student Association of the University of Iowa is the campus’ largest Asian student organization. Although I’m not Vietnamese myself, I still went to a lot of the events that the VSA hosted. The first one I went to was the VSA Jeopardy GBM. I was pretty excited to go since I missed the first GBM (because I didn’t know about VSA then), and Jeopardy also sounds pretty fun. After the APACC Kick-Off, I dragged my friend with me (neither of us is Vietnamese, but that’s what’s nice about these organizations. You don’t have to be Vietnamese or even Asian to be part of them). We got to the CIAE a bit early, so we waited around for a bit until more people showed up. I saw a lot of familiar faces since a lot of people also went to the kick-off the week before. We learned about what VSA is, its history, what they do, and also upcoming events that they are involved in. After their introduction presentation, we got to the actual highlight of the night, Jeopardy. The categories themselves were already funny: “Kevin Nguyen” which was about Vietnamese culture, “Make your Asian Parents Proud”, “If I could Rearrange the Alphabet, I would put U and I together” which was about UIowa, “Siht Em Elddir” which is “Riddle Me This” backward, and “The Dang Gang” which was about the VSA E-Board. I couldn’t answer most of the “Kevin Nguyen” questions, but I was quite confident in the rest of the categories (my biology exam earlier that day helped me answer how many valence electrons oxygen has). Final Jeopardy asked us to guess how many times the word “bee” was said in the Bee Movie (the answer is a surprising 172). My group ended with the most points, so we got a group picture as a reward.
Two days later, I volunteered for Oktoberfest. Now I know what you’re probably thinking, but Oktoberfest is a German thing, what does it have to do with being Asian? You’re right. It relates to this entire blog because VSA partners with Downtown Iowa City for Oktoberfest. I was assigned to the second shift that started at 3:15 p.m., so I went to grab a drink from Starbucks before checking in. I got a little lost trying to find where the check-in booth was located, but I eventually found it. We were in charge of running a beer stall, and we had to open boxes with mugs in them, fill the mugs with beer, handle with cash, and also fill up 15 glass steins for a beer-holding contest. The experience overall was pretty chill. Nothing too crazy happened in the 2.5 hours we were scheduled for, other than the kegerator breaking and causing beer to overflow and spill onto the table and pavement. When we were done, I was feeling exhausted and grimy even after I got back to my dorm. I did get to bring back 3 small pumpkins from the table decorations though.
A few days later, VSA had yet another event, and this time it was their Mid-Autumn Festival GBM. I was looking forward to this GBM since the last one was a lot of fun, and also a Mid-Autumn Festival-themed GBM seems quite interesting. I didn’t know what to expect considering I’ve only ever known Chinese traditions for Mid-Autumn festivals, so I hoped to be able to learn how Vietnamese culture celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival. It turns out (if I’m understanding this correctly) that Vietnamese culture celebrates this holiday in many similar ways as Chinese culture does, which makes sense considering the history and similarities between Vietnam and China. That aside, we spent this GBM painting lanterns in three different teams. My team decided to go with a Pokémon theme, and the trio I was in chose to paint a Poliwag (if you don’t know what that is, search it up it’s adorable), while the rest of our team painted Pokeballs and a Jigglypuff. After roughly 30 minutes of lantern painting (10 minutes spent on group introductions and deciding on lantern themes, 15 minutes on me overthinking the details of Poliwag, and the remaining 5 minutes smothering the rest of the lantern in blue paint), we presented our lanterns to the judge, who was the receptionist at the CIAE front desk. The judge, to our dismay, chose a different team’s dragon-themed lanterns, which I didn’t feel bad about since their idea of painting segments of a dragon and connecting them at the end was cool. We may not have won the judge’s vote, but we did get a lot of compliments from other people. Aside from the lantern painting, this GBM also had quite a few chaotic moments and many laughs shared.
The last VSA event that I went to in September was the Picnic Social. This originally was scheduled to be on September 22nd, but due to the rain that day it got postponed until the next week. I only got to go for about 40 minutes since I had a figure skating lesson before, and also the TSA Moon Festival BBQ after. Nevertheless, it was nice to hang out with the VSA members at the Pentacrest for a bit. We sat around talking to each other about all sorts of things (including calculus help), watched the guys play spike ball and volleyball, took some pictures and entertained and were entertained by a dog! I wish I could write more about this social, but I was only there long enough to write these down.
Filipino Student Association (FSA)
@uiowa.fsa on Instagram
Another Asian organization on campus is the Filipino Student Association. This month, they kicked off with one event, which was their first GBM. I was particularly excited for this one because the post for it mentioned that there would be “potluck, karaoke, games and more!” I managed to get two of my friends from my floor (one of them is Filipina) to go as well, although it wasn’t that hard considering that going would mean getting free dinner. Before going, I studied at the Main Library with some friends that I made at APACC. We then went to the GBM where food was already being served (the food was so good I went for seconds). After eating and chatting with other people for a bit, the FSA did a brief introduction presentation and explained what the current event was. After the presentation, we started the chaos that was karaoke. It took a bit for people to get into it, but eventually, it was like we were in a concert waving with our phone lights. I even went up and sang part of a song, even after saying I wouldn’t destroy my throat half an hour ago. Eventually, it was time to leave, and my friends and I walked as a group until we had to separate to catch the bus.
Taiwanese Student Association (TSA)
@uiowa_tsa on Instagram
The last Asian-related event I went to in September was the Taiwanese Student Association’s Annual Moon Fest BBQ. Like the VSA’s Mid-Autumn Festival GBM, this event is also the Mid-Autumn Festival theme (and it was also the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival that day). After leaving the VSA Picnic Social, I took the bus and walked to City Park, where I almost passed by the shed that was occupied by the TSA (I only really noticed because I saw someone carrying what looked like the cooler over to the shed). Under the shed was a big rice cooker and what looked like a big crockpot, along with coolers filled with drinks and trays filled with beef and chicken skewers. A lot of people actually came by, and the benches were slowly getting more crowded. TSA served braised pork belly over rice (滷肉飯 in Chinese. Also got a tip that it was from Hoja in the Capitol Center!) along with soy-marinated eggs, beef and chicken skewers, fruits, drinks (featuring Ramune), as well as mini mooncakes (I didn’t get to try any because they apparently were very popular). Food aside, the BBQ was a great place to meet new people. There were freshmen like me, and there were also some grad students. Like the other organizations above, a lot of the people at the BBQ aren’t even Taiwanese or even speak/understand the Chinese language, yet the shed was packed with people (yes, food is an excellent motivator, but that’s beside the point). When people started trickling out to leave, the TSA members started cleaning up and offered to take some leftover food with us. I took 3 skewers with me to give to my friend (who is actually Taiwanese but couldn’t make it due to having an exam) who said the skewers were tasty even when they were cold.