Spring break has started, and while I am currently writing this in a hotel room in New York, I had the opportunity to attend an amazing event this past weekend.

UVSA-Midwest’s 21st Annual VIA-1 Conference.

VIA-1 (Vietnamese Interacting As 1) is a 3-day event hosted by UVSA-Midwest, and this year it was held at Purdue University. This flagship event is a place to “develop personal and professional skills and give back to the Vietnamese community” (you can read more about it on this page).

I initially had planned to include this event in my spring break blog, but after experiencing this weekend, I realized that this alone would suffice for a decent-length blog (it was that fun). With that, here’s my best attempt at putting this weekend into words.

I would like to thank UVSA-Midwest and all the staff for hosting such a wonderful conference. It was truly amazing and I am honored to have been able to attend. You can check out their website, their Instagram, as well as their Linktree. 

Day 1

My roommates and I started our 5-hour drive to Purdue at 8:30am on Friday morning, and I slept twice during the ride (I did all my packing the night before so I slept at 3 ?).

When we got to Lafayette, we first grabbed food at a Korean restaurant not too far from our hotel. After the much-needed meal and stretch break, we checked in at our hotel and dropped our stuff off in our room (long story short, the hotel experience could definitely be better. iykyk). Once we put our bags in our room, we headed to Purdue’s campus to start the first day of VIA-1.

After parking the car and checking in to VIA-1, I met my family leader Belle, and went up to a room to wait for the rest of the group. We were just chilling out and getting to know each other while eating dinner before we went to the auditorium for the Welcome Ceremony and Culture Show.

The Welcome Ceremony consisted of event introductions/summaries, as well as staff committee introductions (thank you to everyone who worked on this amazing event). The Culture Show was where the hype was really at. So many spectacular performances from different schools that ranged from parasol dancing to solo singing had everyone cheering and clapping (my eyes were glued to the stage the whole time).

After the Culture Show, we went upstairs to start the Family Games segment. We first made our group banner and showed off our group chant, and then we started to do some staff challenges. Some of the challenges were quite funny, like doing a TikTok dance together or trying to see who could do more push-ups. We finished off with making a jar of paper stars that we agreed to open a year later (can’t wait!!!)

We ended the day with the Night Market, where the participating schools got to sell their merchandise and promote their own VSA’s. I didn’t end up buying anything, although some of the shirts were really cute (UW-Madison I’m looking at you). When we were feeling tired enough, we went back to the car and drove back to rest for the night.

Day 2

The second day started off bright (it was cloudy so not really) and early at the auditorium with the Opening Ceremony, where we had some morning energizing activities, as well as a segment with Keynote Speaker Linh Tran (and a few minutes at the end for questions). We then had our two programming sessions to go to our assigned workshops (I had “Leaps of Faith” and “Rediscovering Roots”). After the workshops, we had about an hour for lunch and also headshots if we signed up for them (I did, so I, along with some other friends, walked across the buildings to get headshots, just to walk back again to have lunch). Once lunch was over, we had a State Caucus with our state’s VSA’s where we discussed certain topics about our own local VSA and as an entire state.

Family Games were up next again, and there were four rooms of games this time. We rotated through the games and went up against different families (our family didn’t win anything, but it’s the spirit that counts). My favorite would probably be the game that had us make shapes with rubber bands. Once family games ended (and after my friend Joy and I made a quick trip to the recuperation station), some of us headed back to the auditorium for Eboard Elections; they take place every two years, so I felt a bit lucky that I got to participate in elections at my first VIA-1. After the last votes were submitted, we ended with a few Ending Remarks and went back to our hotels to get ready for the Banquet.

The banquet was a very chill time. We got to sit down and enjoy some food while we listened to some thank-you remarks, as well as some VSA spotlights (UIowa got an award for being the Tier 2 Miracle Minute Winner!). Aside from speeches, we took a bunch of photos with our families, states, and just other friends we knew. There was also an opening performance by Hieu Nguyen and a headliner performance by Hien!

After the Banquet, we headed back to the hotel to wind down. There was technically stuff to do late at night like Tâm Sự, but I was feeling pretty drained by then, so I just stayed in our room and went to sleep early.

Day 3

We’re already on the last day of the weekend, and it has felt way too fast by now. After we checked out of the hotel and threw our bags into the car trunk, we drove back to campus for the Closing Ceremony and the last few activities of the conference.

Closing Ceremony and Closing Activities were honestly more sentimental than I had expected. Once again, we had the last bit of thank-you speeches from the staff committees, but we also had appreciation activities for our family members and our friends. We wrote words of affirmation on paper stars to give to our family members (mine were really cute, I love you my fellow Greek Gods ?), and we also did an activity where we tapped anyone who we thought applied to the given prompt (we were told to close our eyes so we didn’t know who tapped us). After the tapping and feeling sappy, we ended the conference with a Group Picture and a Regional Chant.

VIA-1 was a magical experience and I loved every second of it. I’d like to give a shoutout to my amazing Greek Gods family for being the best group of people I could have spent my very first VIA-1 with; Belle (actual best FL ever), Joy, Evelyn, Erin, Kollyn, Melody, Jason, Max, Alan, Alex, and Shon: thank you guys so much. Thank you to my roommates Ruthanne (respect for being a driver), Denise, and Jennie for taking me in as the fourth roommate of the group. Thank you to all the other friends I made and met through these 3 days too.

I’d also like to thank UVSA-Midwest again for this wonderful conference. I’ve gained so much from it and I would not trade anything for this experience.

Thank you to the UIowa VSA for being the main reason I even got to go to VIA-1. This organization has introduced me to so much these past months and I am forever grateful.

Shameless plug: go watch this Instagram reel I made of the weekend, as well as this post I made with more photos of the conference!