Campolindo Students Decorate for Lunar New Year

Members of Key Club, Mandarin Club, and Asian Culture Appreciation Club (ACAC) met at Campolindo on January 21, along with Leadership teacher Lindsay Webb-Peploe to decorate the school for Lunar New Year, which falls on January 22.

Lunar New Year is celebrated by many Asian countries, but each country has its own way of celebrating. Common decorations include lanterns, firecrackers, banners, streamers, and cutouts. This year is also the year of the rabbit, one of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs, so many decorations had some relation to a rabbit.

The planners of the event expressed their gratitude for the volunteers who came, including ACAC co-president junior Anna Chen, who “worked with a lot of volunteers and Mrs. Webb Peploe who all helped make the decorations come together.”

“The volunteers split up into teams and decorated the campus,” said other ACAC co-president junior Rebecca Ying. “We pretty much let everyone have free reign and choose which decorations they wanted to put up and where they wanted to place them.” Chen adds that “we didn’t want the rain to ruin our decorations”, which could happen if decorations were hung outside, so “we did more decorating in hallways”.

One example of the hallway decorations is the C-Hall, where volunteers hung red lanterns from the ceiling. “It looks gorgeous with all the lanterns hanging from the top as well as the posters and streamers covering the walls,” Ying stated.

“[The clubs] are pretty organized and they got a wide variety of students to come,, said Webb-Peploe. She adds that “it’s fun to hang out with students and do something that’s meaningful for them.”

However, as successful as the event was, a few years ago there wouldn’t have been mainly red decorations floating around the hallways. Webb-Peploe explains that a few years ago Campo barely did anything at all, mainly “a celebration at a club meeting, but nothing that really represented it for the many students that celebrated here on campus.”

“[It’s] really important to represent and celebrate holidays from different parts of the world as well as educate students on these cultures,” Ying adds.

This decorating event has only been around for one year; last year former officers of ACAC and Key Club collaborated and reached out to Webb-Peploe with the idea and since it was successful, brought it back again.

Chen and Ying both expressed enthusiasm for holding a similar event next year and Webb Peploe hopes “it’ll become an annual thing.”