The Mid-Autumn Children Festival last night (Friday September 24, 1999) gathering about 5,000 people with a huge number of kids in all colorful costumes has made a historical event in the Houston Vietnamese community in Houston and Vicinity. The turnout was wonderful and completely exceeded our expectation.

This is the first year that the Vietnamese Community has organized this event in collaboration of more than 20 other community organizations, especially all the VSAs (Vietnamese Student Association) of all universities in Houston (U. of H, U. of H. Downtown, Texas Southern University, Houston Baptist University and Rice University, St. Thomas University etc.) participated in the organizing committee and Van Hoa Khoa Hoc also plays a major role in organizing with the responsibility of a very popular Craft Booth teaching the kids to make the lanterns, chairing the Program sub-committee and also provide volunteers for the Security Team and Crowd Control Team. Anh Luong Hoang Nam and myself were the hosts of the program last nite and we nearly lost our voice.

First of all, I would like to thank more than 40 volunteers who have showed up yesterday and diligently worked with all the teams, especially our Craft Booth and even helping out the Cleanup team at the end. Also great thanks to all generous donation that you have pleged to help us having enough money to purchase the material for the Craft Booth (if you have not sent your donation, please make the check payable to VCSA and send it to our PO box address, attn. anh Pham Huy Hop, thanks a bunch!)

For those of you who were not there last night, you missed a lot of fun. Our Booth was so crowded with kids of all ages, we taught them making the lanterns, drawing on the lanterns and decorating the lanterns... Special thanks to Hoang Duc and Ngoc Tram for allowing us to use your place for three consecutive nights (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) to prepare the lanterns, special recognition of Phan Khanh Thu for her hard work to coordinate the lantern making team, Duy Dat, Ngo Hoa Lac for offering help and purchase extra material and the two-sided scotch tapes, and a long list of other volunteers.. And of course, the booth would not be possible without our master (chief designer), anh Nguyen Ngoc Bao, who has constantly been busy teaching the kids all night long. Some kid were so determined to make the lantern and I heard that there's one kid about 9 years old of age, spent nearly 3 hours at our booth (6:30pm - 9:30pm) to complete making his lantern and he was so happy!

We still have lots of lessons to learn to improve our productivity. Due to the under-estimate of the number of people attending the event, we ended up with lots of kids without the free lanterns as we promised and I felt bad about it. But overall, the spirit was very high and the kids (and even their parents) really enjoy the Lion Dance of Doan Huong Dao chua Phap Luan.

The Lantern Contest has 43 contestants the three winners are: First Prize - Le Gammy - a beautiful lantern with an S shape of Vietnam and very creative decoration (i just learned that Gammy is a nephew of Trung, one of our members, congratulation!) Second Prize - Pham Thanh Xuan - a very creative and beautiful dragon lantern. Third Prize - Do Tien - another creative lantern in the shape of a bouquet of flowers with lots of candles.

The Traditional Costume Contest has 42 contestants and the three winners are all very little (6 years old - they are so cute!) First Prize - Pham Hoang Thi - dressed up in the a'o tu*' tha^n & kha(n mo? qua. (northern style traditional costume) Second Prize - Vo Hoang Yen - dresse up in a'o ba` ba tra('ng, kha(n qua^'n dda^`u mie^`n nam va` gio? hoa (southern style tradition costume) - She's very tiny but looks so cute that everyone gave her a big applause when we presented her the Award. Third Prize - Lu*u Minh Ta^n - dressed up as O^ng Xa~ Xe^. with beard, ao dai khan dong, o^ dden, gia^y` tay, etc... Everyone had a good laugh when we presented him the Award.

We will scan in some great pictures of all of these kids in our web site after we develop our pictures. Due to the large volume of the people, we do not have the program running smoothly as we planned but overall the spirit was very high and everyone seemed happy. The weather was perfect and the Lion Dance was wonderful.

The event was concluded around 9:30pm and Mr. Nguyen Cao My, the president, treated us a big dinner at A Dong Restaurant.

It has been a great pleasure for all of us to have the opportunity to work with so many other community groups in Houston and lending our hand. I could see our uniform everywhere, VHKH members were everywhere and it gave me a really good sense of proud to belong to such a dedicated and talented and so much fun... group!