Carnegie Students Experience K-Fest

Every year at the start of October, people from all over Houston come to the annual Houston K-fest or Korean Festival. This year's festival marks the 11th yearly K-fest. Every year, people of all different backgrounds gather to enjoy food, music, and enjoyable activities without spinning a single penny. This year, Carnegie’s Asian American Association, or AAA decided to give back to the community and volunteer at this year's K-fest.

K-fest is at Discovery Green, and once you walk in, you will see a bunch of activities made for both parents and children to have fun. Activities include mask making, fan making, Korean writing booths, etc. Carnegie's Asian American Association volunteered at both the coloring and mask making booths and were able to see children and their parents' bond over simple activities.

AAA member, Angelina Nguyen, said, "Even though I'm hot and tired, my hard work truly paid off when I saw the smiles on the children's faces." Club leader Isabella Hsu said she wanted the AAA to experience a variety of Asian cultures and believes that after volunteering at K-fest, she and the rest of AAA will have a better understanding of Korean culture.

After talking to Carnegie's AAA, making a few masks, and writing some Korean, I decided to explore the rest that K-Fest had to offer. I stopped by the food ticket tents and saw a lot of authentic Korean food. After looking at all the delicious options, I decided to buy some mango lemonade Boba tea and also shared a portion of Tteokbokki, a Korean spicy rice cake with my friends. And of course, I had to check out the booths selling Korean cosmetics and merchandise. Although I didn't buy anything, I was thrilled to see so many people connecting over different K-pop groups and the things they enjoyed about Korean culture. Everyone was super friendly, and I felt as though I was part of a safe, supportive K-fest community. 

Tracy Huang taking a picture with the cardboard cutout of Korea’s most famous artist, PSY, the creator of "Gangnam Style."

Finally, at around 2 p.m. some members of AAA and I participated in a random play dance challenge. For those of you who do not know what the event is, this is a playlist of K-pop song choruses from different groups, and those who can dance to the choreography go to the center to dance the song. There is no real objective of the game, but if you know how to dance the song, you can dance in the middle, and the K-pop community will cheer you on as you dance. As the random dance challenge first started, AAA members and I were afraid to dance. We felt nervous because this was our first dance challenge; however, after hearing supportive comments from the audience, we felt right at home and danced our hearts out. After an hour of dancing to both iconic songs like "TT" by twice and underrated songs like "RPM" by sf9, we decided to retire for the day and head on home. However, before I went home, I took a picture with the cardboard cutout of the iconic PSY, creator of "Gangnam Style," to remember this day.

The AAA members and I had a lot of fun while helping the community have fun, as well. We are appreciative of the experience that we had today and hope to have an even more successful year next year.