At festivals everyone thinks all the more of his/her loved ones.  What is the experience like for overseas Chinese students who spend the Spring Festival in a foreign country? Wu Yi, a Grade 2012 student majoring in Finance shares her experience of celebrating the Spring Festival in Ireland.

My name is Wu Yi. I pursued my final year of undergraduate study at Dublin Business School (DBS) after I completed three years’ study in China last September.  DBS is home to international students from all over the world. To show respect to cultural diversity and relieve students’ homesickness, the school elect student representatives from different countries to organize cultural events. As Chinese students make up the largest group in international students, DBS sponsor the Spring Festival celebration event as one of its most important annual events.

On Feb 5, we organized Chinese students as well as foreign members in DBS to decorate the event venue. On Feb 6 and Feb7, the DBS teaching staff and Student Union promoted the Chinese New Year Celebration Event through Facebook, including posting the photos of decorating the venue.

On Feb 8, the lunar New Year Day, we held the Chinese New Year Party, at which Chinese students acted as judges in various games. Involving foreign students as much as possible in traditional Chinese games not only enables foreign students to understand the Chinese culture, but also improves Chinese students’ social skills and English speaking skills.

We arranged various activities including finding Chinese names for foreign classmates, teaching foreigners to write the Chinese character : Happiness, and blowing Pingpong.

What is worth mentioning is, Wu Yi is elected Dublin Business School Ambassador, which is one of the only two nominees assigned by the Irish Student Ambassador project to each university. The elected student is entitled to share his/her study abroad experience on the official education website in Ireland. For the latest sharing by Wu Yi, you may visit the link: http://blog.educationinireland.com/my-study-abroad-life-learning-to-party/.