HCU’s Historic Participation in the City of Irvine’s First Culture Fair

By A. J. Lingerfelt

4/20/2025

“The first club to complete a student-run play, first club to organize a candidate forum, first club to establish it’s own culture chronicle, and now…first club to participate in the City of Irvine’s first ever culture fair.” This wasn’t just an introduction to an exciting chronicle about our Union’s participation in Irvine's first city-wide culture fair, but was also the Union’s advertisement shown at the fair’s slideshow.

The recount of these events goes far back to the very first club kickoff of the year at Portola in 2024. Sometime in September, all the culture and VAPA clubs were grouped in a specific area and advertised their clubs to the students–new and old–of Portola. That is when someone part of the Youth Action Team began walking around these club booths and advertised a citywide “Culture Fair” with a poster that…in all fairness…needed a bit of work (they later updated the poster slightly to be more visually appealing and neutral). The next thing to come was a process where the club signed up for the event, was gradually updated about the event through October and December, until the eventual sign-up deadline arrived sometime in early January. There was an opportunity to participate in a quick cultural performance at the event, but due to unfortunate bad timing and lack of enthusiasm from possible performers, the HCU could not perform and instead decided to only host a cultural booth. Apparently there were some problems with sign-up up and the HCU wasn’t on the list of registered clubs for the events, but the lead Youth Action Team coordinator of the event was fair and helpful in allowing the HCU to participate despite a missed deadline. A tri-fold poster board advertising our club and a set of free miniature Hungarian flags were soon assembled to both spread our club’s purpose and give a fun memento of Hungary.

Now let’s talk about how the actual forum went on February first: great. The president was joined by the treasury, Julian Kim, and spent a mellow first few minutes just setting up the tri fold board and all the previously mentioned flags.

But as more people trickled in, the pace of the event began to speed up. The HCU was one of three clubs from Portola High School to be at the event (there were around twenty or so clubs) and one of only two culture clubs (the other was our friends at the Eastern European Culture Club, who also had Hungary’s flag on display. The president was even interviewed by the Youth Action Team at the event and talked about our purpose in diffusing Hungarian Culture, sometimes including other cultures in relation to Hungary at our meeting, and–most importantly–our numerous historic events. Throughout the forum, we successfully gave out Hungarian flags to residents of Irvine, culture club officers of other schools, and even many part of the Youth Action Team. But after the communication, to which some photos were taken of our booth, the treasurer arrived at around 12:30 (the event starting around 11:00). Performance from the other culture clubs soon started and all of them were great, cultural dances and cultural songs–one of which was KPOP! And from 12:00 to 11:00, everyone participated in a “free rice” charity event where you answered questions on a website sponsored by the UN and the UN would donate 10 grains of rice for each question participants got correct. It was a long battle of answering questions, but the president got 2nd place with the catch name--according to the organizer--of "Hungary Hungary Hippos." (Thank you Julian for the idea).

The president and treasurer participated in the final planned events of the day: a fundraiser lasting from 1:00 - 2:00 and a closing ceremony Kahoot that came after and lasted until around 3:00. To which both were successful. The day ended with a closing ceremony from a Filipino Culture Club.

I admit, this is not the most entertaining blog, but it is a log of the historic first city wide Irvine Culture Fair hosted by Youth Action Team, and the HCU's historic participation in the fair.

Perhaps one of the biggest questions is why I waited so long to upload this blog as of April 20th, 2025. The simple answer is, despite writing, school work and laziness offer great excuses to simply upload a completed blog–but in the coming months I plan to fight that laziness!

Chicago: Lingerfelt, A. J. "HCU’s Historic Participation in the City of Irvine’s First Culture Fair." HCChronicle. April 20, 2025. https://feltgrad.wixsite.com/hcchronicle/post/hcu-s-historic-participation-in-the-city-of-irvine-s-first-culture-fair.

MLA: Lingerfelt, A. J. “HCU’s Historic Participation in the City of Irvine’s First Culture Fair.” HCChronicle, 20 Apr. 2025, https://feltgrad.wixsite.com/hcchronicle/post/hcu-s-historic-participation-in-the-city-of-irvine-s-first-culture-fair.

APA: Lingerfelt, A. J. (2025, April 20). HCU’s historic participation in the City of Irvine’s first culture fair. HCChronicle. https://feltgrad.wixsite.com/hcchronicle/post/hcu-s-historic-participation-in-the-city-of-irvine-s-first-culture-fair