MAV-O-Lantern brings Halloween to international students
October is almost over, but Halloween has just arrived.
For the past week, Minnesota State’s Halloween events have been filled with scares, candy, ghosts and pumpkins for all MSU students. Various teams and organizations planned many activities for the student body to enjoy, including the Kearney International Center.
The center held its Halloween event, MAV-O-Lantern, on Friday. It took place in the CSU Flex Programming Space where several international students from all over the world got together to carve pumpkins into classic jack-o-lanterns.
One of KC International’s graduate assistants, Grace Agbenin, was leading the event throughout the night and said the purpose of the event was to help introduce the culture and traditions of Halloween to international students attending MSU.
“We organized this event for international students to kind of introduce them to the cultural Halloween because Halloween is not popular in various countries,” Agbenin said. “So we put this together for international students to come together, get to enjoy the US culture and meet other international students and bond through something fun. This year, we’re just putting on the pumpkin carving event.”
Fellow sophomore Tiara Nietfeld shared that pumpkin carving is one of her favorite longtime Halloween traditions along with other classic spooky activities.
“I just grew up doing it and it’s fun. Pumpkin carving, dressing up, watching scary movies. That’s a good one. I’m going to go see Five Nights at Freddy’s so that’s cool.” Nietfeld said.
With Halloween being highly popularized in the United States, international South Korean student Joon Park said he enjoyed celebrating his U.S. Halloween.
“This Halloween is the first time I’m enjoying Halloween in the United States so I’m looking forward to it.” Park said.
The Kearney International Center’s mission is to promote and support global awareness and to recruit, orient, serve and engage international students from all over the world. With the holidays just around the corner and more American culture to be revealed and shared, international students attending MSU can now explore the many new cultural discoveries and shocks.
Agbenin said all MSU students are welcomed to all KC International’s events and even expressess her hope that both MSU international and domestic students will be able to share their cultures together and interact and bond over cultural similarities and differences in an effort to have the international students feel welcomed not just in the United States but at MSU as well.
“We welcome domestic students as well because we also want international students to get comfortable with meeting domestic students and understanding US culture.” she said. “We love to see the cultures mixing and the students having fun together.”
To learn more about the resources that Kearney International has to offer, stop by the center at CSU 250.
Write to Anahi Zuniga at anahi.zuniga@mnsu.edu
Header Photo: International students at Minnesota State had the opportunity to celebrate Halloween at the MAV-O-Lantern event in the Centenial Student Union Friday. (Dalton Grubb/The Reporter)