by Jennifer Shin

Colorful decorations plastered all over the walls. The aroma of hot dogs, spicy chili, and sweets filling the air. Cardboard boxes fabricated into robots and Tetris pieces. The sound of balloons popping, DDR music jamming, and children laughing. These can only mean one thing – Fall Festival is here! Fall Festival is an exciting Halloween alternative that we have here at church each year, in which both kids and adults alike eagerly look forward to.

This year, our church building has been transformed into a Dr. Seuss wonderland. The walls and ceilings were covered with giant Cat-in-the-Hats, the Lorax, and rainbow-colored Truffula Trees.

Some sort of game station occupied almost every room in the church building. Kids and adults wandered from room to room, attempting to pop balloons with darts, decorating cookies, dancing to the rhythm of DDR’s techno music, and participating in the infamous Screaming Game. When asked what her favorite part of the Fall Festival was, Megan Yi said, “I think all of them. But I wasn’t doing the screaming game. I liked making cookies.”

As always, the highlights of the Fall Festival are the costumes. This year, we had an array of costumes, ranging from Top Gun characters to praise band equipment, Eugene Park included. This year’s winner for the woman’s solo costume award was Angela Kim, who was dressed from head-to-toe as one of the Power Puff Girls. Garrett Glende walked in covering the bottom half of his face with a cardboard fence, and won the men’s solo costume award as Wilson from Home Improvement. The group award went to all the ladies in the Alice in Wonderland crew. Of all the costumes, Megan liked her sister’s the best. “I think I really liked Aarolyn’s. And she was, like, dancing.”

When bedtime struck and all the children went home after a fun night, the adults stayed and partied on. It was a wonderful time for our whole church family to get together.