Calligraphy Club – Nida Nasimzada

Meeting biweekly on Tuesdays in Room E204, Calligraphy Club members engage in learning and experimenting with calligraphy. The club members also organize fundraisers with the ultimate goal of spreading awareness of the refugee issues as well as fundraising for the effort.  

Q: What is the main goal of your club?

A: “The main goal of calligraphy club is to, first of all, teach the members how to brush letter and just some basic lettering tips, modern calligraphy styles, and learning the basics of that. At the same time, we make cards and little pieces and we sell them and all money goes to refugees. It goes to the UNHCR which is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.”

Q: Is your club working on any long-term projects?

A:  “I guess our long-term goal is not only to raise money for charity- a bigger goal I want to get out is that these types of refugees and these people around the world [whose] stories may not be amplified in the media right now, but I want [their] stories to be still relevant today even if their names are not displayed everywhere. These people can be easily forgotten and I don’t want these people to be forgotten. Giving money to these refugees can cause a lot of beneficial things in the long run.”

Q: What inspired you to start your club?

A: “Before my junior year in July 2016, I remember these pictures came out of [this one refugee] boy lying down on the beach. I was aware of this crisis before but seeing that one picture made me think that ‘I need to do something personally and help people get involved in this.’ Around that same time, I just began calligraphy- I started teaching myself how to do it- so I was thinking ‘How could I make this into a form that can combine two things that I’m passionate about and help teach others and [spread awareness]?”

Q: What were some of your greatest successes through your club?

A: “The last thing we had was a Thanksgiving mini sale. It was our first sale so I didn’t expect it to be a full-out, big sale but I was kind of proud because we raised fifty dollars and we sold a lot of cards and we put out names on the back and we wrote ‘thank you for helping out the refugees’ and we wrote ‘all the money for the card was donated to UNHCR’ so whoever received it, hopefully they saw that. Even though it was a smaller success, it was something to get us started and it felt nice to see people giving [the card] to someone they loved or someone they cared about and getting our word across to other people.

Table Tennis- Zachary Belgum

The Table Tennis Club meets biweekly on Fridays in the big gym, encouraging members to build relationships while playing ping pong together at lunch. The club members engage in friendly competition and provide a fun and lighthearted atmosphere as they all hone their skills as its members support each other.

Q: What is the main goal of your club?

A: “I’d say the main goal of our club is to educate people on how to play ping pong and just to provide a fun space for Woodbridge students to meet each other.”

Q: What inspired you to start your club?

A: “The club was started about 2 years ago and I was a board member last year. There were actually two table tennis clubs last year and we merged those two clubs this year. What inspired me to be the president of the club is my passion for the Chinese culture and the Chinese language. I’ve met a lot of Chinese-American people here in the local community and I’ve played ping pong with them- people forty years old, people eighty-four years old, people who are really young- I’ve played second graders and they beat me before just in the local community.”

Q: What were some of your greatest successes through your club?

A: “I’d say [one of our] greatest successes this year [was that] ASB asked our club to bring our ping pong tables out in the JH area and play with everyone. It was really fun because at least 30 to 40 people came to play. It was fun to have a ton of Woodbridge students come and play and just enjoy lunch.”

Q: What would you like to share with the Woodbridge community about your club?

A: “Come and play ping pong and you’ll have a very enjoyable time. Ping pong is fun and there are so many intricacies to ping pong and I’m going to venture out and say that it is a sport and one day I hope that it’ll be an official Woodbridge High School sport because I would’ve tried out for the ping pong team freshman year, the second I heard it was a sport.”

Astronomy Club – Helen Zhao

The Astronomy Club meets biweekly on Tuesdays in Room K106 to explore science beyond the earth, entering into new depths of the stars and universe. The club members also have opportunities to go stargazing and meet up outside of school.

Q: What is the main goal of your club?

A: “The main goal for me is to educate people on astronomy and to get people more interested in it. It is also a social gathering for our friends and [me] to hang out and explore the same interests.”

Q: What do your members do during a meeting?

A: “I give lectures and we sometimes go on outings. Everyone is pretty comfortable around each other so [there is] good participation- I’m not the only one talking- other people are actively engaging the club.”

Q: What inspired you to start your club?

A: “[My vice president and I] wanted to start a club together and we talked about it over the summer before junior year and now this is our second year with the astronomy club.”

Q: What were some of your greatest successes through your club?

A: “First meetings are always a personal accomplishment. The best meeting was the first meeting I had in my junior year, the very first meeting of the astronomy club, a lot of people came and my presentation was good. So I guess the greatest success is probably that people enjoy coming to the club and people still come every week.”

Inner Rice Peace Club – Won Jung Choi 

The Inner Rice Peace Club meets every first Thursday of the month in Room L103 to gather and appreciate rice as well as delve into Asian cultures. The club is recreational, focusing on incorporating rice through recipes and other methods.

Q: What is the main goal of your club?

A: Rice club is the pursuit of inner rice peace and that means you’re looking for some sort of peace within yourself but you use the aid of food to find where your peace is. In the club description, it says that we’re searching for East Asian cultures, but we don’t exclude other cultures, like types of rice dishes and stuff, we’re always on the lookout for whatever is the best rice dish.

Q: What do your members do during a meeting?

A:  We meet once a month, every first Thursday of the month. We usually bring snacks that relate to rice and we always have this sort of theme depending on the month. This month, in February, we did this sort of Valentine’s day/Beach Clean up thing because I’m planning on incorporating volunteering to help you find peace.

Q: What inspired you to start your club?

A: This was way back in Chinese 1 when we were talking about the etymology of the word ‘and’ in Chinese. It has this sort of self on the left side and a hand on the right but our teacher related it to eating rice. I don’t know how it ended up but it’s sort of inner, and then rice, and then peace. Our Chinese 1 class of 2016 came together and said ‘we should make a club about that” but it never happened until my junior year.