Merienda Time: A Virtual Social Event

merienda
Graphics by Archellaine Panganiban

Last February 22 and 23, the IHM Special Projects Team, headed by Michella Dib, hosted “Merienda Time,” a virtual social event held via Zoom and Discord. This event aimed to build new and genuine connections between students in different batches and even professors. All participants were encouraged to bring their own “baon” or snacks for an hour filled with fun games and activities. There were more than 50 participants who joined on the first day and more than 40 people participated on the second day. Knowing that this is the first ever event held in Discord, the number of participants served as a good starting point.

The event started with an icebreaker game of “Bring Me.” This game’s objective was for the facilitator to call out random items for the participants to retrieve in their house and the first person to come back with the thing while saying the buzzword “Merienda” wins the round. The icebreaker served as a warm-up for the participants before they were divided into three breakout rooms for more intimate and engaging activities. Before jumping into the games, the participants were asked to share what their “baon” was and introduce themselves to know more about each other.

They then proceeded with the first game which was called the “Category Game,” wherein each participant was given only 10 seconds to name the things under the given category. Some of the categories played were dog breeds, mobile applications, Enderun subjects, types of knives and many more. The second game played was “4 Pics, 1 Movie”, a guessing game where the facilitators displayed four pictures on the screen, and the first person to guess the movie title wins that round. On the second day, the 4 Pics, 1 Movie game was replaced with Online Bingo, where each participant had a card with numbers that they had to cross off when the number was called out by the host. The person who matched all numbers in the given pattern and yelled “Bingo!” wins. Lastly, everyone was asked to give other participants recommendations, such as their favorite movie, book, drink, or food for others to try.

The event ended by announcing the winners of the category game. The winners on the first day were Francesca Tanyen, Nina Sehwani, Ms. Cherry Tan, and Kass Damuy. On the second day, the winners were Cedric Sy and Kaye Almuete. The winner in each group would receive an Enderun tumbler with a voucher for a free drink from the Enderun Bistro.

Beating shyness is a difficult battle for all kinds of social events, whether face-to-face or virtual. This was witnessed during the 2-day event. With the stress of online classes and midterm exams, this event was a good way to destress and have fun. Nevertheless, the IHM Special Projects Team is dedicated to creating and organizing more similar events in the future. The team was created for this purpose — to bring the students of Enderun closer to each other and establish relationships within the community, especially the IHM community. With all the positive feedback that we have received, surely, the students should expect more social events in the future as this just serves as a teaser for what’s to come.

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