The lion costume, with its enormous beady eyes, large flapping face and writhing body, terrified Trixie Le when she was younger. It moved to the thumping of the drums and towered over the 5-year-old, who remembers bursting into tears. Read more...

Photo: First-year mathematics of computation student Henry Jian misses the Lunar New Year celebrations in his hometown of Hangzhou, China. Back home, he played with his cousins and lit fireworks for the New Year while his mother and other relatives made dumplings in their kitchen. Now, Jian celebrates with friends to keep the festive mood alive in college. (Keila Mayberry/Daily Bruin staff)

A clerk at the Green Bazaar in Almaty, Kazakhstan asked Brenda Tinoco-Bravo what the weather was like in Los Angeles. Tinoco-Bravo quickly replied “80 degrees” in her intermediate Russian and watched the clerk’s eyebrows go up. Read more...

Photo: Students Brenda Tinoco-Bravo and Dante Matero stand at either side of Stephen Lesser, the beneficiary for the UCLA Russian Flagship Stephen Lesser Award. The scholarship was awarded Saturday for outstanding personal reflection essays written during the department’s summer Kazakhstan study abroad program. (Zinnia Moreno/Daily Bruin)