Writing feature stories

In my advanced news and feature writing class so far I have written two feature stories. The second story was a revision of the first. My biggest problem with writing the story was getting a topic. I had originally planned to profile a professor on campus, but He was unavailable. I then decided to write a feature on a Valentine's Day concert, but I was unable to make it. Finally I Decided to cover the Taiwanese Student Association's Chinese New Year celebration.
Although I was very sick while attending the event, I did enjoy it (plus free food is always motivation). It was good to experience a different culture in a fun way like that, but their dialects made it hard to understand some of the people I wanted to quote.
Writing the story wasn't very hard once I had all of the information I needed. I started with a summary of what happened, then I added the quotes from the sources. After that all I needed to do was a little research and got some additional quotes, then I put it all together.
The best part about the research was finding out about the Chinese zodiac. I read a lot about the year of the pig (the current year in the Chinese zodiac cycle). Many places had different information, but I just used their consistancies in the story. I also enjoyed finding out what year I was born in (the year of the rat).
Overall I enjoyed the experience of writing this feature story. It was both fun and informative. I hope that the stories I write in the future can be as useful as these were.