Are You Happy?

Yesterday morning I saw this on youtube. It is an adorable movie with the cutest 3 year old and I spent part of the movie laughing and crying. You don't have to watch it, I know that not everyone gets excited about watching 9 and a half minutes of Chinese. 

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My favorite part comes at the end when one of the judges asked the little boy why he wants to dance and he replies "Because I like dancing. When I dance, my mom laughs. My mom says laughing is happiness." Another judge then said, "Tell me, what is your dream?" He replied, "My dream is...to make people happy because I'm happy. Are you happy?"

Such wisdom from a three year old. I love it, I want to keep this as a reminder to always ask myself if I am doing something that is making me laugh and making me happy.

Christmas Dancing

As we were getting ready to head over to Ben and Sonia's for Christmas morning brunch I was listening to some music (and was really feeling it apparently :D). For some reason Kyle decided to snap some pictures...this is why I don't dance around other people ;)

Dance It Girlfriend!

Last Monday when I was on the bus we passed Sonic in Provo, when we were at a red light I looked over and watched this girl dancing as she was holding up an advertisement. I watched her for a couple of minutes and she was dancing the whole time. I again passed her today a couple of times, with several hours in between them and she was still dancing away. I love seeing people who are putting their whole energy into their job and really seem to be enjoying themselves.

Friday night at the basketball game they were playing music during half-time, I looked across and saw these girls dancing. Unfortunately I only caught the end of it on camera but I loved seeing how carefree they were and how much fun they were having.

Halloween Parade

Last week Mom and I went to help Sonia in Samuel's classroom Halloween party. After the party they had a whole school parade. I took lots of pictures of the cute costumes so that I can get plenty of ideas for next year!

This was soooooo cute! When I have a little girl I am totally making her a costume like this (if you can't tell it's a little flower pot!)

Mary Poppins...awesome! I love it and it's so amazing how close she did.

The parents waiting for the kids to come (they first walked through each classroom before coming to the cafeteria so it took awhile)

This little girl was in her own little world, just dancing away as she walked through the parade.

I don't know why, but I just love the simplicity and creativity of the lego costume :D

How cute is that? She's a swan princess (she even had a tiara on her head)

My cute nephew...he was Darth Vader but masks weren't allowed at school so you couldn't quite tell.

This big brother was so cute and walking his little brother through the parade with him.

This whole family was awesome! They had Colonel Sanders (KFC), Burger King, Pizza Hut, Wendy's, and the two characters from McDonalds.

I loved this teachers costume...she was the tooth fairy.

Freaky!

There were several sets of Mario's and Luigi's.

My beautiful niece! Can you believe that she is already 9?!

CD1 - Dinner

Andrea and I talked about all the different food we had on this trip and we decided that the restaurants that were chosen were catered to the fact that we came from Taiwan, we kind of wished that we had gotten to try a little bit of different food on this trip but we enjoyed most of what we ate anyway.

Before we could start eating we had to catch a picture of everyone first :D

They had 4 or 5 different sections with different kinds of foods, we all just rotated through the sections for each plate trying a little bit of everything. Those flat things on the left were deep fried bananas, I wasn't a big fan and will probably not be trying them again.

This was really good, it was some noodles with I have not clue what's on top--they chose it for me. I really liked it though, it kind of tasted like black licorice.

This was really good too, there was sweet and sour beef I believe and something else that I liked.

While we ate we had many different types of entertainment--music, dancing, stories, singing!

As we were leaving we decided to catch one more picture of the group of us...it only took like 4 shots to get a good one :D

Leslee's Big Day

Friday morning when I came to class I was handed an envelope from one of the other teachers. I opened it and inside I found a card from Leslee (one of my previous students and now a tutor student) and her Mom, inviting me to come to Far East Shopping Mall on Saturday to watch Leslee compete in a model show.

I was already planning on going there to do some shopping and jumped at being able to support Leslee (I had helper her a couple of weeks ago work on introducing herself in English in case she got invited to this competition).

She started out in this cute blue dress with a teddy bear clutched in her arms. She walked in and gave the judges a big smile and the traditional peace sign. Then she talked to the guy in Chinese for awhile, ran back stage...

Her family and friends were prepared with a couple of signs, it has her name in English and her Chinese name (Yo Tien Hwa)

...she came back out dressed ready to cheer. She was cute and did a dance to "Oh Mickey."

Her score! She was number 32 and the best that you could get was 30!

Afterwards Leslee and Alice (one of the 5 year olds) hugged, played, and ran around like little girls do.

Drum-roll please...out of 50 participants Leslee got 2nd place! So she along with these two others will be going to Taipei in two weeks to represent Hualien in a bigger competition.

They looked thrilled (or distracted at least :D) by their prizes.

I looked over to see Alice scrounging through my purse...naughty girl!

Our beautiful winner! (I'm not a proud teacher :D)