Not Miss Yu... It's MRS. YU!

Yippee!
On June 21st, 2008, James and I got married at the First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto.  We had our reception afterwards at Villa Ragusa with 400 guests and we had a great time celebrating with our friends and family.  We went to the Riviera Maya (south of Cancun) for our honeymoon, and now we're back and getting settled together as a married couple!   Since I'm no longer "Miss Yu," I guess I'll stop this blog, and start another one with James.  So... goodbye Xanga!  From now on (or at least in the meantime), visit James and I on our wedding website: www.yuyuwedding.com
We'll see if we can keep it updated regularly =)
Bye!

Happy Easter

Welcome Home Surprise!

 I'm back from an awesome month-long backpacking trip to Europe!  I visited France, Spain, Italy, and Switzerland and returned late Sunday night.  More on the actual trip in another post later...

Anyways, I had plans to have dinner with James Monday night since we hadn't seen each other in a month, so I went over to his place.  He wasn't home but this is what I saw when I came in... (and wow, he actually bought those brown linens and matching candles!)

with a big sign that says, "START HERE," on the table:

And the scavenger hunt begins!  I run over to the bedroom, and this is the next thing I find!

Beautiful beautiful long stem roses... and the next clue told me to go find something behind the TV, so next I find:

So sweet!  He bought me cute clothes to wear just cuz he missed me!  After this, the clue told me to go to the bathroom cabinet...

I LOVE ice cream, and James definitely knows that!  Yippee!  Gift certificates to my favorite food!!!  Afterwards, I run to the DVD and open it to see:

Hmmm.... I turn on the TV, and this is what he made!!!

A whole slideshow with pictures from YEARS of being together... it brought back so many memories.  He actually had so many photos he had never shown me before from previous trips and it was amazing!  The best part was that he used different songs throughout the video... and the first song was one of my favorites that I never thought he remembered (you know, I think I mentioned it before but didn't thing he was really paying attention...).  Anyways, as soon as I started watching it... I was crying.  Well, remember, I'm all by myself too... so why hold back?  =)

At the end of the video, it said to go to the freezer for a tasty treat!  So off I go, running to the freezer, and I see... (apologies for the blurry picture):

After doing a double take and simply staring at it... James comes out from the closet (he was hiding the whole time and apparently was holding back a sneeze for like 20 minutes...hahah).  After giving me a heartattack, he gets down on one knee and says his speech (I can tell he had been practicing...heehehe), and tada!  He pulls out the real ring from his pocket (the one in the ice cream is a fake.  It's identical but the jeweler gave it to him in case I ever go somewhere shady and need a fake one handy), I say yes!, and now we're ENGAGED!!!  woohooooo!

It's soooo pretty!  I always told him, "Can you just put a string on my finger and let's get eloped???"  But I guess he didn't want to listen to me... and did it 10000000x better!

At the end, I found out there was a hidden video camera in the kitchen!!!  So it captured everything from the moment I come running into the kitchen (wiping my face from crying), opening the freezer (and staring at it with confusion), to James kneeling down (stuttering during his speech...hehe) and the proposal!  Here is the culprit after James removed it from it's secret spot (I hate the feeling of having a hidden camera on me!!!  Right when I found out, I said, "Turn it off!!!" haha)

Well... that's the story.  And thanks to everyone who has supported us all these years.... over 7 years of dating!  Wow.  I can't stop smiling =)

2007 Talent Show

Teaching is absolutely one of the most stressful, time-consuming, energy-sucking jobs in the world.  And yet, I have one and a half days left in the school year and am dreading saying goodbye to this class.  It's kind of an on and off thing.  One year is great, one year is killer, next year better, after that hard... teaching is very much a love-hate relationship. 

Anyhow, with ALL the things we have to complete by the end of the year, somehow, I try to squeeze in MORE!  Always.  It's kind of a problem of mine.  Always doing too much.  Anyways, of course, I created a routine for the teachers to perform as the finale of our talent show.  It's our 5th Annual Teacher Dance!  But in addition, I decided to have my kids perform too... I couldn't resist.  Yes, it's more time, more stress, more money (I had to get bandanas to make it that much cuter!).... but boy is it worth it!  Here are my cutie-petuties dancing...

The Cha Cha Slide!!!

And of course, the teachers dance - it was a GREASE theme this year!!! You have to understand, these teachers vary in age and vary in performance levels - some never have danced in front of others, you know? In fact, one teacher turned pale white right before the performance and was ready to faint!!! Good thing that didn't happen! But in the end, it's just for the kids, and it is just too much fun to worry about the moves!!! I love my job!

kindness.pbwiki.com

With everything going on in our world... well, there's an even greater need to try and change the future generations for the better... is it possible?  is it realistic?  I hope so.

I was part of a technology integration program for teachers this past year called Earn While You Learn through the Krause Center of Innovation at Foothill College (www.krauseinnovationcenter.org) and I decided to create a Kindness Project.  Every week, my first graders (who don't speak English as a first language) brainstormed ways we could spread kindness to others, to the world, to ourselves... and I found this great website called PBwiki that was super easy for the kids to use (PBwiki just recently changed their pages so that educators could have ad-free sites, AND they thoughtfully increased my storage space because I was running low - very cool).  Anyways, my kids typed their sentences each week, and once or twice a month would illustrate their sentences using a drawing software called KidPix.  Anyhow, it's still ongoing, but I thought I'd share with you their work.  Check out the video below which shows a few of my kids presenting our Kindness Project to the District Board Members.