Happy Valentine's Day

I just have to share about the Valentine’s Day Party that our students gave us this weekend. It was amazing. It truly blew us away; all the thought and effort that went into this gathering. We often give parties for our students, but none of them have compared to the party that they threw for us this weekend. A very large group of the students from the Conversation Club at the English Center practiced every day for two weeks to give us this beautiful display of talent and love!

Basically they spent all of their free time the last couple of weeks, arranging, rehearsing, baking, looking up trivia, poetry, studying the love languages, finding quotes to fill the walls of the conference room etc. I feel like we have the best students in the world at our center. I am not even exaggerating. I can’t imagine a more wonderful gesture of love from students.

They gave this party to honor the various foreigners (Americans, Australians, Germans & British) that work at the Center. They began by singing “I just called to say I love you” by Stevie Wonder. Then they hosted a trivia game with various different questions to challenge our minds, they even rewarded us with prizes when we didn’t get many of the questions correct. After this they read some poetry and did a little demonstration of the five love languages. Then they did a skit where they acted like a class of students and they did impressions of some of the teachers, including Curtis and I. It was so funny because one of my students, who is also a good friend, was supposed to be Curtis.

Then they called up Andrew and I to go head to head, answering questions about our spouses! I was able to win this competition; even though they have been married for 11 years, but I guess there is more room for preferences to change.  After this they did an amazing dance with about 10 people, girls and boys! It was astonishing how well the boys did, not to mention the girls who were obviously quite a bit more agile than most of the boys.

They closed with another song sung by one talented young lady. Afterwards we went out into the foyer and ate beautiful heart shaped sugar cookies, the one thing that I was allowed to help with  , and drank tea of course.

It is so difficult to express how much my heart is touched by what they have done and by how cute they are. They are adorable and loving and precious. Seriously, I can’t describe the way that they looked with their huge smiles singing “I just called to say I love you.”

Somehow I wish that I could take all of the love that I felt at that moment and smear it all over this page, but however hard I try, I can’t. It was a beautiful thing; it made me realize how blessed I am to be working with these kids. They are talented and beautiful and loving and grateful for all that we have given to them. I just don’t know what else I would want to do with my life. I feel advantaged to be pouring my love and energy into these kids!

It is these moments that help me to remember why I am here. I LOVE these kids! THEY are WHY I am HERE!