It has been a while since the last time my sister played the piano, but now, right at this minute, there’s sound of her beautiful music floating throughout the house.
I am SO GLAD to hear that!
She’s a natural pianist - someone I adore, and envied even because of how gifted she is at piano. Ever since she was little, the sound of music coming from her fingers is just different from any other kids. For years throughout my childhood and adolescent years, I tried everything to beat her in competitions, but could never do. While all our famous piano teachers deemed her Juilliard material as she won competition after competition, I was left being the forgotten one. It wasn’t until years afterwards that I realize there was nothing to be envied about. Piano is in her more than in me. It makes her happy more than it does to me. That’s all. Read the rest of this entry »
It has been almost a week since our big engagement party, but I am still recuperating from it. The party was a success, filled with abundant joy and love, but it was also so much work at the same time!
It all started with a very simple idea, which then snowballed into a bigger and bigger production. At first, after we announced John’s proposal to our parents, his mom wanted to do a small Christian ceremony in the church for our engagement. Doing it in the church would have been easiest, but upon hearing the idea, my mom responded “why not have the ceremony at home?”. Then, since we were going to have it at home, John’s mom said we should serve some “snacks”. And upon hearing that, my mom said “why not serve dinner?”. Then, since we were serving dinner, my mom said “why not invite more relatives and friends?”
Before we knew it, the guestlist was at 85. On the day itself, about 100 guests were at my parents house, and there were many more that my dad would have liked to invite but had no space for. And we sat all of them down for dinner!!! None of the approximately 100 guests included John’s or my friends. We couldn’t invite our own friends because we went over-capacity too fast. Talk about craziness! My parents have too many friends, and also, the news of my engagement just attracted lots of attention. Read the rest of this entry »
It is all happening. Hard to believe, but it is all happening this Sunday
My engagement party will be held at my parents’ house in late afternoon on Sunday, 6/22. The balcony will be decorated with balloons and candles, plus music will flow in the air. Our friends and family will gather for a Christian liturgy, then we’ll move tables and chairs out for a sit-down dinner. My parents have held big parties at home before, but this is the first time we are serving about 100 guests for dinner on our balcony, so it’s exciting.
Arrangements have been made to have tables and chairs transported to the house in the afternoon. Matching table clothes, plates, cups, utensils, vases for center pieces, candles, candle holders, ribbons, glitters, wine… etc… all have been brought. I also got my paintings framed for this occasion. Initially, we were going to cater food, but many of our family friends volunteered to prepare various yummy dishes for us that we actually had to cut down on the menu. My voice teacher and my mom will sing for us to open the ceremony, and a pianist that I’ve long admired is going to perform for us! Three pastors who are close to my family have thoughtfully prepared a beautiful program. A super sweet lady is giving us an engagement cake. John’s mom will make the center piece for each table. Our dads have arrived from Taiwan for this occasion. So far we’ve only announced the news to our close friends and family, and we’ve already attracted more than 100 people to come share our joy. These 100 guests does not even include John’s and my friends, as we are over-capacity already.
So much love. We are so blessed!
Sometimes when I sit back to reflect on how John and I met, how this dream-like romance has progressed, what a marvelous young man he is, and our prospect of having a very fulfilled life together, I always feel so, so, so, so overwhelmingly blessed!
Now I just hope I won’t cry when my dad gives a speech on Sunday.
On the second to last day of my trip, I visited my grand uncles and uncles at my late great grandma’s old house at Danding — a mountainous region at the southeast edge of Taipei basin.
My great grandparents had six children. My grandma is the 3rd of the six. Each of the six children (my grandma and grand uncles) had many kids, which results in my mom having lots of cousins and me having something like 26+ uncles and aunts all in the Taipei region. My parents used to spend a lot of time with that side of the family when we were little, however, ever since moving to Taitung when I was 10, interaction with all relatives in Taipei became sparse, although the family bond remained strong.
And then after we immigrated to the U.S. in 1992, interaction with all grand uncles, uncles and aunties become even more sparse because 1. once I visit one uncle, I have to visit all others to be respectful and fair to all of them. 2. visiting all of them could easily take a whole month, but all our trips back to Taiwan had been too short for that. Read the rest of this entry »
In some ways, my family never spend Christmas the way conventional American families do. Since my family is always separated over two countries during the holiday season, and since we don’t really have relatives in this country, we never completley adopted to the mainstream Christmas tradition ever since we moved to the U.S. If it is a good year, we would have 4 out of 5 members of the family here. But if it is a quiet year, we would have 2 out of 5. This year, we had 4 out of 5, which made it a very, very good Christmas.
Don’t get me wrong, because we do love Christmas. While we may not have a glittering tress by our fireplace, we always try to do something Christmassy and still manage to have a warm Christmas nonetheless. In the years passed we’ve joined church friends in singing Christmas carols, performed in Christmas concerts, attended candle light services in churches, seen Christmas tree lighteings, drove to snowy mountains to build a snowman, gone on trips, volunteered in soup kitchen and toy drives to serve the homeless and the poor… This year, we had a faculous time watching Christmas lights together! We saw the Newport Beach boat parade, plus many festive light displays in Brea and Yorba Linda. Read the rest of this entry »
It has been almost a week since our big engagement party, but I am still recuperating from it. The party was a success, filled with abundant joy and love, but it was also so much work at the same time!
