Chinese New Year Celebration

Grace and the Director of the Confucious Institute


Analiese and the Director

Sweet Analiese

Family Fun

We had a great time this afternoon celebrating the Year of the Tiger--Chinese New Year, The Spring Festival--it has so many names! We first were treated to two hours of music, dancing (including some dragons)and some other fun entertainment. After that we enjoyed a meal of traditional chinese foods.

The celebration was held at the University. In the past few years the University's Asian Studies has grown tremendously. Their Confucious Center is now working with the Georgia Lottery Prekindergarten programs. Each child enrolled in that program is learning the chinese language!! What a great opportunity. This evening part of the show was a group of prek students singing songs in chinese! It was so wonderful!

I just cannot put into words how wonderful it is for my girls to see their culture celebrated by not just other Asians but by everyone! There was such a multi-cultural group in attendance this evening. We feel so fortunate to have this program so close and available to us.

One of the sponsors of this afternoon's celebration was the Confucious Institute. This is the group that is Grace's sponsor for her gymnastics. Grace was able to give the Director of the Institute, Mr. Ken Jen, not only a thank-you card but she also gave him a photo of her on the beam. He hugged her so many times and told her how proud of her he was. He introduced her to the other members of the institute. When we thanked him for his support he responded that Dave is their "special friend" and they were very glad to help Grace, and want to continue their support.

When Mr. Jen found out that Grace was the Georgia State Champion he said that he couldn't wait until she was the national champion. Soon, Mr. Jen, soon...