Happy Birthday Mr. Lin!

Hello everyone!

Today is Mr. Lin's Birthday!!!

so of course, our studio had to throw him a surprise birthday party  ;)

It all began last night when a couple of us from our studio got together to decorate his door.

Andy, Lijia, Jennifer, and I feeling incredibly mischievous  =p  haha

Our theme was "the more ridiculous the better"

so accordingly, the door had everything from birthday wrapping paper, to sparkly picture of a birthday cake, to little explosions of sparkly ribbon goodness, 'happy birthday' banner, and of course, streamers.

the finished product!!!!

Andy and Lijia also cut out cute little figures from the left over wrapping paper 

to decorate his name tag  haha

the whole crew!

Then this morning, our pianist, Neal, let us into his studio 

so that we could decorate the inside of his studio as well.

Then, we waited inside the studio with a cake to surprise him as he came into teach for the day.

I've never baked a 'real' cake before, 

(you know, the fluffy, incredibly sweet kind that people always eat on birthdays...)

so I was thinking about baking him a carrot cake that my trio used to make together all the time.

So last week, just to make sure that it would be a good choice,

I asked Mr. Lin if he liked carrots.

Needless to say, I think he was quite perplexed by the question  haha

the question was answered with something along the lines of,

"what?  you mean, like,,  raw carrots...?"

but in the end I got the answer I needed, which was 

"yes, I do like carrots"

so the carrot cake made its appearance at our studio this morning  =)

poor thing got squished in the middle on its way over to school...  =/

The surprise party had a bit of a rocky beginning because some of us had classes to run to,

and Mr. Lin was a bit late getting to school than we had anticipated.

So, just to make sure all of us could all stay,

Andy called Mr. Lin to ask if he was close to school,

and gave the excuse that he needed to know because he had to run and get something from his locker before his lesson.

We got the answer that Mr. Lin was about 20 yards from school, 

so all of us, even the ones late to class,

ran back into his studio and waited in silence to surprise him.

Our plan was that as soon as Mr. Lin got to the door,

Lisa would count '1, 2, 3' and all of us would yell,

"Happy Birthday Mr. Lin!!"

in time with him opening the door.

However, Mr. Lin got to the door, 

which we knew because we could hear him chuckling through the wall,

but then he fell silent for at least a couple of minutes before opening the door!

Poor Lisa counted '1, 2,,,'  at least like 10 times   haha

(later on, he informed us that was because he was taking pictures of the door)

But at last, he finally opened the door, 

and was greeted with all of us yelling,

"Happy Birthday!!!"

His reaction was basically perfect  =)

And he liked the carrot cake too!

but I mean, we already knew that he liked carrots, so we weren't too worried  ;)

 So Happy Birthday Mr. Lin!

Thank you for teaching all of us!

most of Mr. Lin's studio and our wonderful pianist, Neal.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

--Janny