SPAC Tour - Utah and Nauvoo, Illinois

We're back from our tour with the BYU Folkdance Ensemble. We had a great time both visiting Elementary Schools in Utah and dancing in Nauvoo, IL and the surroundings. Here are some pictures from our tour.

School is out and tour is at the door!

My dear friends, celebrate with me. I finished one more year at BYU, having only one more semester to go! On Wednesday, the 23 of April, I had my last final exam of the semester and now I'm FREE! :) Well, not quite actually but it feels good not having to worry about readings and homework. My SPAC tour will start on Monday, the 28th of April and I'm really excited and nervous at the same time. I had a lot of shopping to do and now I'm waiting with anticipation to start the tour. David is on the team as well but being a second year SPAC-er he doesn't feel as nervous as I am. That helps me relax a little bit. Because of being nervous and wanting to have the time pass faster, why I've been meeting with friends to keep me busy and help me forget. Yesterday, Gabi Creata and I went shopping and had a good time. I drove all over Provo in intense traffic and it felt great. Today the two of us and Eve will make cozonac and at midnight we'll go to Salt Lake to the Orthodox Church to celebrate the Orthodox Easter. I'm excited to be outside of the church tonight, carrying lit candles and singing "Hristos a inviat". Tomorrow we'll have a potluck dinner with our SPAC friends and we may even spend some time with Gabi again. Hopefully all this won't wear us out and we'll be ready at 7:30 AM on Monday for our first tour day! We've worked hard this semester and learned many dances that we're all excited to share with the kids around Utah and with the visitors that will be in Navoo in June this year. I'll keep you posted on how the tour is going and I'll share pictures as I'll have some. So, stay tuned!

2007 - A year of joy!

December 2007

Dear family and friends,

2007 is been a full year for us. We’ve been going to school full time at BYU and we also worked on campus while also being on a folk dance team. Here is a short review of our year. We hope that you’ll enjoy hearing from us.

In March David and Daliana decided to unite their lives and got married in Manti, Utah. They were happy to see so many family and friends who came to celebrate with them and they would like to thank everyone who sent presents for being so nice and thoughtful.

Daliana is a senior in College. She just decided to change her major to Humanities with a French language emphasis. Besides her major, Dali is working on a World Dance minor and a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) minor. As a result, she still has a few more semesters to go until she graduates. Dali still works at the Open Access Computer Lab on campus and starting January she became a Shift Supervisor. She enjoys her job very much.

David is a senior in college as well, majoring in Exercise Science and planning to go to Medical School afterwards. He is working on a World Dance minor as well. David works as a Lab Attendant in the MAC/PC Humanities Computer Lab and as a web programmer in the Humanities Department. In May 2007 David went on a one-month folk dance tour to all the Elementary Schools in the Utah Valley. He enjoyed his experience very much and is excited to be doing it again next year. He thinks that this time it will be an even better experience because he will get to do it with Daliana.

Together, Dali and David went on a trip to California where they had a wonderful time with their grandparents and other family members, and before that they went to the Arches National Park and other National Parks in Southern Utah.

As you can see, we had a great year. We hope that you and your family had a prosperous year as well.

Marry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love,

David and Daliana Johansen

I made it!!!!!

On Wednesday David and I found out that we were selected to be part of the Spring Performing Arts Company at BYU, or SPAC. SPAC is the back-up touring folk dance team at BYU. David was on it last year but for me is the first time. I've been folk dancing for almost two years now and this is a great achievement for me. We will go on tour in the month of May 2008 and will dance for all the elementary schools in the Utah Valley and around. it's going to be tons of fun. The picture is from a concert that we had a few weeks ago in Salt lake City with my current team, 9 RB. I love folk dance and I'm so excited to dance with David next semester.

Long time no posts.....

It's been more than two months since I last wrote something. Time to repent and talk a little about our wonderful California vacation. We stayed in Garden Grove at David's grandparents and we had a great time. We went in LA a couple time and saw the Griffith Observatory, the Hollywood sign, the Grumman's Chinese theater and the boulevard of stars. Another time we went to Disneyland and had a blast remembering what being a child was like. I liked feeling like a child again in the land of happiness. I got myself a Tinker Bell green shirt and David got himself a nice big cup (tradition). Of course that the beach was on our list of things to do, together with some Romanian and Filipino food shopping that we did at the little stores in Garden Grove.

Springville Fun

This last week David and I had a great time in Springville, UT with some friends who visited from out of town. I'm talking about Marta and Mark Chapman and Aura Ene. We met at brother and sister Smart's home, had dinner together, played games took pictures and just had old plain fun talking and joking. Marta and Aura are from Romania and I've known them for more than 7 years now. They are really nice and fun people to be around. I hope you'll enjoy some pictures of our adventure.

Folk Dance

One of the things David and I love is folk dancing. We both started folk dance at BYU and made it to different teams. David was even on the back-up team (or SPAC) this year!

Anyway, like I said, we love dancing so we decided to be counselors for the folk dance camp this year. That was a great thing and we had a lot of fun with the kids. I had a group of 6 girls between 10 and 13 and David had a group of 6 boys between 9 and 18. It was a lot of fun to take care of the kids and to help them learn the dances and enjoy the camp. We did everything together. David had to teach the boys a couple dances and that was a good experience for him. We learned Irish dances, African, Hawaiian and Polynesian dances and also a mixture of dances from all over the world including my and David's most favorite, Israeli folk dances.

Now, that the camp is over and we both got back to our jobs (we both work in computer labs on campus), we decided that we wanted some folk dance in our life so, I became a TA for the international folk dance class and David TA-s for the clogging class. We both have a lot of fun TA-ing even if it's hard sometimes to teach dances. It's a very rewarding activity too because we get to learn from the teachers how we can become better teachers and dancers and in the same time we help students get better and learn the dances faster.

Because I want to get better at dancing, I decided to take an Irish Dance class at the Power Academy of Irish Dance. It's a class where I can learn proper technique and become stronger and more true to the Irish dance style. I like the class because it gives me the chance to practice and learn new things and it's also fun and entertaining. All the students are friendly and the teacher, Aubrey, is really nice and a great dancer.

I love being a TA and I love folk dance. Oh, I forgot to mention this: It's because of folk dance that I met David. We were in a dance class together when we first met last year. But that's going to be another story...

Hello world!

Well, I'm new to this but I'm excited to share a bit of our life with you.

I'm Daliana, a senior at Brigham Young University, Utah. I'm a French Studies major and I have three minors: World Dance, Computers and the Humanities (CHum) and TESOL (Teaching English as a second language). I'll probably graduate in a year and might go to grad school to become a certified TESOL teacher. I love to dance, to travel and also to have fun. I love foreign languages like French and Spanish and other cultures too.

On March 3, 2007 I married David Johansen. He is a student at BYU as well, studying Exercise Science and planning to go to Med School. He loves Mac Computers, folk dance (clogging and Israeli in particular) and watching movies. He also plays computer games sometimes.

So, this is our little life in a nut shell. We love it. We live in Provo for now but would love to travel and live around the world. I was born in Bucharest, Romania and came to the United States on December 31st, 2002 to study at BYU and David, who was born in Provo, Utah has lived in Germany, Korea and Japan and visited many other countries. He's also been a missionary in the Philippines and speaks a language called Visayan (Cebuano).