Name: Watch Michelle Obama Speak to the Democratic National Convention
Uploaded: 2016-10-09T04:49:34.000Z
Duration: 26 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

[Applause and music: Stevie Wonder's Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours.]

Thank you - thank you so much - thank you - thank you so much

With your help... Let me announce ... Let me start.

I want to start by thanking Elaine. Elaine, thank you so much

We are so grateful for your family's service and sacrifice

and we will always have you back. [Applause]

I have had the extraordinary privilege of traveling all across this country.

And everywhere I’ve gone, in the people I’ve met, and the stories I’ve heard,

I have seen the very best of the American spirit.

I have seen it in the incredible kindness and warmth

that people have shown me and my family, especially our girls.

I’ve seen it in teachers in a near-bankrupt school district

I’ve seen it in people who become heroes at a moment’s notice,

diving  into harm’s way to save others, flying across the country to put out a  fire,

driving for hours to bail out a flooded town.

And I’ve seen it in our men and women in uniform and our proud  military families.

in wounded warriors who tell me they’re not just going  to walk again,

they’re going to run, and they’re going to run  marathons. [Applause]

in the young man blinded by a bomb in Afghanistan who said,  simply,

“…I’d give my eyes 100 times again to have the chance to do

what I have done and what I can still do.”

Every day, the people I meet inspire me, every day, they make me  proud,

every day they remind me how blessed we are to live in the  greatest nation on earth. [Applause]

Serving as your First Lady is an honor and a privilege

but back when  we first came together four years ago,

I still had some concerns about  this journey we’d begun.

While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country

and I  was certain he would make an extraordinary President, like any mother,

I  was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that  chance.

Now, how would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?

How would they feel being uprooted from their school, their friends,

See, our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple  joys:

Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at grandma’s house,

and a date  night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie,

because as an  exhausted mom, I couldn’t stay awake for both. [Laughter]

And the truth is, I loved the life we had built for our girls.

And I  deeply loved the man I had built that life with,

and I didn’t want that  to change if he became President. [Applause]

You see, even back then, when Barack was a Senator and a  presidential candidate,

to me, he was still the guy who’d picked me up  for our dates in a car that was so rusted out,

I could actually see the  pavement going by in a hole in the passenger side door.

He was the  guy whose proudest possession was a coffee table he’d found in a  dumpster,

and whose only pair of decent shoes was half a size too small.

But see, when Barack started telling me about his family –

see, now, that’s when I  knew I had found a kindred spirit,

someone whose values and upbringing  were so much like mine.

You see, Barack and I were both raised by families

who didn’t have  much in the way of money or material possessions

but who had given us  something far more valuable –

their unconditional love, their  unflinching sacrifice,

and the chance to go places they had never  imagined for themselves.

My father was a pump operator at the city water plant,

and he was  diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when my brother and I were young.

And even as a kid, I knew there were plenty of days when he was in  pain.

And I knew there were plenty of mornings when it was a struggle for him

But every morning, I watched my father wake up with a smile, grab his  walker,

prop himself up against the bathroom sink, and slowly shave and  button his uniform.

And when he returned home after a long day’s work,

my brother and I  would stand at the top of the stairs of our little apartment,

watching as he reached down to lift one leg, and  then the other,

But despite these challenges, my dad hardly ever missed a day of  work.

He and my mom were determined to give me and my brother

the kind of  education they could only dream of.  [Applause]

And when my brother and I finally made it to college,

nearly all of our tuition came from student loans and grants.

But my dad still had to pay a tiny portion of that tuition himself.

And every semester, he was determined to pay that bill right on time,

even taking out loans when he fell short.

He was so proud to be sending his kids to college

and he made sure we  never missed a registration deadline because his check was late.

You see, for my dad, that’s what it meant to be a man.

Like - like so many of us, that was the measure of his success in life –

being able to earn a decent living that allowed him to support his  family.

I realized that even though he had grown  up all the way across the country,

Barack was raised by a single mom who struggled to pay the bills,

and by grandparents who stepped in when she needed help.

Barack’s grandmother started out as a secretary at a community  bank

and she moved quickly up the ranks, but like so many women, she hit a  glass ceiling.

And for years, men no more qualified than she was – men she had  actually trained –

were promoted up the ladder ahead of her, earning  more and more money

while Barack’s family continued to scrape by.

But day after day, she kept on waking up at dawn to catch the  bus,

arriving at work before anyone else, giving her best without  complaint or regret.

“So long as you kids do well, Bar, that’s all that really matters.”

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much.

They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care

that others had much more than they did. In fact, they admired it.

They simply believed in that fundamental American promise,

that even  if you don’t start out with much,

if you work hard and do what you’re  supposed to do,