Year: 2007

Well, it looks Mom is heading to Guangzhou, not Shenzhen as originally anticipated. By train to Hong Kong, it is about 1:45 minutes away and one way train ticket is about US$50.00. The trains are numerous and almost every hour has one.

Mom is taking a lot physical exams together with many shots for the vaccination. She is scheduled to leave for Boston from Augusta, GA on the 7th (Sunday) and heads to Hong Kong on the 11th (Thursday). She will be heading for work in Guangzhou from Hong Kong on the 15th.

Yesterday, we spent the day driving to Albany, NY to meet a family who has an eight year old daughter with Rett Syndrome. I got their name through the RETTNET – an online support group for parents.

They were wonderfully generous with their time and information – they’ve lived in Albany for decades and they had us over for lunch and then a babysitter came over to take care of their 4 year old and Vincent while we took Edda and their 8 year old on a drive all over Albany to look at the different neighborhoods. It was nice to get a tour from a native of the area and not a realtor. So we’ve found a neighborhood that we like with a good school system – we’ll just have to find a house there.

The special needs classes for Edda seem to be sprinkled around the area and not so specific to a specific school district. It sounds like it depends a lot on who is teaching the class and who is the child’s 1-on-1 aide.

Their daughter has never been able to walk, but she is able to read and do math on the 2nd grade level (only one year behind), which is so wonderful to see!

Well, It was a fun time in NY. We crashed Times Square after midnight from Choon’s brother’s apartment. It was a mess, and crazy, but I can see how it would be a lot of fun – for maybe the last 2 hours, or at least drunk off your ass. 🙂 The cops were a bit nasty at times, but I can understand. We saw Carson Daly in the NBC booth. We tried to buy some pizza at a place at about 1:30am. It was cold, even tho they had put it in the oven. We didn’t wake up until 1pm. 🙂

Monday was a dreary day in the city. We didn’t do anything, but I had to catch my flight at LGA, which ended up being delayed a half hour due to the rain. This was not good since I had a connecting flight in DC at 9:30. My flight touched down in IAD at 9:18 and it took maybe 8 more minutes to dock the plane and deboard. I was freaking lucky that the SFO flight was the gate straight across the hall from the gate that I deboarded from. The door was closed, but there were a ton of people from Boston begging to be let on the flight. Sigh. So yeah I made it, but my bag didn’t. Hopefully they’ll get it FedExed to me today.

Oh also, there’s a slight possiblilty that I left my Oakleys in NY at Jeremy’s parent’s place. I need to get my bag back to rummage thru it, so don’t go all crazy or anything – it still might be in my bag. I just don’t remember seeing it when I repacked at Choon’s bro’s place…

We just came back around 4:30 PM.

Well, here are my new year’s resolutions:

1. Worry less.
2. Be less judgmental.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.
6. Eat more fruits and vegetables.
7. Exercise more.

There you go, nothing too specific, but hopefully I’ll work on each thing a little bit each day.

Today we went into NYC to visit Arlinda, my cousin. I was taking the whole family into the city for a lunch date and it seemed so silly to go all the way to NYC for just a lunch date, but I hadn’t seen Arlinda in over 8 years and I’m glad that we did it because I had fun and it was a beautiful day and we all ran around Central Park.

(Look at the previous entries – I added some photos to the entries now that I finally have a reliable internet connection.)

Happy new year to all!