A little past midnight last night Cici sent an email message to me.  I opened it this morning.  She is still in Chicago on her concert band tour with her school band.

I tried to call you just now, the message said, but there was no cell phone signal.  My classmate also has T-Mobile, so she also has no signal.  I can't call you, but I will be back tomorrow, and I will call you in the morning.  I am not sure when, but I will call you tomorrow.  I miss you and Mama so much ...

Her plane is due to arrive in Houston around 12:30 this afternoon, so she will be back home soon.  It is Spring Break for her this week, so she can burrow back into our home where she loves to be with us.  It has been a long few days without her.  I can only imagine how difficult it will be for us this summer when we are separated for two months.

Our T-Mobile contract ends in May, and I think they will let us change carriers up to 60 days before the contract ends without paying the early termination penalty.  This incident gives us another good reason to change to Verizon.  She had the same problem with no signal when she went on school trips for the freshman and sophomore retreats and for marching band activities.

Fortunately, Cici was able to call me yesterday morning while I was at the office.  I was meeting with new clients but I answered hercall anyway.  We only talked for a few minutes, but it lifted our spirits, and she promised to call me last night.  Hence her email.

I can't wait to hear our daughter's laughter ringing through our home again, and to see the big smile that she wears on her face.  Yes, I also miss you so much.

Our little girl had a long day yesterday in Chicago, so we didn't talk to her until 9:00 p.m. when she arrived at the host family's house.  We talked about her day and the food, and she sounded happy to be talking to us.  Ping had already talked with her.  Come back home soon, I told Cici as I was saying goodbye.  We miss you a lot.  Her reply came without hesitation, in the small voice of a homesick child

I miss you too.

Since when does Ping stay at the office to help a client while I leave for the day?  Since when does she get up at 6:30 a.m. with me and head for a client meeting -- by herself -- while I go to the office?  Since when does she spend two hours on the phone with a friend in the evening to gather information for our law firm?  Since when does she stay up until 4:00 a.m. to help one of our clients in China?

Last Saturday when I got home from the office there was music playing in our home.  It struck me as a little strange, because it was one of my favorite Alan Jackson CD's.  Who likes this music, I asked?  Ping 'fessed up.  I like it, she told me.  But it is country music, I said.  Yes, I know, she said.  I like country music.

How about you, I asked Cici?  No, I don't like it, she said.  I think it is an age thing, Ping told me.  I didn't like country music until I was older, she said.  Hmmm, the same is true of me, so maybe she is right.  The ability to appreciate country music comes with age. 

In the meantime, Cici is busy playing music in Chicago and the surrounding area with her school band today and through the weekend.  I hope this is a fun trip for her, but Ping and I miss her already and wish that she were back home with us.

Sixteen years of waiting ended tonight for a little girl.  In a parallel path filled with regrets, the waiting also ended for her father.  

In almost every respect, Cici speaks English like a native these days.  She often uses expressions that surprise me.  How did she learn that, I think?  But learn she has, and it shows.  There is at least one word, however, that she hasn't mastered.  The word is towels, but she pronounces it more like towers.  She confessed yesterday that the primary reason she needs such a large suitcase for a five day trip to Chicago is because of the "towers" that she will take with her.

My attempts to persuade her that the towels in a hotel or in someone's home will be clean have been unsuccessful.  This is a lifelong habit that was formed in China where dishes in restaurants and towels in hotels might not be clean.  The distrust runs deep.  My most recent argument was by analogy.  Cici, I said, think about water.  The earth has only a limited amount of water and it recycles constantly.  What we drink today was in someone's toilet in the past.  It has just been cleaned up and purified so we can drink it.  Papa!  Don't say that, she said, but didn't budge on her desire to take her own towels with her to Chicago.

Speaking of Chicago, Ping and I are about to suffer empty nest syndrome for the next five days.  Cici leaves for Chicago after class tomorrow.  She has been packing for days.  Her biggest worry is that it won't be cold in Chicago.  She may be right.  Chicago looks downright balmy right now, with highs in the 50's and lows in the 40's for the next several days.  But there is supposed to be rain, and if the wind is blowing off the lake, it will feel quite cold when they are in downtown Chicago.

I guess I will get a break with no homework and no need to drive Cici to school each morning for the next week and a half.  But it will be tough to have her gone.  Tougher on me, I think, than on Ping, though we tease Cici about all the fun we will have while she is gone.  I think she has tests tomorrow, though, so there is studying to be done tonight.

We had another busy day, but this evening as we returned from eating Vietnamese noodle soup and picking up some fresh Chinese vegetables at the nearby food market, I noticed that the girls were very happy.  Earlier in the day when I drove Cici to the church where she played a concert with her school band, she was very talkative.  I worked at the office for several hours until she called me to say she was ready to be picked up.  She was still happy and talkative. Ping had time to return Cici's books to the library and work out at the fitness club while Cici and I were gone.

I always feel somewhat limited in what I can talk about on this blog.  I don't feel like I can just sit down and write about something that I feel like talking about.  This morning, for example, I stopped at a Starbucks on my way to the office.  It doesn't have a drive through window so I parked and went inside.  It was only 6:30 a.m. but there were already a couple of people sitting inside with their laptops open, waiting, I suppose, to see and be seen.  I can understand that; it felt like a comfortable place to pass some time.

Outside the store, I saw tables in front and along the side.  One man had positioned himself outside with his laptop open on one of the tables.  That he could do this comfortably on an early March morning says a lot about how quickly Spring is approaching us in Houston.  It also says something about the marketing genius of providing free wi-fi access at Starbucks.

Sure I can talk about these things if I want to, but then I feel compelled to tie it back in with the subject matter of the blog.  This is one boundary that limits my writing.  So I add a comment like how much the weather in Houston is like the weather in Guangzhou, which means that the girls are happy with it.  Or I talk about how the girls and I would always stop in a Starbucks in Guangzhou next door to one of our favorite shopping malls.  Maybe I could mention that few Chinese people stop in Starbucks in China because the price of the coffee is so high in relation to their earnings, in order to tie it back to this blog.

But what if I just wanted to talk about how it felt when I walked outside to pick up the newspaper this morning, or some other random topic?  Nope, same dilemma.  I would feel like I need to add that the girls were still sleeping soundly in the predawn chill of this early March morning in Houston, only a couple of months before they will return to China for part of the summer.

Then almost invariably the title that I started with must change in order for it to have anything to do with what I have written.  I started this post with a title about "more exposure," but as I wrote, I never got to the point that I intended to talk about when I started writing.  I guess I will have to leave that topic for another day, held in by one more boundary:  the title of the post.

Last evening I went to report card night at school while Ping took Cici to the orthodontist.  In addition to Cici's report card, I received her standardized test results from last October.  This is going to be brutal, I thought, because I knew how difficult it was for her the previous year.  But I was wrong.  The advances she made in a year were amazing to me.

The first standardized test she took was just a few months after she arrived in America.  I wasn't surprised to see that her English score was only in the 6th percentile nationwide.  In a single year of studying in America, though, she sprang from near the bottom to the 56th percentile.  Wow, I thought, this is a quantum leap to be making in one year. 

The jump in math was less dramatic, but she didn't start as low.  The only reason it was low at all was because of her inability to read and understand the word problems.  Nevertheless, she moved from the 52nd percentile to the 93rd percentile.

Science was somewhat like math, so the move was from the 61st percentile to the 93rd percentile.

This test result moved her dramatically upward in the projected ACT score as well, though still not where she wants to be.  It projects a score in the 17 to 21 range, but the computer has no idea what is happening with our daughter.  The computer assumes that she has pretty much reached her skill level, and it expects little change from this point forward.  The computer is wrong; Cici has only gotten started.

I was talking with Cici about this last night and she agrees with me.  It is as though someone flipped a switch during this school year, and her ability to read and understand English took a dramatic step forward.  She pulled out the Honors chemistry test she had received back yesterday and handed it to me.  Her score was a perfect 100.  I started reading the questions, and they were quite difficult.  Cici, you could not have understood these questions last year, I told her.  I know, Papa, she said, but now it is easy for me.

I was one of the few parents who showed up at report card night last night.  Usually there are a lot of parents there.  I wonder why so few people came, I said to one of the teachers.  I think that at this point in the school year they believe there is nothing they can do to change how their child is performing, he responded.

That is odd, I thought, because every day Cici and I are focused on improving her performance in her classes.  We believe we can move her standardized test scores even higher, and not just by a point or two.  We believe we can move her into the 21 to 25 range for her projected ACT score on the standardized test she will take this fall, which is the level for getting into colleges like the University of Texas.

And now, with her new level of confidence, Cici is raising her hand and answering questions -- in English class!  Her English teacher told me this last evening.  Yes, a determined child can learn a lot in a year.  She has done me proud. 

I started my day in a power meeting.  I thought I was just going to meet with our client, but he was accompanied by three of the top people, including the name partner, of what I consider to be the top angel or mezzanine venture capital firm in Houston.  This was the final meeting before a decision would be made to invest millions of dollars in the client's company. Had I known who would be attending the meeting, I would have asked Ping to be at the office before the meeting started.  That was a missed opportunity, but the meeting went well anyway.

Later in the day I met with two people from one of our marketing firms.  They want to make a video for our website to promote our immigration practice.  Look at your book, they said.  This is a powerful story.  People need to hear about it, and they need to meet you and your family.  So, they suggested, Ping and Angela need to be in the video.  Part of the video should be shot in your tea room, part should be shot in the reception area, and part should be shot in your office.

How about a shot of Angela playing the gu zheng, I suggested.  That would be so good, so unique, they replied.  You see, everyone wants your family, and they will love your story.  It is a story of hope, a story of love, a story of success.  Prospective clients who come to your law firm website should see your family in the office together.  It will allow them to identify with you and they will trust you to help them with their immigration cases.

Hmm, are they just selling, or will they really create sales?  This is the biggest player in the legal market, so they should know what they are talking about.  Our statistics show that a video on a law firm website will double or triple the number of people who will call and ask the law firm to represent them, they added.  But we think you will experience even better results because of your story and your family if you will include them in the video.

So at the risk of feeling somewhat like a politician kissing babies, I am inclined to give it a try.  But first, the girls are going to have to buy in to the idea, so I may have some selling of my own to do.