Cici and my son were like ships passing in the night last evening.  She was studying hard for exams when he came to our home for dinner.  Ping cooked his favorite foods:  hot & sour soup with nothing but the liquid (she saw that he always leaves the vegetables and other ingredients in the bowl, so she just prepares the liquid for him now), and lots of dumplings stuffed mostly with ground pork and whole kernels of corn.  These are the best dumplings ever, he told Ping.

On Friday he is off to New York City for his summer internship with UBS.  He will office right on Park Avenue at 49th Street in Midtown Manhattan.  His summer apartment is walking distance away at 57th Street and 3rd Avenue.  You should take the train to Newark on Tuesday morning, I suggested, and meet Cici's plane when it arrives from Houston.  You can have lunch together and then help her get to her connecting flight to Hong Kong.  I only have an hour to make my connecting flight, Cici told us, so that plan didn't work out.  We will just tell the flight attendants that you are 13 years old, I teased her, so they can hold your hand and walk you to your connecting flight.

The kids will have very different summer experiences, but both of them should return with added confidence about their ability to get along in the world on their own.  It would be hard to find two better students than these two have been, though it is more than that:  they are both just all around good kids who would make any parent proud.  There are other similarities between them too, what with both of them being trilingual.  He is sold on Latin American culture, but I heard Ping making plans with him to go to China with us after Cici graduates from high school.  Who knows what the future might hold.