Congratulations!

So our 'foster' son graduated today. We 'adopted' several students from Malaysia who are in the university here, if nothing else to help out in the initial transition from Malaysia to the American way of life. Thinking back to my culture shock leaving Seremban for Canada 16 years ago, I thought it would be nice to have someone from 'home' take you in, and so we have been doing this for several years.

Anyway, today, we attended the graduation ceremony of one of our students. He has been here for several years, and it has been satisfying seeing him bloom from a shy, quiet person into the man he is now.

Yea, I know, that makes me sound aged, but it was really neat to see him walk up to collect his hard-earned degree. And Kris actually even teared up a bit.

In fact, this university is apparently popular amongst Malaysians, and there was some pride on my part, watching the many Malaysians graduate.

His folks flew in for the graduation, coming from a small town in Malaysia and being in the USA for the first time. And so we've been hosting them for the last several nights since we had some extra rooms. That being said, the glitch is they speak little English while my Hokkien and Cantonese is bad enough to make my ancestors turn over in their graves and cringe. But we got along great, and it was amusing seeing Kris communicate with them.

They leave tomorrow for a long awaited vacation before their long trip back to Malaysia.

Congratulations, guys. May this be the first step in a fruitful and fulfilling journey.