dans les nuages

The parentals! 

I’m basically the spitting image of my mom from 32 years ago, except chubbier. hahaha. Before she came to America, she was a programming teacher. While my dad was in grad school getting settled in, my mom continued to raise my brother and take care of my grandparents. I honestly can’t imagine how she withstood that while she was only like.. 27 or 28. She started grad school, but after a few years, she realized she was pregnant with me. Soooo she settled for a Master’s degree when she was on the PhD track in order to have me…. hehe. My mom is a lot of things for me. She’s the one who disciplined me when I was younger, and I’m pretty sure my OCD tendencies are caused by her similar OCD tendencies. When I was doing Chinese homework, my mom would make me rewrite the story if I had erased poorly or wrote something lazily. She also fostered my love for Chinese by studying Chinese with me every night and making learning Chinese actually fun. She taught me to address my elders with respect and kindness, and she taught me to be patient with ones with views that are different from my own. While she has crazy tendencies of possessiveness and obsessiveness, I can’t ask for a mom better suited to my needs who lovingly nurtures me through every second of my life. 

I’ve always been my daddy’s girl. My dad has a PhD in Physics, and he graduated from grad school the year that I was born. He’s the strong but silent type, but he’s extremely extremely affectionate with me and my mom. I never really saw the affectionate side of my parents until this summer, but it definitely made me appreciate their marriage a lot more. My dad liked my mom for six years before he was able to ask her to be his girlfriend, and they were engaged within the year that they started dating. My dad is a good photographer, and he’s extremely handy with tools. He finished our entire basement (lighting, bathroom, everything), and he helped me build the fastest balloon car in 6th grade. My dad is the one who motivated me to start running with him over the summer, and we built a really strong relationship from it. He used to play soccer when he was younger, and his dream was to have enough kids to have a soccer team… Anyway, he picks up one of the phones while I’m on the phone with my mom to join in on conversation. My mom always tells me how my dad runs over to the closest phone in order to talk to me, hehehe so cute. I’m excited to go home for Fall Break so that I can be there to celebrate his birthday with him on the last day that I’m home :)