My Gookito (cause in Spanish, everything small ends in 'ito') left my house in 2007 and enrolled at UNO in New Orleans. In December, 2012 he graduated with a BS in Business Somethingorother. He says that the worst degree from the worst US college is more valuable than the best degree from the best Chinese university.
Yesterday, he went home to China to begin his adult life for real. I already miss him, even though he hasn't lived with me for years.
Somehow I got him through a semester of high school.
When he first moved to New Orleans, he would ask me to call Domino's Pizza down there and order his dinner for him. He couldn't communicate with the people on the phone and they were rude as hell to him.
I taught him to drive and helped him get his license. (Yeah, that's scary, huh?).
I watched him change and grow through the normal college stuff, through the language barrier issues, through the loneliness of being in a foreign country away from family and friends, etc.
Now he speaks English just like one of us, has a ton of friends, has traveled the U.S. as much as I have, got his degree, partied like a rock star for a while and lived the American college student life as well as anyone.
I am really proud of him, and proud to have had a role in helping him get this far in life. I would like to take this opportunity to wish him the very best in life. May he find happiness, success, good health and peace for years to come.