Early this morning around 3:45 I drove to the airport, sending both the uncle and the nephew to China; thus ended the boy’s 8-month stay in America, from 7/20/2008 to 3/12/2009. I feel like unloading a super-size bag off my back, more responsibility than any size of a bag. A much needed break, especially after some last-minute shopping and packing!

On the way to the airport, I asked him if he could understand his teachers at school. He told me he could pretty much figure out what the teacher meant even if he could not understand all the words. “How about your classmates?” I further asked. “No, not a single bit. They talked too fast. Also, I cannot understand my teachers when they talked to each other.” At home when we watched TV over the dinner table, he would not join us because he could not understand it.

I know his mother is not satisfied with his progress in English. I would think things might have been different if he had spent more time interacting with my daughter and us at home, as I had instructed my daughter to talk to him in English. In reality, at home he was on the computer all the time, either playing games or watching Chinese movies or visiting Chinese websites or being with his mother over the Skype. He would fight unpleasantly over any attempt to interrupt his indulgence. He and my daughter are not on speaking term especially after he threatened her with kitchen chopper last November while I was in China. I wish she could forget it.

When I looked back, I realized I was rather naive and unrealistically optimistic at first, without ever anticipating any bad turn of event. Because I did not really know the boy before he came to America, I was not prepared for the drastic changes demonstrated by the boy upon his mother’s leaving for China. Well, another plan turned sour in the end, much as I have tried to add more sugar into it. Don’t we do this all the time? For me, enjoy the break and the relief.