Although Mio has been smiling for about a month now, her smiles have been few and far between. But since arriving in Virginia, she’s been smiling a lot for everyone, particularly for her obaachan (grandmother). 🙂
(She’s not smiling in these last couple ones, but I thought they were also cute grandmother-granddaughter moments… :))
Mio is getting a lot of love in Virginia from not only family, but a lot of her Mommy’s friends, too! 🙂 Here are some of the wonderful people Mio has had the pleasure of meeting the past few days — she is such a lucky girl! 😀
On Friday, my best friend Debbie came to see Mio.
Our family friend had a baby in February, so we had a playdate with their daughter Junna-chan on Saturday.
Mio’s aunt Hyo (Dan’s sister) came down to visit from New York for the weekend, too!
My friend Stephanie came to meet Mio on Monday evening!
Today, Mio and I took the Metro to visit our friends Lan and Mie and their adorable sons! I forgot my camera so I couldn’t take many photos, but here are a couple that I took on my phone.
Mio is so lucky to be showered with so much love while we’re back East. We still have a little over a week left in Virginia, but we’ve already had so much fun making great memories with everyone here.
Mio and I arrived in Virginia early Thursday morning, exhausted. Mio cried inconsolably for about fifteen minutes towards the beginning of the overnight flight, and although it was only fifteen minutes, it was the longest fifteen minutes of my life. I’m still uncertain about what was wrong with her, since I made sure to nurse her during takeoff and landing to make sure she didn’t get ear pressure problems. She slept for the last three hours of the flight, though, but I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid she’d slide off of my lap. The cabin of the plane was really hot, too, which made for a very uncomfortable five hours. Boy, was I relieved when we finally landed at Dulles Airport…. When we got to my parents’ house in Vienna, we just slept for several hours through the morning.
Mio got to meet some new members of Mommy’s family this time — my father, sister Miwa, and brother Kosei were all seeing her for the first time.
I’m really happy to be back home in Virginia and am looking forward to the next two weeks that we’ll be spending here. We hope to spend a lot of time with family and friends, and just relax and enjoy our time here. It’s definitely summer here — hot and humid! I actually kind of missed the humidity of the Mid-Atlantic region, since this is the type of summer weather I grew up with!
Happy New Year! Dan and I just got back to California late Sunday night after spending ten days at my parents’ home in Northern Virginia. We arrived early the morning of Christmas Eve, and I spent Christmas Day/my 28th birthday quietly at home with my family. It feels strange to think that this was my last Christmas and birthday without a child, and that future Christmases will probably be a lot noisier and hectic!
We had a memorable week spent with family, friends, and enjoyed a much-needed break from work during the holidays. My mom kept Dan busy half the time, enlisting his handyman skills to repaint the kitchen. (He did a great job and the kitchen looks like new! My mom is ecstatic.) Meanwhile, I indulged in stuffing myself with my mom’s home cooking, getting pampered by my parents, and treasured the time that I had to catch up with the friends back home whom I missed so much!
Two of my dearest friends and college roommates, Hanna and Yoon, threw us a baby shower the day after Christmas to celebrate the upcoming arrival of our baby girl! Since baby showers typically aren’t thrown until well into the third trimester and since I wouldn’t be back on the East Coast again before the birth of the baby, we initially hadn’t thought that we’d get to have a baby shower with our East Coast friends. We were so touched that they went out of their way during the busiest time of the year to still plan and organize a shower for us! Our friend Brian generously offered his house to host the celebration, and the decorations were absolutely adorable and the food was delicious! The girls planned some fun baby shower games and we were humbled by the generosity of our friends and by all the gifts. More than anything, though, it was just nice to see so many of our friends again, and we felt so blessed and fortunate to be able to celebrate the new addition to our family with them. Our baby (currently referred to as “eggplant“) is the luckiest girl in the world, to be surrounded by so much love before she even comes out!
Here are some photos from the baby shower…
For more photos of the baby shower, click over to the photo album.
(Special thanks to Pat & Theo for many of the photos!)
Some of my friends couldn’t make it to the baby shower, like my best friend Debbie, who’s back in Seoul with her family for the winter holidays. The night before we left for Virginia, we had received this very generous gift from Debbie and our friends Mimi, Michelle, and Stephanie, who all pitched in to get us the Beaba Babycook that I had been raving about a couple months ago! Dan and I were stunned when we received it, because although we’d put it on our baby registry, we were prepared to eventually buy it ourselves because it’s so pricey and we didn’t think anyone would actually get it for us. It’s such a great investment, and we can’t wait until the time comes for us to use it! 🙂
Three years. My heart is in Blacksburg today as we remember the 32 Hokies we lost on April 16, 2007. It was exactly three years ago that our cherished Virginia Tech campus was branded as “the site of the deadliest peacetime shooting incident in U.S. history.”
Never before then or since have I felt the magnitude of pain and heartbreak that I experienced on that day and the weeks that followed. The trauma of losing a friend among the 32 victims in the horrifying tragedy, coupled with the unrelenting harassment by reporters for a comment as a representative of the Asian campus community, was too much for me to endure and I underwent counseling at the campus clinic for a week. I would quietly cry myself to sleep every night, which regrettably kept my roommates up and made them sick with worry. There was simply no escaping the tragedy, with yellow tape and police cars everywhere on campus, and our school being the top news story every time we turned on the television. I felt like I shed a lifetime of tears that week — you’d think that eventually, you’d run out of tears to cry, but they just kept coming.
They came at the convocation the day following the shooting, when the sky was a serenely calm blue in comparison to the stormy skies of the day before.
They came at the candlelight vigil later that night, as thousands of candles lit up the drillfield in the middle of our campus.
They came at the organizational board meetings for AASU and VTU, where I saw my fellow officers more broken than ever.
They came at the memorial picnic, where I shook hands with Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum and saw such indescribable sadness and utter exhaustion in his eyes, which had just witnessed the worst bloodshed he’d ever seen in his lifetime.
They came on graduation day, as my heart screamed that this was not the note I wanted my college years to end on.
They came as I laid down my graduation bouquets at the memorial, for my fellow students who were forever robbed of the opportunity to walk in their own commencement ceremonies.
But amidst all the heartache that left me bleary-eyed, there were countless tearful moments that helped me to heal. I was so humbled to see how many universities, communities and individuals reached out to us in support and love from all over the country and across the world. Students from our rival school at the University of Virginia painted their Beta Bridge in Virginia Tech’s orange and maroon colors with the message “Hoos for Hokies,” reminding us that we share more in common than we have historically been prone to admit. Colorado State University sent us thousands of paper cranes symbolizing peace. Penn State paid their respects to Virginia Tech by dressing in our school colors for their annual Blue-White football game. Niagara Falls was bathed in orange and maroon lights in a moving tribute to the Hokie spirit, marking the first time the falls had been lit in the wake of a tragedy. Every flat surface in Squires Student Center was covered in banners, posters, and memorial items sent in from around the nation, and so many arrived that they had to switch them out every day. It was these sights and more that moved me to tears and really showed our campus that love can surpass the hate that brought about such a such a horrific event.
Above all, I was inspired to see the strength and solidarity with which our campus community stood in the face of this unexpected and unprecedented tragedy. I am not sure how I would have made it through the final month of school were it not for the support of my fellow Hokies — my roommates, friends, classmates, professors, managers and coworkers.
Three years later, we are still healing. I know I have not completely healed yet, and I’m not sure if I ever will. There’s still not a day that goes by without April 16th crossing my mind in one way or another, however fleeting it may be. There are still moments when tears spill over inexplicably, when there isn’t even anything conscious there to trigger them. It’s painful to remember, but too important to forget. The world stopped and watched in horror as a nightmare unfolded on our campus three years ago — it is my sincere hope that we will never have to see another April 16th.
I ask each of you to take the time to be a Hokie today. Appreciate life a little more, take in every moment around you, count your blessings, tell the people around you that you love them, slow down, remember what’s truly important in life. And live for those 32 that do not have that chance anymore.
Although I’m all the way on the other side of the country, I will be proudly wearing my orange and maroon today in remembrance. Hearts have been broken, lives have been taken, but we will always be here standing tall and proud to be Hokies.
We are Virginia Tech. We will continue. We do it for 32.
We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.
Never Forget April 16, 2007