Dear Dad and Mom,
I'm so sorry it's taken me this long to write back. Please forgive me. I've been back in Austin for about three weeks now, and everything is going really smoothly. I'm still living in the same apartment.
This semester, I'm the TA for a graduate-level course. It's kind of amusing that so many of my friends happen to be enrolled in it, which makes grading their work a little awkward. We'll see how it goes.
I received your very first email! I'm curious: how exactly are you sending and receiving email?
1 Email is truly amazing: it only takes a few minutes for a message to get through. We can use it for anything urgent, or you can simply write whenever it's convenient. There's just one catch, though. My school computers can't display Chinese characters, so you'll need to write in English. I get a ton of email these days. Chun actually emailed me a few days ago to let me know that she had arrived in Maryland.
Weihai just got back from China a few days ago. He told me that, if all goes well, he'll return next May to get married. He spent twenty days in Shanghai but only a few days with his parents in Beijing—talk about an unfilial son! Joking aside, I'm not very fond of arranged matchmaking.
About two months ago, while I was still in New Jersey, I met an American girl online. Her name is Robin. At first, we exchanged emails almost every day, and she even called me once. She's a freshman here at UT Austin and, although she hasn't declared a major yet, she's very interested in psychology. She was born on Thanksgiving Day in 1977 and grew up on a 150-acre family farm about four hours from Austin. Her parents divorced when she was only a year old. Her maternal grandfather is Native American, and her father is of Irish descent.
Since I returned to Austin, we've started hanging out in person. She has sandy-blonde hair tied back into a ponytail and always seems to sport the unofficial uniform of a Texas college girl—shorts and a large T-shirt. She's very down-to-earth and unpretentious, which I find especially refreshing. She's also very athletic and played on her high school varsity teams in basketball, volleyball, softball, and several other sports.
We see each other quite often now—going out for dinner, renting movies to watch at home, chatting over coffee, and watching football games. We were supposed to go to a play tonight, but it got canceled, so we ended up walking around the mall and getting coffee afterward. Lately, we've been talking on the phone every day.
All in all, she's a really nice girl. Don't assume that all Americans are super open and progressive. In fact, she's fairly traditional and conservative. I like her a lot, and I think she feels the same way. For now, we're simply seeing each other, and there's no telling where things might lead. I don't want to keep anything from you, but I also don't want to raise your hopes and have you disappointed if things don't work out.
I'll leave it at that for now.
Wishing you the best,
Tong
09/13/96