anticipation

In 17 days, my parents will be touching down in Cape Town for a 3 week visit! It's been over a year since we last saw them (in Canada), so it's all very exciting.

My cousin, Fiona, will be joining us a week later for 2 weeks. Fantastic! I love having guests here to show around; it gives me a chance to re-see the city/country through new eyes, and it's always nice to have family experience a little bit of the life where you are.

Besides the Cape Town attractions, we plan to go on the Garden Route and from there, they will head up to Kruger National Park for a few days before returning to Cape Town again.

Already, my grandmothers have told Matt and I over the phone they will be giving my parents packets and packets of red lai-see to deliver to us, for all the special occasions we've missed in 2007: Chinese New Year, Xmas, Mid-Autumn Festival, our birthdays, and their birthdays (if someone is older than you, he/she is expected to dish out lai-see to all his/her younger (grand)children).

It's funny, no matter how old we get, we will always be "the young ones" and although I am genuinely touched at their generosity in honouring this tradition, especially with a lot of their grandchildren marrying and having children of their own now, I feel a twinge of sadness of being unable to thank them in person.

With both of their hearing going rapidly downhill (and their stubbornness at not wanting to wear a hearing aid!), I have to resort to yelling into the speaker phone when we speak and I just hope they can hear our sincere thanks at the other end and not some random muffled sounds. Aii-ya!