All My Children

So as I am sure I have mentioned, my son lives in London, at least until November 2013. As I also have mentioned, when he comes here to visit, every year at Christmas, he has many demands on his time and we don’t get to see him as much as we’d like. Fortunately, we have both the time and the money to go visit him in London. This year, unlike last year, I don’t have a broken foot and could walk around instead of traveling in a wheelchair, which meant we had access to more activities.

In addition to my son, we have a few foreign exchange children as well. One of them, a young woman from Thailand, is studying in England, and another lives in Hungary. Once we made plans to go to London, the next step was to see if we could get together with our two foreign daughters. We offered to pay their travel and lodging expenses if they could meet up with us during our trip.

Chan was easy. While she now lives in Leeds, not London, she was just a few hours away by bus and was able to spare a few days mid-week. Anett had just graduated and she and her fiance, Z, had to check to see if they could get time off from work, but eventually were able to arrange to meet us the first weekend we were there. Reserving rooms for them on our hotel’s website turned out to be easier than we thought.

I had hoped we could all be together at the same time so that I could get a group photo of all of us, John, me, Chan, Anett and Neal, but it was not to be. It worked out well not to have them all together, however. Chan had lived in London for a few years and the tourist attractions Anett and Z wanted to see were old hat for her. Chan was eager to take us to see Chinatown and her favorite Korean restaurant, while Anett wanted to see Harrod’s and Buckingham Palace. Neal had to work midweek, so having Chan to guide us around was helpful.

Although not to be counted in the category of “my children”, I learned that there is a young lady my son has been seeing for a few months. We got to meet her, as well, after being duly warned that the relationship is still new and not to read too much into a parental meeting. I’m proud to say I did not whip out a wedding planning guide and start asking questions about colors and cake flavors. However, if she ever does end up in the “all my children” category, I don’t think I will have anything to complain about.

Look for more details of our doings in upcoming posts.