So I came home for the weekend to spend some time with my dad & grandpa, but when I got home, I found out that they'd already made plans thinking I wasn't coming home. Bleehhhhh. Anyways, yea, I took the bus back to Dallas. It was $40 for a round-trip; not a bad deal for just one person (; gas costs roughly the same for a car trip). The bus wasn't bad I suppose; it was a lot emptier than I woulda thought though.

So my dad called back to Taiwan to wish everyone a happy (Chinese) new year, and I talked to my cousin Jack a bit... didn't get in any words with the gramps from my mom's side. Man, I didn't even know until my cousin told me that my mom had gone to the Phillipines. Apparently, in Chinese culture, there's a custom that a daughter can't be at her parents' house to pass the new year or something... probably has something to do with symbolism that you've got no place else to go or something. Yea, the Chinese have a lot of these kinds of customs that I think I oughta verse myself in sometime around.