Prodigy Kid Sister

I try to make an effort to call my family at least once a week. I really ought to call more. Time and events get in the way of things, but its always nice to catch up. I called my Dad house phone to find Amy, my little sister, quickly picking up the receiver. She is 6 years old (almost 7) and in 1st grade. Immediately she bombards me with a list of things she plans we would do when I get home from New York. As she talked a mile a minute I took out a pen and paper to try to get some of the things she was telling me:

Dear Rachel, 
First we will have a meet and greet...we will have a turkey dinner and then describe what we ate...next we will do some math and I will count by two's to one hundred, cause I can do that now...and my dad told me that I can mayyyyybe stay up until 11. Have you stayed up that late before?

I see how much she loves learning in the way she talks. My dad was telling me in her free time she once wrote something resembling a mathematical proof, explaining how addition and subtraction works. My dad gave it to her teacher who then gave it to the principal. Eventually it made it to the school board. What the heck?! Who is this prodigy kid that is also my sister?? Her knowledge at her age blows me away. Being so much older than her too I take a lot of joy in seeing her grow up. I kind of wonder if it's what parenting is like...to a certain extent. I don't plan to know what that actually feels like for a very long time, but its an inkling of perspective that I look forward to.

Last weekend we had our last dance competition at Brown University in Massachusetts. Jeremy and I moved up to silver as planned for rhythm and latin. Much to our chagrin we were eliminated pretty quickly in rhythm, our first section of the day. There was a point in standard when we were almost immediately cut again. At that point I was so discouraged I almost left the building to blow off steam. Fortunately, the announcers made a mistake in the call backs and we ended up getting 4th in foxtrot. All in all, we also received 6th in quickstep and 4th in latin rumba and cha cha. In hindsight, the entire day was a very humbling experience. We're so used to doing well
and to get knocked down a peg was good for us. We can only move forward from here.

I hear it's close to 0 degrees F back home. Definitely not missing that. But I don't really like how rainy it gets here either. I was warned that the winters are pretty wet on Lon-Giland (native pronunciation..still working on my hybrid accent). It still lingers in the 50's here though and I appreciate those days.

3 weeks til I'm home, where has the time gone!?