Singapore/KL Bangkok Stuttgart Washington DC Toronto Colorado Springs San Francisco

Let's skip the stories about poorly timed traffic lights around orlando and poorly trained USAir ground crews in Tampa (but kudos to the flight crew who managed to get us back!). Those negative stories have no place here, when I'm talking about Albert.

World, meet Albert. Albert, meet the world.

He is SO going to kill me for using this photo. But I think it's adorable, so what else could I do????

Albert goes to college in Florida and is studying to be a forensic psychologist. he leaves the occasional short, but very deep, post in his MySpace blog. We met online in 2005 after he'd left a comment in someone else's blog and I clicked over and saw his. He was in his first year at the university and I was still teaching at the time, so I took him under my wing (electronically, anyway). He is from Guam so he's a long way from home, and after the adjustments of the first year he has done really well.

I've made the pledge before that I won't get to know someone well online unless there's a good chance we'll meet someday, so I'm glad we finally got together in person. After I drove over we went to a great litte place for dinner (grilled alligator, anyone?) then hung out and talked for hours, sharing photos from our laptops (I didn't even know he'd gone to Disney World). Sunday morning I introduced him to Waffle House, which he, despite being an occasionally drunken college student, had never experienced. For me, it was sort of a homecoming. For him, it was a chance to ask, "what exactly ARE grits?" He ordered something off the menu but asked them to leave something out of it, and I was a little concerned, because Waffle House doesn't handle change well, but they relented and let him have his breakfast wrap without the bacon. Whew.

All in all a very cool experience, and I'm quite happy to add him to the group of "real world friends."

In the meantime, there are a few more of you out there...

Labels: Friends, Travel