Reading Time: 4 minutes No I don’t drive the Rivian but I drive the Toyota Sienna next to it: owned it for 9 years now (since summer 2013). It was the main car (minivan) I drove in last 9 years, with the exception of sometimes I drove my wife’s Camry for the purpose of saving gasoline, or taking care

Reading Time: 6 minutes Our old daughter Serenity is entering 7th grade this school year, as I said somewhere else, in 6 years she will very likely attend college. Use her word, “I want to a quality college such as Columbia U”. I know she wanted to be a wildlife biologist and last I checked she has no intention

Reading Time: 2 minutes (Update 09-01-2023) I looked around and it seems another app was not not working (it seems the app is called My Ride 360, I never used it btw). It seems “Here Comes the Bus” is more widely used and thinking maybe worth to explore more with them (Android app, iOS app). (This was written last

Reading Time: 4 minutes (Update 11-16-2023) I created a MFS FAQ blog post today: I used some of the content below, plus some of the common questions being asked in last year or so. In the future, I will try to maintain/update that one. (Update 11-02-2023) A few parents asked about the “1st test” PDF file. It’s the first

Reading Time: 4 minutes Any questions please let me know || Mobile: 314 540 2721 || Email: minjie.xu@gmail.com (Update 11-18-2022) We ended the daylight saving time for the year. The sunset is usually at about 5 pm, thus 4:30 pm starting time will give about 30 minutes time. More importantly, the weather is becoming a bit cold as the

Reading Time: 4 minutes A.k.a., the enrichment opportunities, as they usually call it in the elementary schools. For middle school, though, they usually have more choices than elementary school. This is the Ladue Middle School current offerings. Note the Science Olympiad itself has 20+ subjects / events, and it’s mind boggling to say the least. Also note I was

Reading Time: 2 minutes Community night, open house, curriculum night,… the bottomline is, they are all “meet the teachers” night. It’s not as hard as “meet the parents” (I recall there was a movie with that name). Because of pandemic, last few years, meet the teachers have mostly virtual or drive through, to avoid large crowd etc. And I

Reading Time: 2 minutes Background: I went to a boarding school when I was 13. I saw my parents once a month. Society was much simpler then but the change was in the air and in the ground, Ningbo was opened up in 1984, and I saw a lot of earth moving around me. Although foreigner was still rare

Reading Time: 2 minutes I started a Twitter thread on Alcohol recently. I have not finished it yet, and I am in a bit relapse now. But I will attempt to rewrite it as a blog. Or reflection. I think the most important thing of all, is we need to make sure we don’t get drunk often, or have

Reading Time: 2 minutes First: I am happy to say the kids to back to school. In the last 2 weeks before school starts, some days Sophia really got bored, and she let me know that. She asked me to to buy the humming bird feeder, among other things. I recall the days I shopped at Sears (hint, a