He's off to Chinese Camp

This is a picture from Meg's wedding, because I didn't take the camera to BYU this morning when I dropped him off...he'd have died! He's gone for a 3 1/2 week Mandarin Chinese camp. I cried half of the way home....partly 'cause I'm going to miss his face and partly 'cause I've never been away from him for this long and partly 'cause I had a TINY taste of what the MTC experience will be like. How do you ladies do it? Oh man. My boy. This boy has a special place in my heart. I love and admire him so much. He was excited to be going to this camp, but was a little freaked out too, which made it all the harder to leave him there.
But he just called me. He's been gone for 8 hours now. He just finished studying the first lesson and has already memorized the stuff he needs to for class tomorrow. Remember this is the boy with the photographic memory. School has always been so easy for him...I told Andrew tonight that this experience is going to be the true test of his abilities; if he has to work at it, then good! he's a normal genius. If he slides through and aces it; OH MY HECK WHAT KIND OF PRODIGY DO WE HAVE ON OUR HANDS!!?? I'll let you know how it goes;) They have every minute packed with classes and lessons and crafts and cooking...AND they just announced that they've figured out how to get high school credit for this, so that ROCKS! He'll earn a whole year of language credit in 3 weeks.
I reminded him what President Hinckley always said about "get all the education you can" and "learn as much as you can" and "BE SMART!"...yeah yeah yeah he says. I'm so proud of him : ) But I'll be praying very hard tonight that he doesn't get too homesick, and that he'll continue to have fun. It wouldn't hurt if any of you wanted to mention him while you're on your knees as well!