Proud Brother of an Independent Sister

Recently, Teresa had the opportunity to leave the prying and always vigilant eyes of my parents and live on her own while she's doing an internship with Disney for 5 months down in Orlando. She left this past Monday and is having the time of her life (the good and the bad). From not having to pay for anything while living at home to paying rent, grocery, school supplies and such on a monthly basis is quite the jump; and she's learning that money does not grow on trees; a hard lesson I learned after leaving college.

Teresa now has to work at Disney and really account for every penny that comes in and goes out so that she has enough money at the end of the day to feed her belly (it's a paid internship, and her housing gets deducted right from her paycheck). I can completely sympathize.

I remember back in those days when I was working at our local video rental store and Jonathan was AU's equivalent of a meter maid. We were both making minimum wage ($8/hours) and, often times, after rent, utilities and transportation, we barely had any money left for groceries. For almost six months to a year, we were eating nothing but rice from the Chinese supermarket (we had to take a bus there, and often times, we had to wait over an hour on our return trip in the freezing cold). On a good week, we would go to Safeway and get a tomato and an onion, cook it with soy sauce and that would be the topping on our rice; otherwise, we would just have rice with onions and soy sauce since onions are cheap. Jonathan had to take the bus, instead of the metro, to work to save money. A normal 30 minute trip on the metro is stretched to an unimaginable 2 hours just for one way with a transfer at Friendship Heights and another 10-15 minute walk to the AU Shuttle stop where Jonathan had to hop on to get to the main campus, which took another 15 minutes, provided that the shuttle is there at the time of his arrival. Luckily for me and for us, I could walk to my video store; which was only a few blocks down from where we live (the video store is no longer in business). Because we were so poor, we had to rent out our second bedroom and, at any point, a couple is living with another person, it never fares out well for either party, and we endured all this until the winds of change came sweeping through our front door. After a year of what I can only call a humbling experience, I landed a job at the Associated Press and quickly worked my way up the corporate latter. Jonathan worked really hard and relocated to the AU Library where two years of hard work got him the promotion to be their in-house graphic designer. Even though money is not an issue for us any longer and we're able to buy anything and everything that we want and still have money to save at the end of the month into our many savings accounts, we will never forget what we have gone through to get here. That experience helped mold me into the person I am today, and Jonathan, through it all, the good or the bad, has always been there to be my ground to keep me strong and collected.

Teresa, if you're reading this, at any point when you leave the house and live on your own, it is always a humbling experience, but it is with these humbling experiences that you build character and find out really what you're made of. In times of hardship, true character shows, so take this wonderful opportunity and run with it. Like I tell you time and time again, do everything with confidence and always with an open mind. Trust me, everything will come out golden! We're Lee's for goodness sake; nothing stops us! We will ALWAYS get what we want!!