Officially, the weekend elective course I am taking this term is call "Integrated Sports and Leisure." We simply call it "sailing."

(picture not taken by me)

Unlike most other sports, the thing about sailing is that it's much more of a mental game than physical. Granted there is a physical component that comes along with adjusting the sails and steering, but to out-race someone requires the ability to keep a lot of mental notes about the surroundings relative to the wind and your opponents. For example, you can be faster than another boat simply by sailing along side them in such a way as to block their wind. However, that boat will try to prevent you from doing that by steering in such a way to prevent you from getting into that position. Then, next thing you know, you two are veering off course from all this NO YOU CAN'T GO THERE/YES I WILL duel all while your other opponents took this opportunity to sail past. Looking at the big picture, all this means is that someone with a spinal cord injury or a loss of a limb will not be at a disadvantage against a person will full function and control of his body. 

Now, calling this course "sailing" is really over-simplifying everything. These boats aren't owned or operated by the university but rather by Shake-A-Leg, a non-profit here in Miami that gives individuals with disabilities the opportunity to sail. Though there is some classroom instruction that comes with this elective, most of our learning happens on the water with these individuals and, most importantly, about these people and how sailing has affected their lives. 

I haven't sailed on Kerry' crew just yet (we shuffle up every time), her story is still amazing. 

So I rent the downstairs bedroom in a house while the owner of the house, The Land Lady (LL) I call, lives mostly upstairs. This is her Christmas set up in the living room.

This is my own light show in my bed room last night while I was pulling an all-nighter for my last final of the semester. 

We're about even, right?

I like to think that a person loses all muscle control of his facial expression during a moment of intense, absolute focus on a particular task. That's why I had a lot of fun taking pictures of friends during our game of Thanksgiving Guys v.s. Gals Catchphrase. 

This last picture is the perfect example of one person who has no idea what the clue is while her husband knows but won't say.

For quite a number of us first year grad students in this program, Miami is a new city far away from home. Taking the fact that winter break will begin exactly two weeks after Thanksgiving into consideration, and it is no surprise that quite a number of us are spending this holiday away from family. 

And for me, this is a whole new experience. Even for college I did not venture too far; not only was I close enough to drive home for the holidays, I was close enough for the parents to visit me every weekend. And for the first year of undergrad, they did. Today, I am not within a day's driving distance anymore, 3300 miles away in fact. For the first time, I did not spend Thanksgiving with family. 

Here's the funny thing though. If you asked me even as recent as two years ago, I would have been thrilled to not spend time with my family for the holidays. That was just the kind of relationship I had with my parents at the time, more utterly stressful than nurturing, and I felt that way for a good half decade. And yes, those weekly drop-ins during college were not welcome nor pleasant for anybody involved. 

Not the case anymore. We're actually at the point when I have stopped ignoring their calls (which were usually about me ignoring their calls). Our conversations are actually conversations now, rather than lectures Then again, once in a while, Mom will lecture me about having a female best friend who has her own boyfriend ("Back in Vietnam, boys would kill each other over stuff like that!") I even had feelings of disappointment when a hurricane almost cancelled their trip to visit me out here. If anything, my relationship with the parents have had a dramatic, but pleasant, change in the past six months. 

So, for the first time in 23 years, not having Thanksgiving with the family, possibly not have Christmas and New Years with them either, does that bother me? On a certain level, of course, but overall not so much. Why? Because: 

Happy be-lated Thanksgiving from all of us in the Stuck-in-Miami class of 2014.