let's make sure this SMS conversation passes validation

My parents and brother are on a Chinese-run tour of the East Coast right now. It is a six-day tour, conducted by bus. They started from New York City, rode down to Washington DC, and will soon return north to Boston and Niagara Falls.

This tour group does a promotion of "buy 2 get one free", as long as all three people stay in the same hotel room. Last year my parents and I went on a tour run by the same company, for the western US.





This morning I got a SMS from my brother:

Tom: "Might need to take a vacation after this one to get rid of stress."

Me: "Oh no, what is wrong?? Is it because you have to wake up at 6am?"

Tom: "No, that's fine. It's that we spend 90% of the time on the bus and get like 30 minutes at each stop."

Tom: "We got 60 minutes at the Met, 25 minutes on Capitol Hill. Now 30 minutes at the Smithsonian. What a joke."

Me: "Are you meeting other tourists on the bus?"

Tom: "No i am meeting no one else. I am just filled with disappointment."

Me: "Hahaha what were you hoping for?"

Tom: "I don't know. I gave up 5 days on a beach in Hawaii to spend time with our parents."

Tom: "There better be some divine karma that is getting direct deposited as we speak."

Me: [laughing]

Tom: "XML"

Me: "What do you mean by XML? FML? Did your iphone auto-correct?"

Tom: "FML. </>"

...

I can't tell if that last part is him making a squinty maximum-frustration face, or if he is writing the closing tag for his XML schema.