************************************************************************************
Arriving in the nick of time is NOT my style!! I HATE to be late- to ANYTHING. But, in this case, it actually worked out well. I mean who really wants to sit through a long awards ceremony in which you know none of the kids who are getting awards?? We did miss a final blessing on the seniors though, and a nice mom of one of the other kids stood proxy for us. Each senior was given the parting gift of a national hat called a "takia" from the school, which was a nice gesture.
We arrived just in time to hear the last song, and the prayer over the picnic meal that followed. Yes!!!! FOOD!! If you remember from Pt. 1, we hadn’t eaten dinner the night before, nor breakfast OR lunch today. We were beyond famished, and we needed a lot of food. Thankfully, The Away One’s house mom packed a beautiful meal of soft tacos (we can’t get hard corn shells here) and veggies and dip. It was perfect and VERY appreciated; as were the homemade desserts that we stuffed ourselves on afterwards!!
Here’s a pic of The Away One with his family AFTER the picnic, when we drove over to pick up his bags, and say their last good-byes. Yeah, THAT was hard!
While the adults did their usual yacking, the kids did a lot of this:
After a fair amount of chatting it up, we simply could not keep our eyes open any longer. It was time to head to our friends’ house, where we planned to spend the next 3 nights. It was a good plan. The wife was in London visiting her sister, and the dad was bachin’ it with their 3 kids. We knew it’d be a wee bit stressful for him to have to host guests while his wife was gone, so we tried to keep a low profile and out of the way. It was a good plan. We planned to eat out or at other friends’ homes, as we had gotten a few invitations, which was also a good plan.
The next day was THE day. The day every parent waits for. A day to celebrate the wonderful accomplishment a student makes when they do all that the system says they should. It was a day I will never forget- a beautiful expression of who the 12 kids were that were graduating on June 10, 2010 from the school that is about as far away from their home culture as they can get- except for the 4 S. Korean students who were in his class.
And true to the theme of our entire 2 weeks away, there was DRAMA! And true to my blogging heart, I was thinking to myself how interesting this was going to be for all of you!!
The seniors marched in one by one, with a rose in hand. In turn they presented them to their moms before ascending the stage. I think that’s about when I lost it for the next 2 hours. It was a blubber-fest as never seen before. It was so bad that I gladly accepted my hubby’s hanky which was already ummm…, soiled with allergy stuff. I didn’t care. The tears of joy and 19 years of memories HAD to go somewhere! How could my baby boy who spent his first month in a NICU unit of the hospital be graduating??! This little boy who had his first airplane ride on an air ambulance from Medford to Portland- how could it be that he is growing a mustache and wears his tassel on the left side; my firstborn son whose first words were Mommy, Daddy and poopoo.
I won’t give you a blow by blow account of the entire ceremony, but let me recount 2 highlights.
The senior speaker did a very interesting lead in to his message. He called out various stats and categories that fit the 12 seniors. It went something like this:
In this group of 12 young adults, there are 7 languages spoken (if you’re interested, here they are: Kazakh, Uighur, Korean, English, Russian, Chinese and Cajun).
One of us is a National Merit Scholar: 1 stood up
Some of us had LDs to overcome: 4 stood up
Some of us have lived in at least 2 other countries in our lives: All of them stood up
Some of us have lived away from our parents for the last years of high school: 1 stood up
Some of us were homeshcooled most of our lives: 4 stood up
Our class SAT average was 1850
You get the idea....
Another memory that EVERYONE there will NEVER forget, was just as the diplomas were starting to be passed out, one of the KIDS PASSED OUT!!! WHAM! Down he went, right onto the kid next to him. The Away One had already received his, as had 2 others, before the principal noticed what was going on. The school nurse rushed up on stage, asked someone to bring her some Coke right away, and a couple of his fellow students buddy-carried him off stage. The seniors, as a group, asked if they could start over, so Drama King could see the whole thing. LOL! So technically, My Boy received his diploma twice. Just so you don’t worry too much, he was fine. The poor kid stood up, locked his knees, hadn’t eaten all day, it was REALLY hot, and down he went. In the end, the whole scene made for some awesome Trip Reporting.
I’ll spare you the 40 pictures (all bad) I took, and give you just a few. These were my favorites:
The receiving line and picture session that followed were fun, yet bittersweet for us. Many of those there, who were not going to the party afterwards, we will likely never see again. Some we’ve known for more than 10 years, and offered comfort on those especially hard days. We will really miss their camaraderie in the years to come.
Next Up... A Steppe in the Wrong Direction...
No comments:
Post a Comment