Livin' the Good Life: Graduation...sort of

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Graduation...sort of

Two days before Ramadan, Keira graduated from pre-K.

I had been given a long note (which turned out to be not accurate) in the local language, and I had spent about an hour translating what I could before I asked a couple of people for some help interpreting it.

Crazy enough, both people I asked to help me interpret the letter said it was not written well, and they couldn’t quite understand what was being said most of the time either, so I felt better.

I finally understood (after asking the school) that I was supposed to bring her to the school at 3 o’clock dressed in black, and they would bus her to the graduation site (which is the campus where she will attend 1^st grade in the fall).

I was a little nervous when I drove up to drop her off because there were girls in frilly yellow and pink dresses, and I could have sworn I heard her say that Keira should be dressed in black from head to toe.

I left and hoped it would all work out.

The other thing I understood was that only parents could come because they didn’t have enough chairs for siblings and other relatives. However, I had asked ahead of time if we could bring our language helper to help us understand what was going on, and they said that was fine.

Well...since rules (especially when driving) seem to be ignored in this country, no one really paid attention to the note. There were kids running everywhere. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. But my three kids sat at home and missed their little sister’s graduation.

Don’t read that wrong. I’m not mad. In fact, I’m pretty sure they were okay with missing it.

Graduation was on an outdoor recreation area of the school where Keira will attend school next year. Rain sprinkled and stopped, sprinkled and stopped, but the show went on.

It was very orderly before it all began.

Group A through Group E were all led in one by one. Some performed. Some didn’t. They were all dressed differently, and I was actually shocked that so many kids went to Keira’s school.

Still no Keira.

Parents and kids were told repeatedly to sit down, but no one did. I couldn’t see anything that was going on. Our language helper said, “This is very normal. No one listens. They do what they want.”

This picture was taken during one of the performances!

Finally Group F came in, and they were in red robes. I was told Keira would be in a gold robe, so I wasn’t looking for her, but I started seeing kids in her class...

But, no Keira.

Oh! Wait! There she is.

Her whole class was half-way down the aisle, and here she came running. She had fallen coming down the steps out of the school, so she had fallen behind. Literally.

Her class went to the front, apparently the only group graduating, and they performed a song for the parents. It was the only thing that was done in English the whole night. The song was a “thank you” song to parents, sung to a recording, and I’m pretty sure many of the parents didn’t understand that they were being thanked, but thankfully, I did.

I tried to video it, but there were too many people standing, so I really didn’t get anything. I bought the DVD of the graduation from the school, but they only included the recorded version, not the kids’ voices, and the words weren’t dubbed in time with the kids’ mouths...

What we often say here is, “What can you do?”

The teachers quickly took off the kids’ robes after graduation so they wouldn’t get cake on them, but I went and asked one of the teachers if I could have one robe to photograph Keira in.

I took Keira to the back, away from the cake and punch crowd, but as Doug and I were taking pictures with her,