Hello all! In light of all the uh...drama...here lately, I thought I'd share a hopefully uplifting post.
My family has hosted international students for the last four years. For the last two years, Arina (Yuting) has been a part of our family. She is from Hainan Island in far southern China, and she was to graduate with the class of 2020 at the school my wife and I work at. Well, as you know all that has gone down the drain.
To make matters worse, Arina has wanted to go home for about a month and a half now, and has had three separate flights back to her home in China cancelled. However, it does look like she is going to be able to go home this Saturday.
We wanted to make sure she got some sort of recognition of her accomplishment, so we organized a backyard graduation for last Saturday. We picked up her robes from school, and secretly invited our principal and her favorite teacher to show up in the backyard. I made a order of ceremony, and the whole family participated, with my wife giving the opening prayer, my daughter reading the class verse, and I gave a very short speech. My son had her turn the tassels. But, what brings this to WKC is her processional to "Pomp and Circumstance" down the makeshift "aisle" I made in the backyard for her.
Finally, after the ceremony, I made a special dinner of reverse-seared filet mignon with a bourbon-dijon sauce on the 26er.
We will miss Arina, and I hope the Webers helped make her graduation a bit more memorable.