Since then, I have been on vacation, but still keeping busy with unofficial, personal stuff!
1) Graduation
My recent graduation was on December 19, 2015.
I set my alarm for 5:15 but I woke up at 4:30am! Very rare, but fate made it happen!
The ceremony was scheduled to start at 9am but the graduates were expected to report at 8am! I arrived circa 7:45 am.
Usually the graduates wait outside. There were grey clouds and drizzles, bringing worries that we would outside in the rain. Lucky for me, the graduate students could line up inside the security gate. But the undergraduates had to wait outside! Oh well!
Here is a video of me waiting!
https://www.facebook.com/pablo.wegesend/videos/10203680571854766/
The LIS Students waited together as one group.
Then circa 8:40, we all started walking towards the arena floor to take our seats. When we took our seats, we all looked around to see loved ones out in the stands. I saw my mother and waved.
At 9am, it was time for the usual graduation stuff. The national & state anthems, speeches, the oli (basically a Hawaiian chant performed by students from the Hawaiian Studies program), and the calling out the names.
My high school doesn't call out the names of the graduates, which makes the ceremony much shorter! But at UH, with much more people, does call out the names. But lucky for us at UH while we are waiting, we can go use the restroom in the backrooms of the arena! No one would stop us!
By noon, it was time for the ceremony to be over! The LIS graduates take one group picture outside the arena, as it would be one last time we are together as a group. Then we our separate ways as we walk to the fields to meet our loved ones.
Those last named A-N wait at the football practice field, while the O-Z wait at the baseball stadium. While we enter, the graduates had the whole field to themselves as the loved ones are held behind the rope, giving us to time to find our spot by our letter.
Then the rope came down, and the loved ones are let loose.
It was just my mom who came. (My father couldn't make it. By the time I told my parents the date & time of graduation, my dad already booked his trip to Mexico. As you could tell, I don't communicate very often with my parents. Oh well!)
I did take pictures with some of the other students, but we didn't stick around for long. Though sometimes I sticked around longer, but my mother is at retirement age and can't stand around for too long.
Afterwards, it was time to make surprise visits to relatives who couldn't make it. My brother was at work, so we visited his workplace. Then we visited my grandmother, who depends on a walker to get around, and therefore couldn't make it to the graduation!
2) The Vacation
I was done being a student, and my job as a substitute teacher was on winter break, so I finally had time to do other stuff!
The most important was exercise. I had gained 20+ pounds during my time as an LIS student! It was all work & school, work & school!
Now, I finally had time to get back on my biking adventures and the YMCA workouts! It feels to be doing those things at least twice a week again!
I also finally got around to migrating some files from the floppy disks to a USB flash drive.
facebookAlso my vacation time was used to do some of the following
- set up my ergonomic stand for my new computer (which I bought 3 months ago).
- add photo images to my photo binder (yes, I still use them)
- visit relatives for Christmas
- and of course ........ parties at the club! Last year, I was ill in the week before Christmas, so I was unable to go clubbing with my new green Santa hat on! I finally got around to it this year :)
But there are still some unfinished personal business that I want to take care of soon. They include
- end of the year blog posts
- blog posts reflection of my entire time in LIS
- organizing all those folders I used during my time in LIS. Probably half the items could be shredded, though some of the printed articles were from restricted databases only accessible to UH students. (no, not every article can be found via Google search. Some UH students learned that the hard way, LOL!)
- organizing all those printed articles & newspaper I've been piling up! Most will probably go into the trash or recycling! The only problem is finding time to sift through the ones I really wanted to save, then throwing out the rest
- Just general housecleaning!
Well, it's a few days away from New Year's! Enjoy!
