A graduation to remember
Frankly speaking, graduations tend to be boring. AUAF's graduation today was one of the more unique graduation experiences I've had, though.
For reasons related to security and transport, they decided to have the graduation at the new campus (right across the street from the current campus.) There's one completed building there (the women's center) and they had the dedication there. We were all worried because it was going to be outside, and it's been in the 90s this last week, and that, combined with graduation gowns, make it hot.
We were assured they'd put up giant ribbons/banners (15 feet wide by ~50 feet long) to provide shade, and enclosed the area in tent like banners as well.
A week ago, there had been another graduation ceremony held outside, except the night before, the big circus tent fell down.
This should have been a warning.
The weather forecast calling for thunderstorms should have been a warning.
I suppose both were warnings, but too late to do anything.
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When we arrived, the sides of the "tent" had fallen down, so there were just the giant banner/ribbons over the top. That's okay, we didn't need sides anyway.
The ceremony started. It was cloudy and sure looked like rain. We made it through beginning announcements and then the rains came. Not just light rain, but thunderstorm-level rain, complete with wind that whipped the "roof" banners around to the point that it was nearly impossible to understand what was being said. But that was soon partially solved by the first of the banners blowing off to loud cheering and laughing from the graduates (and many faculty and others) who were all finding the whole thing vastly amusing and fun.
Then the rains got harder. The president decided to stop the ceremony and we all went inside to wait it out.
30 minutes later, the rains quit and we all came back outside and found out places... on folding chairs that were now soaked. Fortunately, the normal folding chairs were easy to get relatively dry. The VIP seats in the front two rows, however, were upholstered and impossible to dry, so the poor VIP's got even wetter than we did.
The ceremony started again, to considerably abbreviated speeches.
By this time, only about half the roof was still there, and was still whipping loudly in the wind.
Just as they were about to hand out the diplomas, the storm came back. But not before the last remaining banner, which had collected hundreds of gallons of water, came loose... dousing the poor audience members seated under neath it. This happened twice. Then it ripped off and the rains came.
Back into the building we went for a second time. The president, in a valiant attempt not to have it be a complete waste, pointed out to everyone that the very large catered lunch was being served in small tends to the side of the building, so people could go enjoy the lunch and stay dry if they wanted.
What he didn't realize (because he couldn't see) was that the food tents had collapsed. On top of the food.
So everyone huddled inside again, by this time finding the whole scenario utterly hilarious in an, "absolutely perfect representation of perseverance in light of troubles" sort of "appropriate for Afghanistan" sort of way.
Eventually it stopped raining and everyone came back outside. This time, they'd replaced the drenched VIP seats with the seats in the next rows back, which were the faculty seats. So we were all without seats. In an effort to find seats, we poached folding chairs from behind us--meaning the graduates no longer had seats. The graduates poached chairs from the audience and everyone sat roughly more or less approximately where they were supposed to sit.
Finally it was time to hand out the diplomas, and the graduates were asked to find their place in line, which they did by calling out, "I'm # 42" "38" and so on until they figured out where they all went and could walk up in order.
They got their diplomas and graduation ended.
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All in all, spirits were high and everyone was positive. I didn't see anyone angry or upset through it all. We were just finding the whole situation quite funny. It is definitely one of the more memorable graduations I expect I'll experience, though.
(And here's a pic of me, for those of you who have no clue what I look like. The pic was taken pre-rain.)
