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| Me, Tania, Yocattia, Avriel, and Maria Ines |
This weekend was a weekend unlike any other
here at NPH…graduation! The festivities kicked off with the special needs
students’ graduation celebration on Wednesday morning. Two of my girls, Erika
and Carmencita, were recognized with certificates and I, sitting there in the
audience, felt like such a proud ‘mom’.
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| Erika and me! |
Saturday morning, the action continued with
the 8th grade and preschool graduation ceremony at 9:00am. This was
a big deal…5 former volunteers made it back to celebrate, hundreds of photos
were taken, and the kids were dressed in their absolute best. Another one of my
girls, Yocattia, was one of the 8th grade graduates. Again, I was
soooo proud of her. I nannied for five summers, but I’d never felt like such a
parent before. It’s hard to even describe!
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| Yocattia! |
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| The ceremony begins! |
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| Our 8th grade boy graduates! |
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| Our 8th grade girl graduates! |
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| Yocattia and myself post-graduation! |
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| Arturo and Milagros graduate from preschool! |
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| Milagros gets her diploma... |
Then throughout the afternoon on Saturday,
us volunteers prepared for the graduation red and black ‘after party’, this
time just for those with invites (7th grade on up). The night kicked
off with some music, a brief power outage (in which the dancing continued), a
dance show performed by a group that came in from the capital, an award show
(Mr. and Mrs. 8th Grade, Mr. Sonrisa Bonita, Miss Dulzura, etc.) and
finally, us volunteers performed a dance we had secretly been preparing for two
weeks. We made a mash of 5 of the most popular current dembow songs and put on
our tigre gear and off we went. It
was a blast!!
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| Avriel and myself all decked out in our red and black! |
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| Franchesca and me! |
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| One of the older girls painted the nails of all of the girl volunteers prior to the party! |
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| Me and Sulema, the older girl helper in my house. |
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| Giving out the awards...Mr. 8th grade was Yoan and Mrs. 8th grade was Yocattia! |
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| All ready to dance in our tigre outfits...notice my Twins baseball hat...aww yeah! |
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| And here we go...unju unju... |
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| Getting our 'flow' on... |
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| Muevete jevi jevi jevi... |
Now, summer has officially started! About
1/3 of our kids are spending anywhere from a couple days to a month with family
members they have, and the majority of those kids left today. Six of my girls
took off this morning and another couple will head out in a week or so…it was a
little bittersweet saying bye and knowing I won’t see them for awhile (I can
NOT imagine saying my real goodbye when I leave). But I’m excited for them to
be able to connect with their family this summer! Overall, it’s been a very
busy week!
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