A Graduation Ceremony

In creating this blog, I promised that there would be stories. About cute children.

Well, even though I haven't even left the US yet, I already have one such story.

Yesterday,  I had the pleasure of meeting my great-uncle’s son (which makes him my uncle?) for the very first time. His name is Bao Phong, or Pierre Louis, and he was graduating…from preschool.

(After the jump)
That’s right. I had a couple hours to spare, and I went to a graduation for four- and five-year-olds. Sound exciting? Surprisingly, it was.

Now, a preschool graduation is quite different from your traditional high school or college ceremony. For starters, when the graduation class comes in (wearing white caps and gowns, of course), parents (so, everyone except my sister and me) are allowed to line the aisles in a parade of cameras. Once all the flashes started going off, I started wondering how long this ceremony would be, and if this was more for the parents’ benefit than for the kids, and also, if a preschool graduation was even really necessary. After all, it is just preschool. The kids probably won’t remember a thing from this day, and I’m pretty sure that preschoolers are expected to go on to kindergarten. Their education doesn’t exactly stop there.

But then they turned on the music, and before you know it, these tiny, adorable children (and rest assured, my uncle is definitely one of those) are doing the Chicken Dance, which transitions smoothly into Itsy-Bitsy Spider, soon followed by Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. Who knew that there was a medley of all this? Yeah, this graduation was for the kids too – they were definitely having a good time as well, especially when "A Tooty Ta" started playing. Bao Phong was bouncing along quite happily, and the boy next to him (blond, cute as a button; his little brother sat in front of me and definitely developed a fascination with my moccasins) was rocking out, hair flying everywhere. In fact, everyone was dancing joyfully (some better than others), except for a boy named Emmanuel, who folded his arms, stood with one hip cocked, and indicated with his raised eyebrows that he was above such antics. Well, I guess some kids just start early.

Finally, like any other graduation ceremony, there was the presentation of diplomas, which took no time at all, since the kids were rather distracted by all the sparkly graduation balloons and the happy music. This was followed by Capri-Suns and cookies; Bao Phong also got a bendable alien toy, which he promptly attacked me with. Good times. All in all, it was probably the most adorable graduation ceremony I will ever get to attend. I wish I had pictures, but I simply was not as prepared as 99% of the audience. Oh well - I promise to take my camera everywhere, once I get to Hong Kong (I'm currently camped out in the Vancouver airport).

In the meantime, since I had never heard of the "A Tooty Ta" song, here's a video to demonstrate.




Just picture 12 five-year-olds doing that. :P