Graduation

Of the 24 volunteers currently at NPH, two are Guatemalan. It's been great having them around to help out with language and cultural questions; the fact that they're two completely awesome people is great too :) This week was Karla's graduation from college so she invited us all along. Not wanting to miss out on a chance to see the one and only University in Guatemala (yes, there's only one public university for the whole country) I quickly asked for a day off from work so I could head into the capital with everyone. Karla's been super sweet to me from day one so I was happy to be able to show some support.

Luckily transport was having a slow day so we were able to pay one of the NPH drivers to take us into the city instead of trying to struggle through the buses. After a traffic-filled two hour drive, we got to the campus with seconds to spare. I was able to snap up a few photos while we wandered around trying to figure out where to go (as you can tell I wasn't much help).

Have I mentioned lately how much I love models?

They have really cool Mayan tiles.

Luckily walking around with seven beautiful foreign women has it's benefits. Two minutes after arriving at the University we had scored our own personal tour guide. He was nice enough to stop what he was doing to walk us all to the right hall and we got there right in time for the graduation. The graduation was completely different than I expected. There are 100,000 students at this University, so I pictured a huge auditorium with a list of names that would take an hour to read. Instead, Karla was the only person to graduate. They hold the graduations by department and do short 30 minute graduations for each person. It was absolutely beautiful. First Karla had to stand in front of a panel of the department directors. She gave a short power point presentation summarizing her final project (which was helping kids start a community library. She's a social work major)

After that each of her teachers said a little something about their experiences with her in the classroom. Then they declared her to be eligible to graduate and dressed her in this special graduation gown.

The poofy hat makes it official

They gave her a medal for outstanding academic achievement too. It was so nice to see her get recognized for how hard she's worked. I was secretly jealous of her medal. All I ever got was a letter from the Dean :P She had a chance to give a little speech afterwards and she literally went from person to person in the audience and thanked them for how they supported her over the years. She started crying when she got to her mom (who raised her as a single mother for the last several years). Lots of folks started tearing up in the audience too. It was so nice that she had the opportunity to do that! Giving a shout out to family members is totally impossible in the states; it would have been so nice to thank my family in front of everyone.

Group shot!

When we left the auditorium her family had a little table set up with cupcakes and soda for all of us! It was really sweet and it was nice getting to chat with her family for a little bit. Check out the awesome cupcakes her little brother made!!

We headed out shortly after the snack but not before getting invited to a family lunch at Karla's house on Saturday! Woohoo! I love a chance to be nosey and I can't wait to see what her house is like! More pictures to follow :)