What You Wanted

June 1st 2013

The day that I wanted. When we moved to Beijing almost three years ago my parents asked us what we wanted to do while we lived in Beijing. My sister said she want to see the panda's in Chengdu. I said I wanted to graduate. Of course my dream would have happened simply with the passing of time and where my sisters dream required a trip. Nevertheless this was the one true thing that I was looking forward to. Of course seeing more of China was also on my wish list but graduation was something I had been looking forward to since the first day of 7th grade (first year of high school in Holland).

On June 1st 2013 I had my dream graduation. And it truly could not have been a better day. The last few weeks/months in Beijing consisted of far more polluted days than no pollution days but June 1st was a gorgeous sunny and no pollution day! It was so sunny that I had to put on sunscreen and we all were sweating like crazy throughout the ceremony. The ceremony took place in the Confucius temple. There were a lot of speeches but it was all worth the 20 seconds that it took to get my diploma.

Credits Western Academy of Beijing

Credits to my mom

Credits Geraldine Cuason

Credits to my mom

After the ceremony my family and I went to my friends' house for lunch.

After the lunch we went home, changed etc and then it was time for the graduation dinner. It was a nice dinner and during the dinner there were some more speeches. After the dinner there were two video's that were made of our class which was really nice because it was nice to be reminded of all the things that happened in the past year. After that it was time for the awards (14 in total). And completely unexpected I received one of the awards! I got the WAB Mission Award, as the student of the graduating class who best embodied the spirit/mission of WAB. It was a beautiful way to end the 3 years at WAB!

And after the dinner it was time for after grad! It was a lot of fun and after after grad we all went to tiananmen square to watch the raising of the flag at 4:47 am, the last of the traditions. 

It was a wonderful 24 hours that for me were a true celebration of the past 3 years. I am going to miss WAB so so much but I am also looking forward to begin university in (as of July 2nd 2013) 1,5 months. 

WAB, thank you for changing my life.