My little sister graduated!
So on Friday, Kris and I drove down to Delaware with my parents. The fact that it was Memorial Day weekend and everyone was going down the shore made the trip almost unbearable, but we made a good decision to exit the NJ Turnpike after sitting in very slow traffic for nearly an hour. After that, the trip still took almost 5 hours - but at least we were moving. The funniest part happened when we finally got to Delaware and were trying to find the hotel we were staying at. We joked later that its location, practically within the cloverleaf exit ramp area, was the “spiraling pit of hell.” You see, we drove past it about four times - because the location was on a small side street next to the highway, yet this road had obviously once been the main thruway, because the address of the hotel was the same name as the highway! There was only one small turn to get onto the side road, and if you missed it, you had to drive around in a circle again. We never stopped to look at the hotel’s directions, so we’re still blaming Google maps (which are usually pretty good!) for getting us lost. At least once we got there, several other hotel guests were there to commiserate the experience.
That night we met up with Laura for dinner near the mall (which both going to and coming back from were other “we got kinda lost” episodes). We were all pretty tired so we headed to bed early. We had to get up early Saturday morning, too, since the large convocation ceremony started at 9AM (Laura had to be there by 8, which was fine with us because we needed to get seats). Now for a side note - why are college move-in, move-out, and graduation weekends always the hottest, most humid, most unbearable weekends? Is it because a whole lot of people are gather in one place and all moving about? Well, this day was certainly no respite from that type of weather. Sitting in the stadium in the blaring sun, which was killer already at 10AM, was too much for Kris and I, so we had to step out to the shade for a few minutes. We DID, however, get to see Laura (and everyone else) march on in, and we went back up right when “all the honors, rights, and privileges granted by the university” were bestowed upon her and all the other undergraduates, so that was pretty cool. We were also able to beat the crowd out the doors from this larger informal ceremony. Another side note - the University of Delaware does a very large ceremony in the morning, where everyone goes, but only the PhD graduates receive their degrees individually. Then there are a whole bunch of smaller graduations later throughout the day for each college or department. Laura’s ceremony wasn’t until nearly the end of the day at 3:30pm.
After the morning’s festivities, we wandered down the main street at UDel - stopped in a few shops, Kris bought a new hat - and then we had lunch. Just as we were being served, Aunt Linda and Grandma showed up at the Iron Hill Brewery - so we all got to eat together. We took a second trip down the main street for dessert, then went back to Laura’s apartment. She still had a bunch of stuff to move out, so we put as much stuff in my parents’ Trailblazer as possible. One of her housemates was getting rid of a huge TV, so Aunt Linda took that in her car. Pretty soon it was time for the College of Agriculture’s convocation, so we all headed over to that. This smaller ceremony had each person individually announced and walk across the platform, but it was not in alphabetical order, and nobody actually got a degree - instead they got a calendar with the UDel seal on it! Our final stop for the day was Laura’s graduation dinner. All in all a fun, though hot, weekend.
Congrats Laura! 
