Graduation weekend:
Mom got in to the Twin Cities last Thursday around noon. After I picked her up, we went to downtown Minneapolis. I took her to eat at Pot Belly, a sandwich shop (she said it was slightly different then the one she was familiar with). To get there though, we walked through the skyway, which connects most of the down town buildings, and she found that really intriguing. After lunch, I took her by DeLaSalle where she got to meet a few of the staff members there and I think I can safely say she was quite pleased with me being there and placed at ease after having met some of them. After getting to my apartment and finishing my cleaning up and vacuuming, mom and I went to have dinner at Pastor Tom and Lois Kramer's house in northern St. Paul. Ed and Pearl Yoshikawa also join us for dinner there. They were all glad to see mom in Minnesota.
Friday was my graduation day. After having brunch at a local dinner, we went to the Baccalaureate Mass, which was at the Cathedral of St. Paul. While the service was nice, the acoustics, as always, were poor in there. The actual graduation ceremony took place at 7pm at the River Center in downtown St. Paul. The ceremony itself was about and hour and fifteen mins; ours was only for those in the doctorate and grad schools (about 400 students). Im my department, the School of Divinity, there were only about 5 us that actually walked. (While we were one of the smaller groups, the smallest group was the one person getting a masters in real estate. The larger groups were MBA and education.) Charlie's dad was also able to make it to my graduation ceremony and sat next to mom. They had a reception there afterwards of punch and cookies, so I told mom to eat enough cookies since they were worth a couple thousand dollars for each cookie. Friday night, Charlie was also having a party, his holiday party for his family and friends. So after the ceremony, we went to the bar where the party with, and mom actually stay at the bar for over an hour! I took her to my apartment when she started to get bored, and then I went back to the party for a couple more hours.
Saturday...For Lunch we met with classmates at DeGidios, an Italian restaurant in St Paul. It is a nice sit down restaurant. Four of us were in the graduating class, two of them had taken classes with us but were not done yet, and 5 family members joined us. It was also a fare well party for one of our graduated classmates, Manuk, who is going back to his homeland of Armenia. Manuk is a deacon in the Armenian Apostolic Church (a traditional orthodox Church); his Church sent him to grad school for Ecumenical reasons and he was a blessing to have in class because he provided some good insights. Saturday for dinner, mom and I were invited over to the Yoshikawa's. We joined them and their friend, George, for a nice chicken and potatoes dinner.
Sunday, after I got back from Church, I took mom back to downtown Minneapolis. We went to the Macy's there which had an animated walk through of "A Day in the Life of an Elf." Apparently it's a tradition that Macy's does and each year they pick and theme to make in animation, we walked through it in about 20 mins or so and it culminates in a chance for kids to take a picture with Santa, which we by passed. We then went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. They have a nice collection of European and Asian artwork, but we went because they have a collection on loan from the Louvre. I figured since mom may never make it to France, it would be interested to see. While I'm not sure it is worth the $16 they were charging per person, I guess it wasn't bad since I got in for free for being a student. I guess the most famous painting they had was "The Astronomer" by Vermeer;
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it was quite interesting to see the detail of the painting so up close. For dinner on Sunday, we were invited over to Charlie's mom's house, who cooked pasta for us. I think mom had a good time chatting with Charlie's mom and step-dad, and I had fun chatting with Charlie and a few of his other friends who were also there.Thankfully, the weather was good on Monday morning and we were able to fly out of Minneapolis with only a slight delay (since they were waiting for some crew members to get there).
Tidbit by Thomas: Bed time, in the morning I'm headed to Napa with my friend Jimmy. We are going out there to have lunch with some of my students I had out there and visit with the Brother's I lived with up there.
