Ben & Mandy: Graduation Continued

I feel like all I do is apologize for never updating our blog lately. We're worried that our computer may be in it's last days, so uploading pictures and running more than one thing at a time nearly puts it over the edge. This one blog post has taken me an entire length of a movie (1hr and 40 minutes) to complete. So, we're sorry for those of you who check in on us and there is nothing to read! Hopefully we can get a new computer soon and update more regularly. In the meantime I will continue post about our summer as the computer allows. :-)

Thanks for reading!

I don't think any of us could have been prepared for the University of Washington's general commencement ceremony. We have lots of friends who have graduated from the UW who described a long ceremony with enough graduates to fill the football field. One friend said, "I'd really like to come and cheer Ben on but I sat through that ceremony for my daughter and I just don't think I can do it again!" That should have warned us but we, or at least I, went into it naively thinking: it won't be that bad, it couldn't possibly last the 4 hours it's schedule for, they are just estimating the 'worst case' scenario length.

Boy was I WRONG. The ceremony lasted 4 hours, not a minute less, and not a minute more!

We got to the stadium early because Ben needed to report for the big graduate line-up. We got in a long line and waited for the stadium doors to open. We were able to secure seats in the shade, which was great because it was a warm day for Seattle!

I'm not sure how long the procession of students, departments, and schools took, but they just kept coming and coming. Trying to spot Ben was like trying to find an individual ant on an ant hill!