The 20 Year Reunion

I had a good time. It was the strangest feeling at the beginning but after awhile, things settled down. As I mentioned in the previous post, a friend picked me up so that we wouldn't need to go there alone. Thank goodness for that last minute security-blanket type of arrangement! While walking into the school grounds, we saw little clusters of people who waved at us, and we waved back while saying we had no idea who we were. Out of approximately 200 girls from our year, 70 attended yesterday's reunion. Only very few from my 'inner circle' of friends attended but there were many others that I was friends with that were there. So here's the nutshell...

The Expected...
- We started the reunion with a mass. I remember the last thing we did at school 20 years ago was to attend mass. Afterall, the school is called 'All Hallows' School'.

- There are no more nuns living in the convent and only one nun on the school staff. I was a little sad to find out that my old piano teacher only passed away earlier this year. I should have made the time to visit her.

- Everyone was in the same boat in terms of not being able to remember other people's names. Sometimes there were awkward moments when I found myself having a brief staring competition with somebody else while we tried to figure out names or even if we knew the other person.

- There was gossip, just like there was 20 years ago. In fact, there was even continuation of 20 year old gossip....I'd better not mention it here.


The Unexpected...

The chapel was smaller but prettier than I remembered it. Actually, the whole school was prettier! I'm sure it looked the same 20 years ago but I couldn't appreciate it then.

- We can all still sing in Latin! BUT, we still don't sing the hymns during mass and we even had a few wrong responses (hey...they're new) - the priest jokingly told us off and then proceeded to give us a pop quiz on the church.

- The remaining nun saw me and yelled out my full name. Then she gave me a BIG HUG! We weren't exactly buddies back in the day. I had a nice long chat with her and she gave me many ideas about how to make piano lessons interesting for Aaron. Funny how she knew of all these techniques but never used them. In the end, I took her number and I am going to visit her with Christmas presents one of these days.

- Two girls passed away the year after we left school - one from anorexia and another commited suicide. One other girl was murdered on a holiday to South America. Sad, sad news to hear.

- The gregarious girls had all become quieter and the quiet girls had all become much more confident. I'm putting this under 'unexpected' because it wasn't how I remembered them.

- I enjoyed the whole reunion more than I thought I would. In fact, I didn't plan to go out for drinks with them afterwards but I did and I almost didn't want to go home because they were such good company.

I wonder if there will be a 30 year reunion, and I wonder if I'll go. I'll probably chicken by then again and need my friend to come pick me up....better go let her know now.