First week of summer holiday

This is how my summer holiday started...

Graduation parties!

Father's Day!

Advice: Don't have a bonfire if it's still more than 80 degrees outside

My 18th birthday!

Packing to the beach and home!

On Saturday we will head to Ocean City, New Jersey, for a week! I hope I'll have time to post pictures before I'll start my journey back to Finland. On Monday 30th we will drive to Harrisburg to meet up with other exchange students and then we'll drive to New York together. Then on Tuesday my flight to Helsinki will departure. I have couple of posts coming up when I'll be back in Finland, so keep up checking my blog!

Baccalaureate and Graduation

Wednesday night I went to Baccalaureate event. It was optional for seniors to go, but Concert Choir performed there, so that's why I went there. It is said to be the "religious" part of the graduation, even though it was held in the school auditorium. The event started with a prayer and then continued to reflections, performances of graduating seniors. They were all absolutely amazing! Warwick has a lot of talented people. Then we sang Glory of Love and Wind Beneath My Wings, which was then followed by a speech from a priest. It was a short event but I enjoyed it a lot because of the great performances.

These are the things I wore at Baccalaureate and graduation. A gap, gown, and stole of course. The red medal is for being a senior member in Concert Choir as well as the black and red pin. I also added my little AFS pin to the stole. The golden cord is for being member of NHS.

The tassel

The graduation was held in Calvary Church on Thursday evening. Earlier in the morning we had practice there to go through what happens in the ceremony.

Concert Choir seniors! Missing Mikkel and Kyra

Photobomb game

All the foreign exchange students in Warwick! Mikkel from Denmark, Luisa and Julia from Brazil, Nora from Austria, and Alex from Sweden.

Before the ceremony started everybody came downstairs to the gym to take pictures and to line up. The ceremony started with the band playing music while we entered into the church. First the principal had a little speech to open the ceremony and then four students had their speeches. Then they recognized the top 10% students and announced the valedictorian of the year. After that they recognized the members of different honor societies.

And then we foreign exchange students got recognized. We all went to the stage to receive American flags. Right after that we seniors of Concert Choir sang a song called Thankful. I absolutely love that song! I sang the tenor part with four other girls because there were not so many guys and they all had to sing the bass part. 

Just graduated!

Family picture :)

Because I didn't actually graduate from high school, they gave me a Certificate of Attendance. Like I said in the last post, my last name was spelled wrong at first, so I went to get it corrected :D I hope I can get the flag home without damaging it or anything! It was so nice that I got to be part of the graduation ceremony! 

The last week of school

Before the last week of my high school career started, I got to go to Mario's birthday and graduation party! It was also the last time to see Tuaha and Faysal, who now are heading back to their home countries. We had a lot of fun, exchange student parties are never boring!

We got our yearbooks! I pre-ordered one online, so I got it on the first day they were available to pick up. It includes pictures from this school year, for example everybody's school pictures, and pictures of all the clubs. We foreign exchange students even got our own pages in it!

I bought this really cheap flag thinking that people could sing it at the end of the year. So I carried it around with me and now it is pretty much full already! This was not my idea, I know a lot of exchange student who have done it. I think it's a really nice memory of this year! (I should probably iron it though...)

Yes, we had to go and see the Fault in Our Stars. It was so good!

Practising the senior song

Art class selfie!

Tuesday was the last full day of school for me! My art teacher has his little tradition where everybody can print their handprint to the wall. And there's mine :)

Tuesday was the last full day of school for me! My art teacher has his little tradition where everybody can print their handprint to the wall. And there's mine :) Someone asked me to take more pictures of school lunches, so here is my last school lunch :D

On Wednesday senior did not have regular school because of the graduation practices. I'll do an another post about the graduation, I've got a lot of nice pictures from there. But basically on the practices we just practiced, what else can I say :D Julia, Nora, and I had a little problem in the beginning because we didn't have senior homerooms, so we had to find out which homeroom should we join. We also got our gap and gowns on that day! Then on Thursday we had another practice. It was hold at Calvary Church, where the actual graduation was.

I had to make collage of these misspelled things, since them all happened in one day :D My name Pinja has switched into Pinza or Pinga many times before, but Pijna was a new one! Americans usually spell Tuomainen as Toumainen but now I got one where it was Toumaines :D My last name was also spelled wrong in the certificate of attendance in graduation ceremony, Tuomanien. Here is an advice to new exchange students: learn how to spell out your name. You will need to know how to do it many, many times. 

Mr. Cifuni, the greatest art teacher ever.

My Spanish teacher Mrs. Poletti!

Civics and government teacher Mrs. Mousetis!

I did decide to go to school after the graduation on Friday to say final goodbyes to my teachers and some friends. I can't believe my year in Warwick High School is now over! I could not have had any better school than Warwick, my year was amazing because of it. I hope we exchange students gave a good picture of exchange students, so they will keep taking new ones in the future.