Fashion | Catherine Lee

An amazing evening last night ~ so many smiles and laughs, and of course, photos!

Yes, it’s the end of the school year here in Taiwan and at SJU we are gearing up for tomorrow’s graduation ceremony, and saying many congratulations – but also sad goodbyes – to our lovely graduating students. For our 4th year undergraduate students in the student fellowship, last night we held the annual much-anticipated, highlight-of-the-whole-year graduation party ~ this year on the theme of ‘復古’ ‘Vintage’. Everyone’s been busy for weeks in preparation, not least finding an outfit, vintage style ~ grandparents and parents to the rescue!

Our fellowship has 7 student members graduating, led by Vincy, who was last year’s student fellowship leader, the first girl to be elected to that position for over a decade and our first ever student leader from Malaysia. Jing-Sen was also one of the student fellowship leadership team. Pei-Ching and Mao-Ge are 2 other committed members, and Pei-ching was baptized only recently, at Easter. Here they all are – making their presentation to Jing-Ching, the current fellowship leader…

I arrived a bit late and missed the food, but in time for the party proper! We had singing, dancing, games, drama, catwalk, presentations, videos, gifts and prayers. And many many photos. So so so so much going on, all evening!

One of the highlights was the dancing ~ this is Jailhouse Rock, led by Tony and Nai-Nai…

Video No.2 features our graduating students, Jing-Sen and Vincy…

And this one features our chaplain Rev. Wu and his wife, Vicky… they certainly know how to dance!

And so to the photos – and yes the lights were flashing all different colours throughout the evening!

And a few photos taken by students, my vintage style is definitely, well, pink!

35235261_949941135184226_3769915721681731584_o

35238959_1698788946864879_6127278126331330560_n

35299860_1066117863536636_4783197699077832704_o

35265647_1066121806869575_1500529674776739840_o

Plus the group photo….

Then, this morning, Vincy’s parents and family arrived from West Malaysia ready for graduation tomorrow, and their first stop was to visit the SJU Chaplaincy for a photo! Actually, after weeks on non-stop sun and a major lack of rain, today started 5 days of predicted heavy rain. It is absolutely pouring down out there, but still, anyway, a very big welcome to Taiwan!

We have at about 10 students in our fellowship from Malaysia, maybe more. These are most of the girls ~ they are all so amazing, so mature, and bring so many blessings to us in SJU! For the boys, well there’s Calvin and Tony, spot them in the photo album above, they bring a whole lot of life and energy to the fellowship group!

And finally a special mention and congratulations to Dong-Gua, one of our students on the master’s program, finally he is ready to graduate. He’s been here longer than most of us, and we will miss him so much. He’s the student who can always be relied on to come to our rescue whenever we need anything technical or practical, or needing muscles or clear thinking, always willing to help! Here he is posing with Rev. Wu. Ah, congratulations Dong-Gua!

I can’t be at the graduation tomorrow, so I gave the students my congratulations and best wishes last night. As always, they’ll leave a big gap that will be hard to fill, but we send them out into the world with our prayers for God’s blessing and grace to be upon them. And of course, we hope they’ll keep in touch ~ and come back and visit us very often!

MANY MANY CONGRATULATIONS AND BEST WISHES TO ALL THOSE GRADUATING THIS SUMMER ~ YES!

Every year in mid-November, all the first-year students in St. John’s University take part in a Coming of Age Ceremony ~ which has been highly praised by the Ministry of Education. It’s run by the SJU Chaplaincy and the Student Affairs section ~ and yesterday was the day!

Almost 1,000 students took part, plus their form tutors and heads of the different departments, all dressed in SJU ties and white shirts! Parents and relatives were invited and they were presented with a small poinsettia plant to take home. Everyone had a small taste of wine too, toasted to mark the students’ arrival in the big bad world of adulthood!

We had speeches and prayers and songs – the student fellowship formed a choir and sang, and many of them helped to run the whole event. Two students from the guitar club performed too. SJU President Chen gave a short speech, as did one of the alumni. Bishop Lai blessed the wine, and gave the closing blessing.

And in case you’re wondering who won the fashion award of the day – well it went to this student who was wearing a live seedling in a clip in his hair ~ this is big fashion in China, and on its way to becoming big fashion in Taiwan too ~ y’know it’s quite fun!