Jenny's Graduation Weekend

This weekend we have been in Dunedin to attend Jenny's graduation ceremony. Otago, in common with most New Zealand universities, have a tradition of a formal awarding of degrees. Most people extend the festivities to include formal photos in academic dress and invite all their close friends and family (what we term whanau).

Graduation day started with a parade of graduands. It was a wet and cool experience
but many brave souls marched forth, led by a Scottish Pipe Band (Dunedin was settled by Caledonians and the name Dunedin is the old form of Edinburgh).

The ceremony was held in Dunedin's Town Hall with all the university hierarchy bedecked in their traditional attire in attendance. The fellow in the centre is the Chancellor who confers each degree on the recipient by symbolically tapping them on the head with a mortarboard (or trencher as they are known there). This is the ritual of capping at which point the recipient becomes a graduate.

There is a video of Jenny's capping which may be a bit bandwidth-hungry if you have a slow connection.

Afterwards we celebrated with our whanau - here are Janie (who has a degree in nursing) and Denise who has only a degree from the University of Life so felt she was entitled to wear the trencher.

At times there were more photographers than photographees (from the left Kathy, Sam, Jena and Noreen).

Later we had a meal and toasted Jenny's success. The group is, again from the left, Chris, Jenny, Denise, Noreen, Kathy, me, Janie, Jena, Sam, AJ and Gemma.

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was this bottle of Taieri George (or to be more accurate the contents of the bottle but the bottle itself is pretty neat).

Jenny and Janie being mysterious, or possibly Muslim.

This is the house we stayed in. Four bedrooms and plenty of room for us all.

Janie and Denise were busy in the kitchen. Pink gloves are so in this year.