Sunday, 10 June 2012

The Future and the Past

Friday (8th June) was Graduation Day in most schools here. 
Florists had a busy day…

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I don’t know anyone who is graduating this year but there is a ‘Senior High School’ close to where I live so I went there to snap some photos.

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Friends and relatives waiting in the school yard.

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It’s common for family and friends to carry placards with the name and often an old baby photo of the graduate. Supposed to make it easier for them to find each other in the crowded school yard…

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Finally here they come.

The graduates usually wear white graduation hats (old tradition) – and then people hang flower bouqets and balloons and whatever around their neck.

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Afterwards, it’s tradition to go riding around town on lorry platforms. Singing and shouting and whatever, celebrating “freedom”. Usually they have some placards or banners on the side of the truck. The one above had the cleverest messages of those that I saw: “Newly divorced” and “Cutting the umbilical cord”.

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Hopefully off towards a bright, independent future!

I got a little bit nostalgic watching them…
Traditions haven’t changed much since “my day”!

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New collage of some old photos from my album, digitally colourboosted to compensate for loss of original colour through the years… The green lorry in the upper right hand corner was ours (my class).

Linking this post to Straight Out of the Camera Sunday
(please ignore the nostalgic photo collage! LOL)

6 comments:

Ginny Hartzler said...

This is SO cool, to see how you do graduations! The placards a great idea, we don't do that here. And friends can all see the baby pictures, too. I LOVE those sharp caps, we have what is called a mortar board with a big tassel hanging down, pretty stupid looking compared to yours!

{Shannon} said...

Thank you so much for sharing this!!! Quite different that here in the U.S. So much more interesting!

MadSnapper said...

i love it, much different than here. i love that old photo of you. i don't have one of me graduating because they canceled it because of rain and we go no pics. all i have is my senior class photo that was for the highschool year book. do you do year books for each year with all the classes pics in them?

NatureFootstep said...

jag ahr också firat en student i helgen. Men har inte lagt ut det än. :)

Jenny Woolf said...

It's strange, there has never been a tradition of graduation here. I remember walking out of school on my last day and thinking, "this is unbelievable, I don't have to go to school any more!"

Thank you so much for buying my book, and I hope you enjoy it!

Graham Edwards said...

I was going to say that there is no similar tradition here but Jenny has already made that point. Things can be very different in Scotland but not, as it happens, in this case. Much more is made of it at the various levels in New Zealand where leaving pre-school for primary school is even a 'big thing'.

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