Glaser's Grenada Life: The White Coat Ceremony

So for those not familiar with Med/Vet schooling the tradition in most schools is to start with a "White Coat Ceremony". This symbolizes the student's official entrance into the Vet/Med profession. Each student has their first white doctor's coat placed on them by one of the head people of the school. It was a very exciting event to see my wife with her official doctors coat on, looking quite the part.

The highlight was of course watching Megan get coated (I guess that's what you call it?) along with her new friends. Unfortunately that was but 20 minutes or so of the 1 hour long ceremony. The person leading the ceremony was nice and said some interesting and encouraging things. The guest speaker was quite decorated with President of this, and director of that, and treasurer of this... but he was bloody BORING! I even checked with Megan after to see if I was the only one begging for him to sit back down, she agreed completely. The points he made were good but his 45 min speech could have been shortened down to only 5 minutes worth of info, the rest was just blah blah blah fluff about those points.

Another slightly silly but exciting aspect of this ceremony for me was a chance to really try out the telephoto lens Megan bought me for my birthday. For those into camera's it's a Canon 70-300mm IS lens, I REALLY love it. Unfortunately the lighting was horrid in this ceremony. The hall was lit with fluorescent lights with the very annoying exception of the stage which was lit by incandescent lighting. What this means to those not familiar with photography is that basically if I setup the camera to compensate for the orange incandescent lights on stage then when I took a shot of someone just prior to walking on to the stage they looked very blue. And on the other hand if I set it up for off stage then when they walked onto the stage they looked very orange/red. I just couldn't win. So you'll see some photos have some color variances. I did my best to correct this but there's only so much I know how to do. Also I knew it was likely to be dark in the auditorium so I figured I'd just pick my self up a cheap tripod or mono-pod to stabilize the camera, but upon asking a professional photographer on the island where I could find one he said they simply don't exist here... ugh. So many little things we are used to be readily available in the states that just don't exist here. I think this is something I'll be looking for to ship down this summer.

Moving on, after the ceremony there was a very nice reception with heavenly finger food and deserts. Below I'll throw in some photos from the even including the reception. We had a great time. I am quite proud to have a wife who's going to be a doctor very soon.

(Above) This is just a quick snap shot of the hall before things really started.
(Below) Some important guy with the Mace, not the kind of mace I spoke of last time. The fake sword time that is carried in the beginning of a precession.

(Above) The processional started with all the Vet students entering the room, that's Megan just coming through the door. Notice the high male population in this profession?
(Below) A good shot of the mace. It's a dragon wrapped around a sword. The dragon has something to do with Saint George whom the school is named for. The end of the sword's handle is a nutmeg representing the island of Grenada the school is located on. The sword it's self you ask? It's now made of wood so for decoration only but traditionally it was used to clear a path through the crowds... uh yeah, that's one way of crowd control. Seriously hacking a path through a big crowd is a good way of saying get the heck out of our way. By the way this is one of those shots where I REALLY appreciated the new lense, even though it looks as I am standing just two-three feet from it, when in reality I am actually about 70ft from it!

(Above) So this is the ceremony moving along with boring guy number one. He droned on a bit about something that I chose not to bother recalling. The lady on the left was leading the ceremony, she was a good speaker. The guy with the red "POWER TIE" is the dean. He said very little, I liked him. The guy to the far right staring at his toes... I'll get to him in a second...

(Below) Boring old guy number two. Now THIS guy really took the cheese. The fact that he's from Georgia and has quite the slow slurred drawl didn't help things at all, but man he was painful to sit through...

(Below) YAY WHOO HOO!!! (Crowd goes wild!) In order Erin, Alicia, and Megan. All three only seconds after being coated. The only problem with someone coating you from behind is that they can't see the fact that most every one's coats were sitting crooked and off, but oh well who cares.

(Below) If you didn't already notice Megan literally stands quite a bit above the rest. She's wearing flat flip-flops in this photo. It's great for me, I can always find her in a crowd.

(Below) Handheld shots with shutter speeds of a full quarter second never turn out perfect but hey! you can at least get a vague idea of the party in the background!