The Main Event: Eve's Grad Weekend Part 3

What was wrong with the dessert, Suzanne? I'M GLAD YOU ASKED. Well, not really, but I'm happy to talk about it because it was SO WEIRD. It was a brownie that was supposed to come with chocolate sauce, caramel sauce and ice cream and whipped cream - all three of us were going to share it. I didn't used to like brownies that much, but the malt chocolate brownie dessert at Jack Astor's sort of changed my mind a few years ago.

So it was a brownie. It pretty much came with a bit of whipped cream and a sliced up strawberry. No problem. It also just tasted... really weird. Kind of like somebody had maybe used the knife they used on the brownie and strawberries to chop up some garlic and mushrooms first? I would have said something, but we were kind of just ready to cut our losses with the restaurant. I will say that it was not outrageously priced. I really liked the salad I got, and the salmon and mashed potatoes were...fine. Matt got a steak that he said was adequate. Eve got fish and chips and it was fine. Matt had insisted on booking a dinner with our home friends for Thursday night after we got back, and I thought it was superfluous at the time, but it ended up being such a fun night where I was right in the middle of the table so got to talk to anyone and felt brilliantly witty and hilarious all night and the food was AMAZING, so I was very wrong and he was very right, and the mediocre dinner that already wouldn't have been a big deal is now even less of one.

So!

 Monday! Graduation day! It felt like we'd been in Hamilton forever by this point. It was quite cool and windy on Friday, but had been warming up a little bit every day, and Monday morning was kind of perfect - not too hot for me, not too cold for Eve to wear a dress. 

We had a late breakfast at the hotel since the ceremony was going to make lunch kind of impossible and dinner wasn't until seven. There is some sort of odd, random tradition of girls wearing white dresses for McMaster graduation. Eve would have had to buy another dress, and she didn't really want to, so she decided to buck the trend. She had found this at a vintage store in Westdale just before coming home.

We got to the venue and she followed the signs for where she had to go and we went and found seats. She texted that there were a LOT of white dresses, but sent us this picture.

We were there almost an hour and a half early, but we talked and I organized pictures on my phone and it went pretty fast. 

I have mixed feelings about the dress I wore. I really liked it when I tried it on, but I maybe should have observed it while moving around more.

The off-white colour and the lace remind me of my wedding dress, and I knew I needed something cool. But later on in pictures I was a bit worried that it looked like I was wearing a nightgown.

Anyway. Arts and Science was grouped with Humanities for this ceremony, and quite a few people felt like there was a fair amount of Arts and Science erasure. There were speeches from the Humanities Chair but not the Arts and Science Chair. Eve was nervous because she was the first person to go up for her department and she was worried she wouldn't know what to do. We didn't love the way they did it - putting the hood on beforehand rather than when the student went up, not really enough time for them to do anything but smile awkwardly and keep walking. My professor friend said they used to do the hooding as they walked up, and it didn't take that much longer. Anyway - it's never going to be perfect. 

The students had to send in the pronunciation of their names, which is completely understandable. Apparently the humanities chair had pushed for AI to read out the names, and our chair fought them on it - seems like that could have been laughably bad. Things went pretty well, except for a few understandable slips - the funniest was probably when the previous name had been something very long and complicated and the person read it perfectly, and then the next person was named Brayden and she pronounced it "Brain-Ned". 

The speeches were all good - not too long, some humour, insightful. When the department chair said the formal "I present these students as being found worthy and suitable" I actually felt kind of emotional.

Afterwards we met the girls outside the venue. Everyone was a little dazed. We hadn't met most of the other housemates' parents yet, as well as the parents of a couple of Eve's other friends, so that was all happening in a rushed and giddy fashion.

There was a reception in a building across the street so we walked over. 

We met Jean coming in - she stepped down as department head so after thirty years does not have to sit through the whole ceremony anymore.

Honestly, it was pretty awkward - just small enough so you felt like you should know everyone but you didn't, quite. We were all ravenous, though, so we lined up for a cracker and a piece of cheese and six grapes and some ice water (no shade, it was perfect). And then took pictures out in the hallway.

The mother-daughter alumni and graduate photo.

The housemates! They look like a garden! 

The picture of Eve and her housemates was the first pic featured in the social media post about the Arts and Science graduation. 

About a week before we left, Eve and her housemates had been talking and someone suggested having dinner with all the house girls and their parents. I'd been kind of thinking this would be fun but I didn't want to be the first one to ask. Naturally, this turned into a flurry of stress and indecision about where we would go, where would be big enough, where would be nice but not too nice, was this actually a good idea. Eve hates talking on the phone and dealing with logistics like this, but she also hates watching people dithering when there is a solution to be had (the way she laid out who should take what room in their house was masterful). So she went up to her room, closed the door and then came out saying she had called Nanaa's, the Persian restaurant near their house, and secured a reservation at seven o'clock for twenty-four people and a baby. 

So that was that.

We had eaten there and knew the food was incredible, it was nice but not fancy, and the service was incredible. I regret that we didn't get a picture of all the parents at our long table, but I got a pic of all the girls and Zoe's boyfriend Sam smushed happily in their booth.

Eve made them all little clay houses, with the house number and a magnet on the back.

We all hung around talking outside on the sidewalk for a while, and had to tear ourselves away. Basically, it all turned out pretty much as well as we could have hoped.