In the spring of 1912, when Choate was still exclusively a boys’ school in Wallingford, the senior girls of Rosemary Hall designed a garden on the Greenwich campus. At the end of the term, the graduating class of girls each invited two juniors and a faculty member for a special supper in the garden, beginning the tradition of Garden Party.

Today Choate Rosemary Hall honors the pre-graduation tradition of Garden Party by having Sixth Form girls each invite a Fifth Form girl and a faculty member to a celebration at the Paul Mellon Arts Center. During the event, Sixth Form girls receive flower bouquets from their guests and three Sixth Form girls pass down the symbols of Rosemarian tradition to three Fifth Form girls. Then the “party” ends with a special presentation meant to remind them of the good memories they have of the years they spent together.

While the girls enjoy such merrymaking and make lasting memories in their bright, spring-colored dresses, the other half of the graduating class – the boys – change into special dress in their rooms and proceed directly to the form-wide Senior Banquet at the end of the Garden Party. They do not have any unique traditional event of their own.

This lack of tradition for boys, however, has not always been the case. In Choate Rosemary Hall history there have been two major attempts to create a traditional event for the Choate boys: Mid-winter Feast and Parden Garty.

At some point in the last two weeks, our stuff stopped fitting into our suitcases. The duffle bags shrank, the clothes grew, or our ever increasing supply of souvenirs has finally become too much. But as we try to figure out mailing rates, and if that AP prep book could stay at the hotel, it’s hard not to think of all of the abstract things we wish we could bring home from our voyage, those that we’ll miss most. Below are a few pieces of Spain that would never get through customs, and that we still don’t feel quite ready to leave behind.