Marines Galore

One thing that will be a new annual tradition in my life if I stay in this job is the Marine Birthday Ball.  Marines are assigned to almost every Embassy worldwide, primarily to protect classified information, but they do a bunch of other good stuff too.

So, it’s the Marines’ job to throw a big birthday bash every year on the anniversary of the founding of the Marine Corps.  This year was the 238th birthday of the corps.  For those of us who are not Marines, it’s basically an excuse to dress up in black tie attire and drink with our colleagues.

This year, I ended up as the narrator for the evening’s program, which was fun.  It basically meant I read a script about the history of the Marine balls, plus a bunch of stuff about how awesome the Marines are.  In between, the actual Marines march, do their fancy flag presentation thing, cut a big American flag birthday cake, and give speeches (as did the Ambassador).  Other people from the host country and international community generally come too – it was very cool to see other countries’ military people all decked out in their versions of dress uniforms.

There’s really not much else to tell; the evening went well, the program went OK, except for some technical difficulties that ended up not being THAT big of a deal, and about 45 minutes later I was at my table with my friends.  So that’s about it – here are some pictures of me dressed up.  There’s a picture of me with Marines somewhere, but I’m not sure whose camera it ended up on, so these will have to do for now: