Marine Corps Ball

On November first Ramiro and I attended the 233rd United States Marine Corps Ball. The ball celbrates the founding of the corps. The event is quite the birthday bash. The ball is a formal affair, so Ramiro "had" to get a tux made (of course he wanted to get this done anyway so why pass up the opportunity). Many marines, embassy employees and guests of honor attended this birthday bash.

There is a cocktail hour starting at about 6pm (during which you can get your photos taken). We had ours done and then met up with some friends and had a group photo-op as well.

Kelly, Pat, Sam, Ben, Bonnie and Ramiro
(from left to right)

After the cocktail hour, the ceremony began: the Marines paid tribute to the honored guests (a.k.a. the US Ambassador to The Kingdom of Thailand and a guest speaker - some former marine who joined the corps in like 1940 something), the corps and of course marines around the globe. After the pomp and circumstance, the food began to come out.

There was a salmon pate' followed by soup (clam chowder) and then the main (we had beef) and then a dessert of cake and coffee. The food was quite good, but very small portions (i.e. the vegetarian dish was four small ravioli separated by a couple of sprigs of asparagus.

Of course since this is a ball there was dancing and who can dance without a live Thai band; but there were even sightings of Elvis and Tom Jones among others. They did quite a good job and when we left at midnight the party was still going strong.

We were trying to figure out a clever ending, but in order to simplify things - Happy Birthday and Semper Fidelis.