{"id":2239,"date":"2012-11-03T23:04:18","date_gmt":"2012-11-04T05:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=2239"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:36:14","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:36:14","slug":"marine-ball-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=2239","title":{"rendered":"Marine Ball 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2244\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/Optimized-DSC_0329x.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2244\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2244\" title=\"Optimized-DSC_0329x\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/Optimized-DSC_0329x-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Optimized-DSC_0329x-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Optimized-DSC_0329x-1024x680.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Optimized-DSC_0329x.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2244\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">At the Marine Ball<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Last night was the Marine Ball to celebrate the founding of the Marines &#8211; it&#8217;s a tradition at embassies all over the world. There is a nice ceremony with the presentation of the colors, cutting of the cake with the sword, the Ambassador speaks and there is a keynote speaker (this year an entertaining Army general). Mostly it&#8217;s fun to see everyone all dressed up! The Marines set up a huge tent in our quad, complete with oriental rugs and dance floor. We had a lot of fun! Here&#8217;s a photo of me with three of the NIV officers I work with &#8211; aren&#8217;t they handsome?<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2242\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/Optimized-DSC_0313.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2242\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2242\" title=\"Optimized-DSC_0313\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/Optimized-DSC_0313-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Optimized-DSC_0313-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Optimized-DSC_0313-1024x680.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Optimized-DSC_0313.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2242\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Antonio, Philip and Brandon<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Click for <a href=\"https:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/105012868629442064934\/MarineBall2012Islamabad?authkey=Gv1sRgCIehkrn6ovOdjQE\" target=\"_blank\">more photos from the Ball<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Last Monday was the last day of the Eid celebration. John and I got a lot done around the house, moving furniture, decluttering, unpacking, etc. The house is looking great and feels very comfortable.<\/p>\n<p>I hosted the Consular section heads and senior local staff last Friday for a day-long offsite meeting. We had a long agenda of items to discuss, and it was so nice to be away from the hustle and bustle of the office so we could concentrate and brainstorm.<\/p>\n<p>Our A-100 classmate Joe arrived at Post this week, so we had him over for dinner Friday night. It&#8217;s fun to see familiar faces here! We now have five of us from our class. Here&#8217;s our photo from the Ball last night.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2240\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/Optimized-DSC_0319.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2240\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2240\" title=\"Optimized-DSC_0319\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/Optimized-DSC_0319-300x152.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"152\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Optimized-DSC_0319-300x152.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Optimized-DSC_0319-1024x521.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Optimized-DSC_0319.jpg 1033w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2240\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">With our A-100 classmates at the Marine Ball<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Our new ambassador arrived this week, and he held a town hall meeting to greet everyone. It will be interesting to see how or if the personality of the Embassy changes with his arrival.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Last night was the Marine Ball to celebrate the founding of the Marines &#8211; it&#8217;s a tradition at embassies all over the world. There is a nice ceremony with the presentation of the colors, cutting of the cake with the sword, the Ambassador speaks and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2239"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2248,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239\/revisions\/2248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}