Marine Corps Ball

After getting home on Saturday from St. Petersburg, I took a nap before starting to get ready for the Marine Corps Ball. Instead of getting ready at my place and riding the metro over in my fancy dress, I packed all of my stuff and took it over to the embassy compound, where I got ready with Vienna, Josue's girlfriend. She turned out to be super cool, so it was fun to get ready together. It reminded me of high school when I would get ready for formal dances with my friends. We took a van over to the ball, where we met up with Elliot and Josue.

After a cocktail hour, they had the beginning of the ceremony. I was right in the front so I could see, but they did it far enough over on the other side of the room that I couldn't get great pictures. Elliot was the youngest Marine, so he was in part of the ceremony. After that part was over, we had dinner and had the second half of the ceremony. They had a buffet with a million different choices. All of it tasted really good so it was hard to choose and I ended up with a super full plate. After dinner was over, we took pictures, mingled a bit and then went to dance. Everyone had a great time dancing. I have a bunch of really great pictures. After a while, it was getting close to the end of the ball, so we went back to the embassy to change clothes and go out. We went to a club called Fabrique. It was fun there, but we didn't stay super long. When we were back in the car, I had a long chat with the driver in a funny mix of Russian and English. I was trying to practice my Russian, but I didn't know a bunch of words and he knew English pretty well, so it was really fun. The whole experience of going to the ball was so great. It was a perfect night.

Since we were leaving to go to Egypt on Wednesday, Erin and I had planned on hanging out with Elliot and Justin on Monday and Tuesday. We had two different dates planned out, neither of which worked out how we planned, but we had a great time anyway. We wanted to watch Harry Potter but it was only playing in Russian then, so Erin, Justin, Vienna, Josue, Elliot, and I went to a German food place for dinner. I tried escargot for the first time and it was delicious! I just figured everyone said that it was good to sound cultured, but it really was good if you didn't look at it for too long.

On Tuesday we had planned on going ice skating, but the rink collapsed a couple days before so it wasn't going to be open for another week. Instead, we planned on going to KFC and then making snowmen by the river. We couldn't find KFC so we ate at a Chinese food place instead. Elliot and I ordered almost everything off the menu because we were so hungry. It was pretty funny when they were bringing it out because we realized how much food we had actually ordered. After dinner, we decided not to make snowmen because the snow wasn't good enough and we went back to watch a movie. Even though everything didn't work as planned, we're pretty good at having a fun time anyways.