Bonnie's Party

Our friend Bonnie, a ribelle woman who has lived here for years and helps NGOs write grants (and so much more; I'm not sure what her job title is but she gets stuff DONE), had a birthday party. She invited pretty much everyone she knew, so there were lots of Dartmouth and WorldTeach people in addition to expats, some guys from the US Navy construction corps, and lots of Bonnie's Marshallese friends. There was music, dancing, a prize drawing (I won a handicraft basket!) and of course great food.

Here I am with our friend SK, a WorldTeach volunteer who is doing college counseling at Marshall Islands High School.


My friends Heather and Kiersten, from the Dartmouth program. Heather is at Laura with me, and Kiersten is teaching elementary on the island of Ejit, which you can walk to from Rita (downtown Majuro). She's back for her second year!


Here I am with Bonnie, the birthday girl. Our bdays were a week apart- yay August birthdays! So in case anyone was worried that I wasn't celebrating my birthday enough (like my mom, who wanted to mail me a cake. Yes. I think she was serious.), don't worry! I did plenty of celebrating, even though some of it was officially for the Dartmouth group and the end of orientation, or for Bonnie.


Here's one of the US navy guys from the party, he's Filipino. After the party died down we all went up to Tide Table for drinks, which was lots of fun. It's the sort of place where only ribelles hang out, which is sort of lame, but it also means we don't have to be so careful about our behavior--even drinking a beer is considered inappropriate for women here. So sometimes it's fun to hang out with just ribelles and have a chill time at the bar. Oh and I believe my incredulous look in this shot is due to the other navy guys, who were a little ridiculous.