After the "Dress a girl" photos, I thought I'd go back to the cruise.

Aruba and Bonaire

On the next two days of our cruise we visited Aruba and Bonaire. The buildings are all painted pastel colors. Not much was open the days we were there, as they were celebrating Carnival. The bars and casinos were open, as were the gift shops. The towns just shut down for about 4 days and they party. They have incredible parades. I couldn't stand around for all the festivities, as it was really hot. When I got back to the ship, my back was soaking wet. Don't think I've ever perspired like that!

Carnival parade

Island of Bonaire

Dave in front of the shops in Bonaire. Again, not everything was open because of Carnival.

Our friend Norm.

Cute towel animals.......

After dinner and the evening activities the steward would come into our room and create this little towel animals. A different one each night and of the course, chocolates!!

Dress A Girl Around The World

I'm going to interrupt the cruise photos for a minute and tell you about an organization that I recently got involved with. Dress a Girl Around the World includes women from all over the US and a couple of foreign countries, who get together and make dresses for girls who have very little, in mostly 3rd world countries. Some of them have never had a dress. The dresses are made pretty much from pillow cases. They add ruffles and trim and turn out some lovely dresses. They also use fabric and when they do they start out with a tube of fabric, just like a pillow case and go from there. Most of the fabric and trims are donated by women who have remnants stashed away, from other projects, that they didn't want to throw away or they have pillow cases they are not using and the fabric is still is good shape. They have a web site they explains all this in more detail. It is http://dressagirlaroundtheworld.com Some folks are very creative. I'm not much of a seamstress, but I go, cut things out, press things and collect fabrics, etc. from my friends. I've collected 5 grocery bags of fabrics, buttons, thread and trims, just by mentioning it to my fellow swimmers at water aerobics. It's a very nice project.

Ddinner the first night on board.

We're waiting to be seated. The first night was casual dress for dinner. Probably a good thing, as we were all pretty tired.

Haiti

It's hard, from this distance, to imagine the hardship there.

All dressed up for dinner the next evening.