Where are they now? Crissy

My dear friend Crissy has left CA and her postdoc position studying deep sea squid behaviour, in favor of a position in the real world, promoting marine conservation, out there in the frontlines.
I'd love to know more about what Crissy's up to, but as always, she's extremely busy.....what I do know is that she's based in Bali, Indonesia working for Conservation International. Which involves all kinds of exciting fieldwork, such as flying ultralights through flocks of hornbills, for example!

I'm confident that we'll manage to catch up at some point, but until then I'll just make do with just knowing that she's out there somewhere doing her thing...

Where are they now? Amy

Amy now lives in Nottingham, she and Dave have just bought a house and are busy renovating.

Amy is working for Nottingham University as a Community Scientist on the OPAL (Open Air Laboratory) project. Which aims to get people aware of the natural environment and improve peoples' skills in naming and classifying common organisms.

Amy and Dave were at our wedding. Dave put together our truly excellent wedding video, pretty much single-handedly, and Amy was one of my blue ladies! Since that memorable day Amy's been on an expedition to the Antarctic.

In August 2008 she and Dave got married, and I was able to be there as a matron of honor, it was a really beautiful occasion (see blog entry). So she's keeping busy!

Where are they now? Mandy

Continuing on with news of my maids of honor.......

Mandy's had an exciting few years - after leaving Bowling Green, in 2008, she headed to India, where she traveled through the Gujarat region, working in environmental education. It's wonderful to be able to follow just a few of her adventures and thoughts on her blog.

Now she's back in the UK, training to become a teacher of the International Baccalaureate.

In August she heads to Thailand to a dream job at Patana School, the British International School in Bangkok. What an amazing life!

Where are they now? Sarah M

It's over three years since our wedding, and I've recently heard the happy news that my good friend and one time maid of honor, Sarah M, is getting married to this dashing young man, in CA in May........
....before moving to New Hampshire and a new and exciting life! Congratulations Sarah!

This got me thinking about the rest of my fabulous blue-team girls....where are they all now and what are they up to? I'll be finding out and reporting back over the next few weeks!

Little friends!

Matotea and Elsa having fun throwing stones at the beach last week!

On thursday I had yet another prenatal visit, but this time, despite the fidgeting, it was clear that this next baby is another girl - just a rather large and fidgety one! Matotea is rather excited by the idea that she might be going to have a little friend to play with........though I suspect that she thinks that the baby is going to come out the same size and shape as her little friend Elsa! After just three days together, Matotea was heart-broken when Elsa left, even if things were not always harmonious while she was here - the reality of sharing ones toys was often a rather bitter and noisy pill to take!

Our big fat Polynesian wedding (part I)

In December 2006, we did the traditional Rurutu wedding, all 4 days of it!
It was quite an interesting experience - on Rurutu traditional marriages happen just once a generation, and it's actually more about paying your respects to the parents of the grooms than to us the couples - I say grooms because all the boys get married at the same time. So we were part of a three couple extravaganza. Viriamu is actually one of seven children, five boys and two girls, two of his brothers are still single and so they weren't forced to get married, though traditionally the weddings would have been arranged for them, from an early age. The photos from the marriage are in the next two blog entries. Here I want to say a few words of thanks to my friends and family who made the long trip to Rurutu to be there for our wedding. How lucky I am to have had so many wonderful people there for us!

In particular I want to thank my six superstar maids of honour - I'm so glad that you could all be there to share the experience.....

And it was quite an experience - we even made the newspaper (Tahiti's La Depeche), granted it was the Boxing day edition and so they didn't have too much else to report, but all the same it was a colour spread!