An Irish Goodbye

There are times when something strikes me, a phrase, a word, something I pass along side the road, something I read or something someone casually mentions - it really could be any matter of thing. The difference is that it hits me with perfect aim, catching my attention and causing a head-turn, a squint, or an "I'm sorry - come again?" I recognize the truth of that particular something and know we will meet again; I tuck it into a pocket like a smooth stone I'll rub between my fingers while waiting.

The most recent such something arrived nearly two months ago while my mother and I were talking on the phone. I don't remember exactly what I was saying, but her response tells me I was weighing a decision of whether to do something sooner or later. I don't mean a pedestrian task like emptying the dishwasher, but rather a fork-in-life's-road type of contemplation. To respond, she quoted a line she'd recently read, but I wasn't yet paying enough attention to remember to whom she gave credit.  

"You don't have as much time as you think you do."

I paused. 

It smacked me as irrefutable and I knew I must take heed. Into the pocket it went. 

Perhaps you're already considering a few rebuttals that this might not have been a real something:

First, it'd be natural she'd want me to grab life before it's too late; at 91 she likely splashes the realization of running out of time into her morning coffee each day. But that's not her personality at all, being pessimistic. A worrier I'll give you, but never a "woe is me"-er.  No, that wasn't why she said it.

Then perhaps I'd been subconsciously advice shopping on that particular decision, and when she offered some that resonated with what I secretly wanted to do anyway - I snatched it. Hmmm.... closer. 

But then my mother died suddenly just a few weeks after that conversation. Fortunately, it wasn't our last phone call, which would have sent her words instantly into the horrible premonition hall of fame. We had a few more calls and an email or two...

Pardon me.

Okay. 

I can type that sentence now, "my mother died suddenly...", but not easily.  

See, my father died four years ago, gradually declining and giving us all time to say goodbye to the man we'd known who'd left us long before my brother called me with the final news. No, my mother went from one hundred percent to zero with no illness or suffering in between those states. The best way to go at 91, if one had to choose. I wouldn't trade a few more years with her if the cost were watching her spark dim and she certainly wouldn't have either. In the end, I'm convinced it was the exit she would've chosen. The Irish goodbye. Tell folks you're just popping into the the other room and then slip out the backdoor.  

In her absence, I hear her advice with ever increasing clarity: You don't have as much time as you think you do. It is the something I still keep in my jacket pocket; I don't consider her death to have redeemed it. Her words were as blunt and non-negotiable as her departure. 

What I want to do with my time is write, so here I am. 

To Sheila, one heck of a writer and my incredible mother.  You're with me.

Fourth Tour in the Bag

Back in October 2012, in the middle of the requisite six-week consular training course known as ConGen, a woman came to speak to the class from the Consular Integrity Division (CID).  She explained what happens to malfeasant consular employees (e.g. sell visas = go to jail) and her presentation was chock full of real-life examples complete with photos, names and salacious details of their crimes.  At the end of the 90 minutes, I knew I wanted her job.  Before joining the Department, I worked in an urban police professional standards - that's the nice way of saying "internal affairs" - unit.  Before that, I taught riding for over a dozen years, and now I was a consular officer.  Teaching + consular stuff + internal investigations = the perfect equation and I vowed I'd have her job some day. 

As I wrote in November 2016, it wasn't our first choice to come to DC for an assignment; we're here for the overseas adventure after all.  But when I saw the CID training coordinator position open on my bid list - I couldn't resist.  In July 2017 my five-year-old vow was realized and "her job" became my job.  

Last Wednesday I walked out of my last ConGen classroom.  Fortunately, my final hurrah was a great group: very engaged, interacting with me and each other, full of questions, gasps of surprise, and a lot of laughs even with such a serious topic.  When I started this job nearly two years ago I got to overlap with my predecessor for a week and she told me the story of her first week in the classroom.  While teaching a manager-level class, a presenter's basic nightmare came true.  A more senior member of the class challenged her, "What do YOU know about this?" and she was left to scramble for an appropriate response.  She warned me to have something tucked up my sleeve should I also be faced with such a Doubting Thomas. Since then, before each presentation I scan the room full of faces and ask myself, "Is this the day?"  I'm happy to report that I'll complete my assignment at the end of this week and that day never came.  

So what DID I learn from a domestic Consular Affairs tour?

Let's start with the "domestic" part:  We learned it's really expensive to live in the DC Metro area!  (Yeah, yeah - I heard the chorus of "Welcome to the real world, sister!" from you all. There's little pity for someone who didn't pay rent for six years.  I get it.) Our shopping sticker shock wore off after the first few months and now a trip to the grocery store that comes in under $100 is considered a screaming success. We adapted just fine to small apartment life by not living in a small apartment, and choosing to live in northern Virginia instead where rents are lower than DC.  In fact, our neighborhood is likely the most diverse zip code we've ever lived in, surrounded by what I refer to as "my first immigrant apartment" and brimming with folks establishing their new lives, families and businesses.  Within blocks of our apartment, we devoured Salvadoran pupusas and Ethiopian enjera. We enjoyed the music and merengue'd our cart down the aisle at the nearby Latino Supermercado, and we spent Christmas Eve at an Eritrean-Lutheran church service - now that's diversity!  We explored lots of Virginia, picking out favorite parks and arboretums to visit and re-visit all the while complaining about the humidity and traffic.  We barely took advantage of DC - something I regret - but we did have lots of family visits "while we're closer."

My husband was able to work in his field teaching English to international students.  He started at a small language institute for the first year before graduating to teach at a marquis-name university for our second year.  He gained great experience for the resume and brought home often funny, and frequently enlightening, stories about his students and their particular cultures.  

And we adopted our two non-tabbies who just turned one year old and one of whom is now on my lap.  They're still blissfully ignorant of the adventure this summer will bring.  Shhhhh....

Seamus says, "What do you mean? We're not living here FOREVER?"

Professionally, two years of reading about malfeasance incidences by domestic and overseas employees has served me as a master class in consular management do's and don'ts.  It's true what they say about the value of coming to DC is getting to know the Department.  Let me clarify that a bit - I feel I know my bureau within the Department, Consular Affairs, far better than I ever did.  In fact, I've become so immersed in all-things-consular-all-the-time that sometimes I forget there's a whole other building just down the road (that would be the actual DEPARTMENT OF STATE).  I'm satisfied that I'll leave with a better understanding of the sausage-making and what office does generally what thing, and maybe even why they do it.  I trust that when I'm a manager myself - I'll know who to ask about how to do that thing.  And perhaps I'll even know who that person is.  

The most valuable thing I will take from this tour, however, is that I was able to meet, work with and hear from colleagues from around the world.  I presented in over a dozen different consular classes with all range of students: from the bright, shiny pennies in Con-Gen, to the experienced mid-level managers, and particularly to our dedicated local employees. Two years ago I could not have predicted what incredible opportunities to learn each class would be.  And it's me who was doing the learning, as I may have taught them a yard, but listening to them taught me a mile.  This is the part I'll truly miss. 

We made it. Eight years and four tours down.  How many more to go?

Next stop: a short vacation and then back to FSI, but this time I won't be in front of the class.

Eight Years In Movement

This month marks our eighth year in the Foreign Service.  
Sure, anniversaries tend to make us all a bit sentimental, but perhaps it's more than just an anniversary that has me thinking about the passing of time, and especially HOW we've passed that time. This time it's also the ending of one assignment and the preparations for the next. Another departure, another arrival. 

This is how I picture my life since 2011:

Yeah, it's essentially a continuous structure: one life, one career, one family.  But each segment is more than just a different color; each segment is also a different country, language, set of coworkers, job, climate, time zone, cuisine, favorite evening news, and distance from "home."  I put home in quotes because that's feeling like an increasingly misty spot on the map. This is an actual conversation from our living room:

Is 425 the area code where we lived? 
No, it's the highway.  
Are you sure? I really think it's the area code.  
Yeah, okay. But then what's the highway called? 415? 
No, that's the area code in San Francisco.  
405? Is that the highway? That doesn't sound right. Just a second... let me look it up. 

Town and road names sound familiar, but we can't place from where we know them.  Favorite restaurants, leafy parks, a nice drive - they're all blurring together until I find myself with the memory of a lovely weekend I'd swear is accurate that has us waking up in a Bogota apartment, going for a Washington hike, and finishing the day with a nice meal at a Bucharest restaurant. And don't even start me on trying to figure out if that beach we visited - you remember, the one with that long pier - was in Maine, New Brunswick or Maryland. Sure we own a house in our "home state," but we've never slept in it. In true bureaucratic fashion, the Department refers to this as our "home of record."  Of record.  Sounds cozy, eh? This designation has nothing to do with roots, one's family, holidays spent, or neighborhood cookouts. It's all business. Keep yer' memories to yourself, lil' lady. This if just for tax purposes and we gotta' know where to ship your stuff when you retire. The term "our house" has been replaced by "our investment property."  

So what do folks do when they find their anchors slipping? 

Last night my husband and I went out for an evening of dinner and music at an Italian restaurant nearby.  Sounds pretty straightforward, certainly nothing worth writing a blog post about.  But this place is more to us than just a Friday night out. I'm not going to tell you that it's because the food is among the best we've ever tasted, or the wine list unparalleled. Simply put, our forays to Pistone's have become a familiar routine, somewhere we can go where we know what we'll find.  What we find is a real Dean Martin-ambiance: a crew of career waiters - older gentlemen with accents (Italian, Albanian), wood paneling, colored-glass lamps lighting the raised semi-circular booths upholstered in overstuffed Naugahyde, a menu of Italian standards where they know how to put together a proper antipasto, and best of all - the attached lounge bar where every Friday night a two-man band belts out classic country/rock favorites until midnight. This has been their regular gig for the past 13 years, taking requests and playing guitar (acoustic, electric and steel) for their faithful crowd of middle-aged-plus date-nighters. The bartender, holding court from the horseshoe-shaped bar, has been there for 25 years and likely many of the patrons, too. After dinner, we saunter into the lounge, order a Jameson or glass of wine, and soak up the cozy familiarity.  Sometimes the band recognizes us, and sometimes they thank us for coming out as if it's our first time. It's okay - we recognize them and especially their playlist, not only from our many previous visits, but also from our whole lives. They take us from Little Feat's "Willin' " to Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer," and end up with a beautiful version with full guitar solo of Garth Brooks' "The Dance."  The singer's wife joins in from a stool at the bar with her tambourine and suggestions for the sound mix.  Couples take turns on the tiny dance floor and folks shout out requests.

Routines like dinner at Pistone's with Eddie Pockey and Brint playing in the lounge are more than just pleasant evenings to us. They've become threads that hold our scatter-shot experiences together.  In a life of many-colored LEGO bricks, these little pieces of reliable familiarity, where we can walk in and it's just like we never left (even though it's been two years) make us feel as if we have a home.  We know what it looks, tastes and sounds like - and it's always there for us. 

Foreign Service families hear thanks for our service and appreciation for serving in foreign countries. I used to think they were just thanking us for the difficulties of living outside the U.S. (i.e. more than 10 miles from a Target), or for putting ourselves in danger - which is undoubtedly true in some places. But beyond that, it's clear that what we really are in danger of losing, or missing out on, is this:

Which is why simple things like an Italian restaurant and a great lounge band have become so important to us. They remind us that some things don't change every two years. Some things have roots that keep growing while everything else is in movement.

Home Leave II - Maryland Edition

Subtitle: Greetings from  the Mosquito Coast

Just outside the door.  

We successfully made it through pack-out, pack-up and 20 hours of transit to arrive in the DC area.  My husband, Toby and I are spending two weeks near Chestertown, MD. As described in detail here, for me home leave is that delicious time to set aside the backpack of responsibility and bask in unstructured time.  From the State Department's point of view, it's our time to become "re-Americanized" after years of foreign immersion. Rather than returning to our home state(s), we've decided to spend home leave trying out new regions, seeing if there might be somewhere new we could see ourselves living after all is said and done.  Besides, our own house currently has tenants and love family as we do - weeks of uninterrupted time as house guests (with Toby) isn't quite the vacation it sounds like. Home leave 2015 was a winter month on the Florida panhandle living among the snowbirds, and this time we're learning about life in the Chesapeake Bay. 

Our first four or five days found us still under the influence of Romania's time zone, which is seven hours later than the East Coast.  This meant that were bright eyed at 3:00 am and forcing ourselves to stay in bed until the far more decent hour of 5:45 am when we were raring to go, tea and coffee poured and planning the day. Woohoo!  The flipside of this early start was that we had to nap in the afternoon to even stay awake for a 6:30 pm dinner.  Now fully acclimated on the 13th day, it's breakfast at 9:00 and out of the house by 11:00 if we really push.  

Earlier this spring, as soon as I was able to nail down a departure date from Bucharest, we searched for accommodation.  We were lucky in 2015 to be renting during low season (February), but in the height of summer - the costs are about double.  We didn't want a place where after the arduous flight, we'd then have another connecting flight or a long drive for Toby; therefore, this quiet, rural area only 90 minutes outside of DC fit the bill. We've rented a mother-in-law apartment on a large, shady lot fronting a tidal tributary of the Chester River.  I hadn't anticipated how agricultural this area would be, and combined with the charm of colonial towns - I'm finding it the perfect combination to re-immerse ourselves in Americana.  

Morning stillness.

It seem everyone has a boat here.

Americana in downtown Chestertown, MD.

Corn fields and white steeples.

Colonial architecture along the Chester River. 

Wide horizons = mental peace of mind. 

Toby on his daily constitutional. 

Fountain in Chestertown center.

Dimming of the day over the Chester River. 

Sunset over the reeds, full of Red Wing Blackbirds.

Eager to get to know our new surroundings, we filled our first week with daily outings in all directions. We were very fortunate to find hosts we really like and who have not only given us great recommendations for places to visit and eat, but who also have invited us out on their own boat and sailing as part of the crew on their friends' schooner.  Besides riding on commercial ferries, I really didn't have any prior boating experience, so this has been an education into the water life that is so much a part of the Chesapeake Bay culture. 

Log canoe races on Chesapeake Bay - a regional specialty.

The boards are slid from one side to the other as the boat changes tack.

Schooner "Martha White" where we spent a 9 hour day sailing. 

But this area is more than just boats and seafood - it's also amazing for the variety of bird watching, either from our front garden or the wildlife refuge just a short drive away.

This one needs no introduction.  

Great Blue Heron just outside the house.

Osprey are as common as park pigeons here.

Buzardly welcome.

Butterfly garden resident.

Speaking of wildlife, we also hit the Delaware/Maryland coast in search of what I had imagined were going to be towns bursting with Romanians. What? See, our Consular Section just spent the past three months issuing over 7500 J1 Summer Work and Travel exchange visitor visas to Romanian university students to work in tourist destinations from Maine to Alaska, with perhaps the highest concentration ending up in Ocean City, MD. Back in May, while I was interviewing thousands of these kids, I was pictured them seeing only other Romanians and questioning just what type of American experience they were going to have.  So we took a day to head to the coast in search of some J1s and darned if after a few hours of walking from t-shirt stand to fudge factory to souvenir shop - we found exactly four.  I expected at least a few of them to recognize me and exclaim something like, "Hey - it's that nice lady from the Embassy!" But it didn't quite go down like that. Instead, it was more like:

"Hello Romanian student! Remember me from your interview? 
No, the interview at the Embassy.  Yes, in Bucharest. 
I was one of the ladies behind the window? 
Remember - the ones asking you a bunch of questions in English? 
Maybe I altered the course of your life by issuing your visa and you said it was the happiest day and then skipped out the door to tell your friends?
Really? Still nothing?" 

But when they saw my husband they were all: 
"Hey - it's the fingerprint guy!"  

Ah well, I guess that 39 seconds of their life didn't make quite the impact I'd imagined. 
But they looked so happy in their salt water taffy shop right there on the boardwalk, surrounding themselves with other J1s from all corners of the globe (we met Ukrainians, Jamaicans, Bulgarians, Chinese, Lithuanians and a Kazakh) and living the American summer life. 

Three Romanian J1s on the job at the seashore. 

Because it's called the Summer Work and TRAVEL program!

Rehoboth Beach, DE

"You should see what Americans eat!"

As we go around visiting, I feel like we're on a first date with the region. 
Physical beauty? Yup. 
Interesting history? Check.  
Similar political beliefs? 50-50.  
Fun things to do? Definitely.  
Diversity? Indeed.
Attractive architecture? Yes.  
So far so good. But there has been one less-than-wonderful aspect of life on the water's edge: it's been perhaps the hottest, muggiest and buggiest place I've ever visited. Like waking up to the house windows already fogged up and dripping by 7 am. It's been in the mid-90s nearly every day with up to 100% humidity and all this greenery and wet means bugs bugs bugs.  I'm sure the birdies I love to hear and watch are thriving on all these creepy-crawlies, but the ongoing battle with the no-see-ems (we sure feel-ems!), ants, skeeters, spiders, ticks etc... has "dampened" the experience somewhat.  And my hair has never been wavier.  Ah well - part of the experience, right?

This weekend we move back to DC. Back into Oakwood temporary housing until we can move into a permanent apartment.  Back to work on Monday and slipping on the backpack of responsibility. 

I think I'll just enjoy the bugs a little longer. 

One more window-side cat nap.

End of Training and Heading to Post Part III

I recently took an online stress indicator survey where I answered a long list of questions about recent changes in my life. My score resulted in the pronouncement that: "You have a high or very high risk of becoming ill in the near future."  

As if that's not going to now make me MORE stressed.

Let me explain what happens at the EOT and what comes next, and I think you'll understand my stress level. And yes, the Foreign Service Institute uses that acronym. It means "end of training" which apparently is a lot harder to say than E-O-T. 

First - there's the language training test.  
There is no greater equalizer among men and women of all ages and career lengths than the dreaded EOT exam. I've yet to meet anyone who says it was a breeze, a pleasant experience, something they'd consider doing in their spare time, something to look forward to or even something that "really wasn't that bad."  Even those who  scored above their expectations have come out of the testing suite (that's what they're called, the video-taped, painted-blue-to-sooth-the-tester torture chambers) feeling like they really screwed the pooch. 

I went into my test fairly, well fairly "okay" is about the strongest adjective I can use here, and left almost cancelling our airline reservations. See, if you don't pass - you get six more weeks of language, you get to make the call of shame to your post and tell them you won't be arriving on time, cancel all travel reservations, extend your housing reservation, cancel your pack-out etc... It's insult, injury and major inconvenience with some embarrassment added for good measure. 

Somewhere during the test, even faced with my familiar and friendly teacher and language consultant as examiners - it dawned on me that perhaps my grasp on Romanian above the very basic level, was purely based on short-term memory and under stress it crumbled like an old aspirin found under the sink. 

At about the 90 second mark, I started to forget really simple words. Specifically, the verb "to work" ("lucra") and found myself holding my Spanish vocabulary away with a whip and a chair. Let me tell you, there's nothing like that little internal voice saying "Don't say 'trabajar'!" that will make you say "trabajar".  In the end, I was successful; however, I'm fairly confident I earned my 3/3 due to my prior demonstrated work in the classroom, and nothing to do with that two hour sample I provided in the exam suite.  And by "sample," please think of other samples one has to give in life... like in a medical setting. 

Now having passed the exam, the brain cues the little Zamboni that comes in and wipes clean your short term memory. Just watch that new language disappear!  Because now, you've got other hurdles to tackle: namely pack-out.  I will just refer you to this blog post about what that entails. True, the experience is physically demanding in the sense that you have to sort through and separate all your belongings. But mostly it's mentally draining due to the amount of decisions you have to make, the planning of what will be needed when, how much space you'll have etc... It can also often entail multiple trips to the post office to pre-ship things you'll need on Day One that won't fit in the suitcases. In our case, a litterbox, cat food and cat litter.  

It bears mentioning that if you're shipping your car to post, you'll be doing all this running around last-minute junk without personal transportation because the car is already en route, sitting on the deck of some carrier ship headed to the Black Sea (or so our shipping folks told us). There's another itty-bitty stress.

Now it's moving day and there's the worry about clearing out of the apartment, putting out the bag of FREE stuff in the building lobby, hoping your favorite houseplant will find a good home, and making sure you don't leave something in a cubby somewhere.  My clever husband puts that blue tape over all the drawers and cupboards once we've cleared them out so that the obsessive-compulsive one among us won't continually open and check for stray items.  (That would be me.)

Then comes the final shoving of stuff into your suitcases, followed by the hauling of them down to the workout room in the building to use their scale (you've already sent yours away) to make sure the bags aren't over the 50 lb airline limit. But what'll you do if they are? Wear the heavier shoes and tie a sweater or two around your waist, I guess. 

The Tabbies by now have definitely figured out what's going on and will probably be under the bed.  Unfortunately, their stress started a few weeks ago when the movers came. AGAIN with these guys?! was the look on their little faces. One Tabby stopped eating and beyond the multiple vet visits to get their international travel health certificates, she required more visits and blood draws to figure out what was wrong. Conclusion? We don't know, but here are some prescriptions to help get her to your destination. At least she'll be in cabin with us and in reach the whole time.  The third Tabby however, has to go under the plane because there is a strict limit to the number of pets allowed inside the cabin - and that limit is two.  I made their travel reservations six months in advance to be sure to grab the two allowed in-cabin spots.  I'm sure there's a European woman with a purse-sized dog cursing my name as she is unable to book her little amour on the same flight with her. Sorry sis, it's a harsh world out there. And did you know with pets you should check in three hours in advance? Yeah, that makes for a long day to be in a little carrier.

Finally we're on the plane for the long slog east. My husband and I haven't traveled horizontally across time zones like this since 2002.  Moving to Juarez meant a five day drive to gently acclimate us to the two hour change that is Mountain Time - how civilized! Jet lag is a very real thing when you're moving across seven time zones. Don't want to think about moving to Asia. (It took about a week for me to stop waking up at 2:00 am, bright eyed and thinking that a game of Scrabble sounded like a good idea.) 

So now you arrive at your destination - success! With luck there's a sponsor, a friendly Embassy/Consulate driver holding a sign with your name and a nice welcome to your new city. That has been our experience so far, at least.  Next comes my favorite part of all -checking out the new digs. I think it's one of the main reasons I joined the Foreign Service, truth be told.  As the instant excitement over seeing your new home begins to wane, you can't help but start mentally sizing up the storage space.  

Sponsor: "And here is the balcony with a view over the park" 

My Inside Voice: Yes, yes, very nice, but where will we put the Kitchen Aid on that counter?

Sponsor: "You'll find the central AC controls here, very convenient."

My Inside Voice:  Yes, yes, convenient, but I only see this non-walk-in closet in the master bedroom! What about the shoes?!

Sponsor: "And there are two darling restaurants just down the block."

My Inside Voice:  Fercrissake, be quiet woman, WHAT ABOUT THE TREADMILL?!

Truly first world problems for which I have no excuse and only shame, but they need to be expressed as I think just about everyone goes through them.

Your sponsor then tells you to just relax and settle in (sorry, still sizing up closet space), rest up (not happening) and the van will be here at 07:30 to pick you up for your first day of work tomorrow!  If you're lucky, this conversation isn't happening at 10:30 pm, but sometimes it is. 

The van comes on time the next morning, as it always does, and ready or not whisks you off to work. The following days are a blur of meeting new coworkers (only 10% of whose names you'll remember and only because they were kind enough to have nameplates on their cubicles), learning new regulations, new passwords and building codes, where the bathroom and cafeteria are and how to get back to your office after lunch.  

And on top of all that - now you have to do your JOB. The job for which the USG has just paid perhaps more than your annual salary to train you and move you, your family and your too much stuff. 

So THAT'S why my stress meter is in the red.  

My current mantra is something a coworker in Juarez used to say as I was training her on the heavy details of immigrant visa work: Poco a poco, or here, puțin câte puțin - little by little. 

It's all we can do.

Home Leave 101

 After nearly four years in the Foreign Service, we're now enjoying our first home leave.

So first, a definition:

Per the Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM) 3430: 

The purpose of home leave is to ensure that employees who live abroad for an extended period undergo reorientation and re-exposure in the United States on a regular basis.  

You can read the entire description, definition and all sorts of regulations and exceptions in the link above, but the gist is that after coming from a posting abroad (yes, being five miles from the Texas border is still considered being abroad), we're mandated to take a minimum of 20 business days on U.S. soil. "U.S. soil" includes all 50 states plus Commonwealths (Puerto Rico and the Northern Marianas), Possessions, and Territories (Guam, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands), but please don't ask me what the difference is between these last three categories.  When you're hired, you choose a home leave address of record, which can really be wherever you like from that list. Uncle Sam will generously pay to send you from your posting abroad to your listed home leave location. If you choose to go somewhere else, say to spend this month re-Americanizing yourself in the U.S. Virgin Islands instead, some fancy calculation is done to compare the cost of getting you (and family) to your island paradise vs. to your parents' house in Hoboken, NJ (for example).  You are then responsible for paying any overage between the two costs. This is called a "cost construct."

Seattle, WA is our home leave address, but as we've had a stable renter in our house there whom we don't want to evict for just one month, plus our home leave will take place in late January and February - not generally considered the best months in the Pacific Northwest - we opted to go to Florida and cost construct instead. 

Nearly one year ago, with our departure date from Juarez fixed, and the starting date of Romanian training known, we did heaps of research and finally chose to rent a house in northern Florida's Gulf Coast, thereby joining thousands of retired Canadian and Great Lakes residents as part of the great snow bird migration.  Coming off-season as we did, is not only less expensive, but also less crowded and finding a house available for the entire month was not too difficult. 

So here we are, and I gotta' say it's pretty cool.  

First of all, when was the last time you had one calendar month in which nothing more was expected of you other than remaining in the U.S.?  I think I was 15. Truly, other than basic personal hygiene, not crossing an international border is our only responsibility. Home leave is different from vacation because of the luxurious lack of expectations or lingering responsibilities.  When you go on vacation, that pile of stuff on the kitchen table will still be there to greet you when you return. Your inbox will continue to accept messages which will require your attention and action at some point, and you will still have to weed the garden, deal with that tiresome coworker and fight that horrible traffic wherever you live when the rosy glow of your vacation has worn off.  

In contrast, home leave, by definition taking place at the END of an assignment, comes without that mental baggage.  I have no further responsibilities to my job nor our house - loved them as I did - in Juarez. I have no expectations from my assignment in Bucharest yet either, and unlike in AP English in 11th grade - there is no required summer reading list for Romanian language training.  Oh I suppose I could try to be a real go-getter and find some language tapes to get a head start, but it's not at all expected and frankly would be just a bit more than annoying to come to class on the first day all full of little phrases I learned to (mis)pronounce during home leave. Yeah, instead I'm just going to unplug and let my brain rest this entire month. 

We've now been on home leave (which does not include the three travel days it took to get us and the Tabbies to Florida in the car - more on that later) for just over a week.  We're getting acquainted with the new environment and have already chosen our favorite grocery store and have located the PetSmart (I'm already on the second box of cat litter). We've walked on the beach each day, even if that meant we were wearing sweaters and hoods a few of those days.  We've completed a very complex 1000 piece puzzle; have had my husband's brother and sister-in-law visit for four days; have dug into new books and crossword puzzles; and have begun to catch up on a bunch of bad TV and too many morning news shows.  Really, all the stuff you WOULD do if you had the time - which is all we have now.  

Coming from a border posting, we're fortunate to have our car with us already.  But the great majority of folks coming back for home leave will do so in a plane, and therefore will not only have no home, but also no car.  This is why many of us refer to it as "homeless leave," that month of couch-surfing and relying on the kindness of friends and family.  Some of my younger coworkers have told me that returning to their parents' home, sometimes even to their childhood bedrooms, can be fun for the first week, but just awkward thereafter.  Because we're allowed to drive our cars to and from post, many leaving border assignments choose to do lengthy road trips and have filled their Facebook pages with pictures from National Parks throughout the American west. As we have the Tabbies to tow, spending more time on the road did NOT sound like a viable nor enjoyable option.  So we're staying in one place and letting friends, family and adventure come to us instead. 

Besides being the dead of winter and not wanting to spend our month stuck inside to escape the drear, we chose Florida as we're also "trying out" the region to see if some day we may want to live here. Next home leave will be during summer and so we may be renting a house in Oregon or along a lake somewhere.  But that's just our decision, and in my free time I've been thinking of other things that people could do on home leave. Here are a few ideas:

• Rent an apartment or house in that region of the U.S. that has always intrigued you.
• Schedule the minor surgery or dental work you've been putting off.
• Rent a cabin in the woods and finally get started on the Great American Novel.
• Take a course in something you've always wanted to learn, like French cooking, watercolor painting, Tai-Chi or playing the harmonica.
• Use the time to buy a house or to remodel one you already own. 
• Put all the bureaucracy of life in order: Wills; Insurance policies; Documents in your safe deposit box.
• Hike all/part of the Appalachian or Pacific Crest trails. 
• Work on your tennis, golf or poker game obsessively. 
• Binge re-watch entire seasons of your favorite TV shows or Cary Grant's life work.
• Actually put together your wedding photo album before your 15th anniversary comes around.
• Staying in DC? Try to visit a different Smithsonian museum each day.
• Buy a box of books from the Goodwill and see how many you can get through.

The Tabbies have continued to adjust to our mobile lifestyle and took to three days on the road exceptionally well.  Naturally, they prefer being settled now and are especially liking that we're home all day (i.e. available to tend to their needs). Toby spends a lot of time watching the neighborhood go by outside his screen door and sniffing the new smell of salt air.  My husband has kitted himself out with a fishing license and tackle and is determined to pull something out of the water.  I discovered Ancestry.com and have gotten back to the late 1700s on one side of the family. And we've barely cracked Week Two.

Once again, I will leave you with a few pictures of our move east and where we've landed:

Daphne in the crow's nest perch. 

 

Dodger watches west Texas slip from view. 

 

Toby found my lap in San Antonio and didn't give it up until we hit northern Florida.

Toby didn't take well to leaving the hotel rooms each morning. "No really, it's small, but it's cozy! We'll be fine here; we don't need to leave!"

But once we got to the new house - well, he got pretty comfy. 

Finally here!

We've been getting to know the locals...

fighting the crowds...

and generally just finding a good spot to rest for a bit.

Adios Juarez

It's finally here.

I don't mean "finally" as in Christmas morning, but rather "finally" as in that dreaded dental appointment. 

The last work day, the last hug goodbye, the last look around our house and garden, the last time we turn the car north and head for the border, the last crossing over the big sandy depression that is the Rio Bravo/Grande, the last chat with CBP and then we're away and into Texas.

Time is such a mercurial, fickle friend and sometimes enemy.  Time has both flown and crept since our February 2013 arrival. May to January slipped by in a blink, and yet it seems as if I've been aware of the passing of every hour in our last week. Yesterday we drove by the El Paso hotel where in Feb 2013 we spent the last night of our road trip south before meeting our social sponsor and heading across the border for the first time.  I saw the window of the hotel room where we stayed and remembered what I had been thinking as I looked out over the twin cities that would be our home. During the day it was all very beige (very beige!), and at night Juarez spread out beneath El Paso in a rolling, twinkling blanket of lights.  But the skies were so crisp blue (they still are) with the widest and brightest horizon I'd ever seen.  I think that horizon was emblematic of my time here: broad and full of possibilities. 

Professionally, this assignment could not have been better suited to me. Back in Bogota when I was an OMS and hoping to be a Consular Officer, I got some advice from one of the Consular managers that, should I make it to A-100, I should seriously consider going to the border for everything I could learn there.  (Sorry Canada, but when we say "border post," we're usually talking about the southern border.)  I'm sure I smiled and nodded, tucking away her advice, all the while privately thinking that I wanted to go somewhere far more exotic.  But she was right. Cutting one's teeth in arguably one of the most complex immigrant visa sections in the world has been an incredible learning experience for me. 

Personally, our time here has been equally satisfying.  That's such a milquetoast word, "satisfying," for something so meaningful.  The most important elements to a successful tour are often completely unrelated to the actual job. Is your family happy? Do they like their jobs/schools? Are the pets safe and comfortable? How do you like your house/apartment? Do you like the local food? What is the weather like? Are there fun things to do outside of work and friends to share them with?  Everything has come our way in each of those categories.  In fact, I'm a bit worried that we've used up all our Foreign Service luck in that respect. 

I think I've made my point that I've loved it here. And that's why it's so sad to see that the time has come to close the doors on this experience and move forward.  And why I feel so guilty thinking that time is now my enemy, barely crawling by when I just want to get it over with and go. This is by far the hardest part of a Foreign Service life: the departures. Not the technical pain-in-the-butt stuff like pack-out and writing EERs, but the "it's not goodbye, it's see you later" when you're pretty sure it really is goodbye. 

So I'm just going to leave you with a really snappy song and video about our dusty, ole' city and a few pictures that I hope show this place off. It's not a beautiful city, but the soul of the place and the people here make it as warm as it is hot. Our Consul General, in giving a going away speech for a few of us, said that there are some posts worldwide that are "snakebit," meaning that no matter how lovely the setting - they're just full of bad juju that persists year after year. He didn't know what the opposite of that was to describe this consulate, sunkissed perhaps, but he's right.  Through all the tragedy the city and post have endured, the soul and spirit continues to welcome. I'm proud to have been a little part of it all.

With that...

Ciudad Juarez es Numero Uno! Just try to get this song out of your head afterwards. 

A blanket of lights on both sides of the border

Amazing skies and Juarez's mountains to the west.

Best sunsets!

The Equis (X) at the crossing of countries and cultures

La bandera grande, slowly waving in the sun rays

Thank you for everything my friends. It's time to head north.