At FSI - Sixth Week

We've been in DC for about 6 weeks now. Getting here, physically, was its own challenge. The government-paid movers came and packed us up and moved our stuff on Dec. 27-28. We stayed in an historic hotel in Union and then a bed and breakfast in La Grande for about a week until we headed out. In addition to putting our house up for sale (if you haven’t already, check it out at http://realestateteam.oregon.remax.com/listings/ListingDetail_r4.aspx?LID=38166321#aTop), we also sold our car. So some friends drove us to Boise, Idaho (about 3 hours away), where we were going to catch our flight to DC. But the weather was bad (especially on the west coast where our plane was coming from) and our flight got canceled. We had to scramble some to get another flight. The government-contracted travel agent was very helpful! It was just a little later than planned, but we got to DC alright. Unfortunately, our luggage didn’t! So we spent the next couple of days working on getting them to locate and deliver our six suitcases. After a couple of days, we ended up driving our rental car to the airport and getting it ourselves.

The furnished apartment is decent enough. We have 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, with a small living room/dining room/kitchen in between. It’s taken some getting used to live in an apartment, and do your laundry in the Laundromat here, take your garbage to a chute down the hall, and so on. Of course, the weekly housekeeping service is nice! It’s also been an adjustment living in a more crowded area than we’re used to. We thought it would be more urban with all the public transportation nearby, but it’s a little more suburban than that. Part of why we sold our car is that we planned to rely on public transportation. It hasn’t been as easy as that. The apartment complex has a shuttle (like one of those little buses you take from the airport to the car rental or hotel) that goes to and from the National Foreign Affairs Training Center (where I work), and another one that goes to and from the Metro (rail/subway system). But they don’t run all the time, and they don’t help us much for going to the store or to church. In fact, we realized we had a problem with early morning seminary (Melissa’s church studies before school). While she could take the school bus to school, we thought she could get a ride with someone to seminary. No such luck. There’s no one that goes this way to seminary. When we talked to her seminary teacher about the problem, she came up with a suggestion: her family has an extra car they’re not using, and they wanted to loan it to us for a couple of months. We were a little shy about doing something like this, but we decided to accept the offer. It’s been a real blessing. We do use the Dodge Caravan quite a bit. But I still take the shuttle to work, or the Metro to some of the malls or to downtown DC. It’s less stressful, and often much faster. Things are closer than I thought they might be, but it can still take a long time to get there in traffic (even when it’s not rush hour crazy). It’s really strange to have not only a mall, but numerous malls and stores to choose from! I can’t believe I’m a few minutes from 2 Apple stores!

The other thing that was different about the area than I expected is that it is much hillier (I thought everything east of the Mississippi was flat) and there are more trees. Also, the houses look different. They’re more of a “colonial” style, I guess: two-stories, but small and lots of red brick. I guess they don’t have as many earthquakes here. Even the churches all kind of look the same, at least all the Christian churches.

So what have I been doing at my new job? I am in orientation training (nicknamed “A-100” after the room it used to be held in) at the Foreign Service Institute (on the campus of the National Foreign Affairs Training Center). That means I’m essentially in class all day. But it’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before. There are 64 of us in the class, ranging in age from 23 to 52. A little less than half are married, the rest are single. There’s even one married couple who are both in the class. A little more than half are men. Some people have very little foreign experience. There are others who have had extensive experience living abroad, working or volunteering or studying, and speak several languages. There are even a few naturalized citizens (not born in the U.S.). Five of us are Latter-day Saint returned missionaries. It’s an amazing group of people… and good-looking, too, because we’re required to wear business suits. We have a wide variety of training, sometimes all together, sometimes in smaller groups. We cover such topics as diplomatic history, foreign service writing, public speaking, composure under fire, rules and regulations, foreign policy, crisis management. (Those are all topics in the last week or so.) And, yes, I often have homework, so I rarely have free time. Sometimes we have special guests and sometimes we go to the main State Department building in DC or to Capitol Hill to hear from even more special guests. And sometimes our briefings are classified. We had a two-day team-building retreat at resort in West Virginia, where we really had to learn communication skills, etc. We’ve also been to more social events than I normally go to in a year. But it’s good practice in learning the art of small talk and “working the room” – important skills we will use a lot overseas.

It’s not required that you speak a foreign language to join the Foreign Service, but it is required to get “tenured.” You have 5 years to meet certain requirements, including language probation, or leave the service. I took my Spanish test (speaking and reading) a couple of weeks ago and received a 3+/3 – high enough of a score to get off language probation and to be ready to work in a Spanish-speaking country. I’m also scheduled for a German test, although I don’t expect to do as well.

So, where will we be going? I don’t know. But, as hard as it is to believe the time has flown by this fast, we find out this coming Friday (woo-hoo!). In our first week, we received a list of about 70 positions for junior officers (don’t you just love that designation?). We had to do our research about the job, the living conditions, schools, etc. and “bid” on the list a week later. That is, we had to rate each post as a high, medium, or low preference and why. We were encouraged to bid high on as much as possible, to give them flexibility in assigning us. For us, we had just a few requirements: I didn’t want to go to an unaccompanied post (without the family), and we needed to have a high school for Melissa and a medical unit. I also prefer not to go to a huge post, like Mexico City or Cairo, nor to a Mexican border post, like Tijuana, where Melissa would end up going over the border to high school in the U.S. every day. So what were our choices? Keep in mind that we’re at the bottom rung; we get what’s not already spoken for. So there’s no London or Paris or Sydney. Among the places we bid high on (a total of 18, as I recall) are: Taipei, Taiwan; Guayaquil, Ecuador; Monterrey or Guadalajara, Mexico; Sarajevo, Bosnia; Damascus, Syria; and Montevideo, Uruguay.

Again, I have no idea where we’ll be going. It will be announced at a “Flag Day” ceremony on Friday. They actually hold up a little flag for the country and then say your name. We’re making a family affair. Liz and Rebekah (who are at BYU-Idaho) and Annalicia (at Eastern Oregon University) are flying out for the ceremony. Then we’ll spend the weekend together doing tourist stuff in DC. After that, I’ll have one more week of training, followed by a swearing-in ceremony at the end of the week. Then I’ll have some more job-specific training and perhaps language training, depending on the post I’m going to. Mary is very supportive and ready to go anywhere. Melissa is less excited, mostly because she misses her friends in Union.

Now we just have to wait for Flag Day!