Well, we passed a big milestone last week. Last Wednesday, the movers came and we officially "packed out" for the first time in our foreign service lives. We have done three cross country moves with the help of family and friends, and while they were wonderful, I'm here to say that professional movers are the way to go! It was so nice to have them come in and pack everything up and they were extremely efficient. A big shout out to my mom, Brian's mom, and Ellie for all your help on move day. Without you, we never would have been out of that place in one day!!
On Friday morning after the move, my dad and I headed for DC. It's about a 21 hour drive, so we decided to do about 15 of those hours on Friday and the remaining 6 on Saturday. It was actually a really fun trip and we had plenty of coffee stops, treat runs, and meals on the road together. It was a nice chance for us to spend some quality time together.
Saturday we arrived in DC. I was so glad to see Brian and am so glad to be out here with him. Living apart was no fun! Brian is making amazing progress in Spanish and it's fun to be able to talk with each other. Yesterday Brian and I went to do our passport applications. It took us nearly the whole morning to do our applications, get our pictures taken and wait in line to get them processed. But after all of that, we are well on our way to having our diplomatic passports. Exciting! We ended the evening with a dinner together at La Tasca. It's a tapas restaurant about 10 minutes from us and it was nice to finally take a deep breath and be able to spend some time together just catching up and not doing anything "administrative."
Now that I'm here, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what it is that I want to do, both for the next six months, and for the two years we'll be in Venezuela. As we've begun to talk with the people out here who can really help me with that search, it seems I have a lot more to focus on and work on out here than I had anticipated. Suddenly my summer is filling up and it looks like the next six months will be spent "building a toolbox" for Venezuela. Brian and I call it building a toolbox because while I'm not doing any one specific thing, I am basically just growing my skill set and qualifications so that I will ahve options in Venezuela. It looks like this summer will be spent networking with old contacts, reaching out to new people, taking the Consular course at FSI, brushing up on my Spanish, taking the protocal course and taking a short vacation to Maine. I am excited about the opportunity to take the course at FSI to see what opportunities might be available for me within the embassy as well. Aside from that, I'm looking forward to having a few visitors :-)
We're hoping to be back to Minnesota at least once more before we leave in October. We'll keep you posted.
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