making a comeback

I managed to get all the way through 2008 without making a single post on this blog.  I don’t know where the time went.  I knew it had been a while, but 16 months?  Well, a lot has happened.  Our family grew again with the birth of our son last April.  We also made several moves.  We left our last post Toronto in December 2007, took home leave in Illinois through the end of January 2008, moved on to training in Washington, DC and arrived at our current post Cotonou, Benin at the end of July 2008.   Amazingly we’ve already hit the 6-month mark here.  This is an interesting place, which would make great blog fodder, so I’m going to try harder to post more frequently this year!

on the road in Cotonou

séjour à Québec

  

I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to spend the past 7 weeks working in Quebec City.  Quebec is beautiful and makes you feel as if you’ve left North America.  It’s been a real treat.  I’ve also been able to wear several different hats on the job here, so that’s been a nice learning experience.   It’s also been great to be able to use my French since my next assignment requires it.  Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to heading home at the end of the week to be reunited with my family, who didn’t come with me.  It wasn’t so easy for them to up and leave jobs and schools for a couple months.  If you ever have a chance to visit Quebec, I highly recommend it!

The beginning of the end

I’m finally at a point in my stay here when I feel like things are wrapping up.  I’m still a little more than 4 months from my departure from Toronto, but I’m closing a big chapter next week.  After 19-1/2 months in the NIV unit here, I’ll be signing off for good.  I then have an interesting TDY opportunity in Quebec City for 2 months and then back to Toronto for 2 months of ACS before we leave.  It’s been a great experience here for all kinds of reasons.  I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of unique and unexpected “stretch” opportunities on the job and to work with a great bunch of people.  I’ll be sad to go, but we’re looking forward to home leave, going back to DC for 4 months and moving on to our next assignment in West Africa.  As of now, I think that joining the Foreign Service was a great career move for me. 

Happy Canada Day!

Today is Canada’s equivalent of the Fourth of July.  People are having picnics and cookouts and fireworks are gearing up for this evening.  This means two days off work this week – one for Canada Day tomorrow and another for U.S. Independence Day on Wednesday.  Last year it worked out so that we had a nice four day weekend, but this year, we have one day in between, so it’s back to work for a day on Tuesday.  Oh well.  I’m not complaining!  After no public holidays in June, it’s nice to finally get an extra couple days off.   It should be a festive and patriotic week on both sides of the border!

ah, summer!

A lot of time has passed since I made my last post.  I’m proving to be a pretty poor blogger and will just face the fact that this will not be a daily thing for me, perhaps not even monthly.  But here I am again and am glad to report that summer has finally arrived in Toronto and everyone’s spirits are high.  This weekend there’s a lot going on.  We went to see the Blue Jays play the Washington Nationals last night.   It’s an interesting inter-league match-up which encouraged many to dust off their old Montreal Expos hats.  It’s also Barbados weekend, the Distillery District Blues Festival and the annual dragon boat races.  And I find myself inside watching the U.S. Open, but will definitely get out a bit later.

Summer has also presented welcome changes at work.  I’ve moved back on to the main visa line from my year-long hiatus working with E visas, I-130s and “special” visa applicants.  Amazingly, I’m happy being back into the faster pace work on the visa line with the camaraderie of other officers.  With my departure from post now just 6 months away, I learned that I’ll be doing a 2-month TDY stint at another post in Canada later this summer.  So the days in Toronto are really numbered!  Better get out and enjoy our last summer here.  We’ll surely miss this place when we’re gone!

only 90% of me left

My New Year’s resolution this year was to really get serious about losing weight.  With my little one soon to turn 2, I can no longer use the “I just had a baby” excuse for being overweight.  I joined Weight Watchers on the first Saturday in January and today reached my first major weight loss milestone – I’ve lost 10% of my starting weight.  Telling you how much weight that is would give away my starting weight, so I’ll withhold that info.  Anyway, I feel great.  An FSO friend of mine noticed my success and started going to meetings with me in February and she’s doing really well, too.  I thought I’d write this post to give myself a pat on the back today!!

thoughts at 15 months into my first assignment

It’s been a month since I last posted.  As much as I like this blog idea, I don’t seem to find the time to do it on a regular basis.  And by the time I sit down to write, I forget about the interesting things that have happened over the course of the past month.

The excitement of knowing my next assignment has worn off a bit and I’m trying hard to stay focused on my work in Toronto since I do still have another 8-9 months here.  I learned that we’ll have 5-6 months for home leave and training at FSI in between postings.  I’ll get a month of French and area studies training and 3 months of GSO class.  That should be good.  Somehow I’ve managed to have two very short FSI stints as a JO, but I’ve also managed to screw myself out of language training, which I really would have liked.  It just worked out that way as we gave priority as to where we wanted to go and family considerations versus how I could score the most language training.  Hopefully there will be other chances down the road.

The ELOs in Toronto had a mentoring session with a senior officer from the Embassy in Ottawa on Friday and received some great advice from him.  I’m always fascinated to hear from those with 30 years of FS experience and glean some pearls of wisdom.  He advised a return to DC for the third tour and a real careful evaluation of whether the FS is for you at the end of the third tour.  Not enough people do that.  The 5-6 year point is a good time to reassess.  By then you’ve seen a couple different overseas missions and worked at HQ.  This gives you a pretty good idea of how the organization works and what it’s all about, but you’re not so vested at this point that you can’t make a clean break.  By the 10-year point, you’re just 10 years away from a guaranteed pension.  It may be more tempting at that point to stick around even if the work really isn’t for you.

I hope this works out for me as a career, but I will be realistic and take to heart this advice.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my work so far – even the often dreaded consular tour – but it hasn’t been without challenges.  My husband’s employment situation has been the most serious.  We’ll see how long he’s willing to go along with the program.  Gone are the days when all the trailing spouses are housewives.

our next global adventure – Cotonou, Benin!

I’ve been in my current two-year assignment for 14 months and just last week learned where we’ll be headed next - Cotonou, Benin!   We were thrilled to learn we got our #1 choice.  It will be great to return to West Africa, where we’ve all spent a lot of time and where we have a lot of family.  We’re very excited.  Where is Benin, you ask?

choice

weekend in Montreal

            

We had a chance to get out and see more of this vast country last weekend.  In spite of what is probably the worst winter weather we’ve seen here so far, we took to the road for the 6-hour drive from Toronto to Montreal.  This was my first visit to Quebec and the French-speaking region of Canada.  I was surprised how most people in Montreal started conversations in English, only switching to French if the person responded in French.  I was encouraged to see that this wasn’t the case just a short distance outside of Montreal.  Perhaps we’ll get back to Montreal during the summer because the winter definitely didn’t do the city justice, but we enjoyed our visit just the same.

another fun thing

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 336 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?