Going into Rewind

I've come to realize I may have put the cart ahead of the horse a little and skipped this topic. Or at the very least, I only hinted at or made some implications as to why I was agreeable to Natalie taking up a career with the foreign service.

I found myself thinking this over in great detail after reading a post by I'll Take Mine...To Go, Please! about talking disapproving or concerned parents/family members about this different lifestyle.

Along with the regular suspects of questions about where and when we leave for Mexico and what we will be doing comes the other biggie, "Why?"

Of course, part of this question is brought on by the fact that we are moving to Mexico. If we were telling friends and family we were moving to some western European capital, it would be easy to turn that question around and ask "Why not?" (But isn't just hilarious to tell people you are moving to Mexico to get a job?)

But even before Flag Day, or as I like to call it, A-100 Lottery Day, friends and family really couldn't understand why we would sign up for a life that would require us to move to anywhere in the world every two years or so. (Where I'm from, we joke [these were jokes, right?] that if you want to cross the Ohio River, you need a passport...such is how well I was equipped for culture shock.) After all, even if we were sent to a Caribbean paradise one time, we could end up in civil war-torn hell hole the next.

I can't speak to Natalie's frame of mind when she decided to apply. Besides, that's kind of out of this blog's scope anyway. I'm here to talk about why spouses would be OK with moving away from friends and family and likely ditching a career as well.

For me, at least, the career thing wasn't a big deal, because as I believe I've made clear, my career wasn't really going anywhere.

But that obviously doesn't answer the question about "Why the foreign service?" After all, I could just quit my old job. And if a change of venue was also part of the answer, this is a large country with plenty of places to relocate.

The easiest answer is that this is what Natalie wants to do, I love her, so I support her.

I have my selfish reasons, too. I do want to see the world, and this definitely lends itself to that.

Professionally speaking, I fancy myself a writer. As such, I believe that writers write from personal experience. This life offers an abundance of experiences I would not likely face in the United States alone.

So to come back to ITMTGP's question about talking to family and friends about this choice, perhaps the main points that should be made is why you want such a life. Our family and friends just want what's best for us, so maybe once they know why we think this life is best for us, that might help them to cope with adjustment.

And don't expect anyone to understand either. This is a nation that has done pretty well throughout history subscribing to isolationism, so wanting to leave the Land of the Free to live else where is an entirely foreign concept to most Americans. I think the key to putting others' minds at ease is getting them to understand that this is a decision that was not made lightly, pros and cons were weighed, and ultimately you reached the decision that this is a lifestyle that is best for you.

Celebrating A-100 Graduation

I wanted to post something today, but I was feeling lazy, so I’m dipping into past events as an excuse to post this surprise party video.

Since we’ve been married, Natalie has made it very clear that she wanted a surprise party, thus making it impossible to plan a surprise party for her birthday. Every year as her birthday approached, I’d be asked if she was getting her surprise party this year.

Fast forward to 2009 with her passing her oral exam, getting called into A-100 and getting our Hermosillo post, I decided I should do something a little special for her, so I chose this my chance to catch her off guard with a surprise party.

I decided to use the Sunday evening after the swearing-in ceremony because 1) it was short notice, so it had to be a Sunday so people could attend and 2) the ceremony provided an event to actually celebrate (though it really turned more into a post-Flag Day party, just a week after the fact).

After hacking into her facebook account and scrolling through her cell phone on this rare occasion it wasn’t in her hand, I was able to invite several hometown, high school, college and area friends, former work colleagues, family and some fellow 148th members to the tune of about 80 invitees altogether (about 40 arrived).

I told the lie of our apartment in association with a fictional local restaurant group was hosting a Taste of Crystal City-type event in our apartment’s party room, which she bought hook-line-and-sinker.

And I spent about a week preparing food and decorations, storing them at friends’ places and making up excuses about preparing lots of food to give to our friends as we got closer to the party.

There were several close calls, luck and lots and lots of assistance from others to pull this off right under nose, but as you can tell from the video, she definitely was not expecting this.

So without further ado, enjoy!



P.S. For some reason, the video seems to be interfering with the comments section. If you really want to leave a comment, you need to click on this post's title first. Then at the bottom of the page, the comment section springs back to life.

EFM: Explaining Flag (Day) Meticulously

This post is a corollary to the previous post intended to provide a little more insight into our bidding process and what happened on Flag Day.

First, let’s talk about the bid list. This is where dreams begin, and are eventually dashed. Going back even further, as Natalie was accepted into the 148th A-100 class (good job, honey!), I immediately started imagining life in Istanbul, a Mediterranean resort, any Caribbean island, or an African safari, etc. Believe it or not, I was not fantasizing about a Mexican desert.

But most of those ideas quickly were put aside as we developed our bidding strategy. A very quick explanation for the uninitiated: in our case, there were 90 or so A-100 members and about 90 or so posts to bid on. While the State Department would like to send everyone some place they would like to go, ultimately, the State needs to put people where they need them the most.

But to gauge where federal service oath-takers (FSOs) want to go, they rank every possible destination on a scale of three resulting in a fairly ambiguous hierarchy. (I forget if one is the highest or lowest ranking, so for these purposes, I will designate as high, low and medium bids).

So our strategy was to highly rank posts that would require Natalie to learn a world language (French, Portuguese or Spanish) because she is required to be fluent in one by the end of her first five years to receive tenure. With that in mind, we ranked all English-speaking posts (or posts that do not require fluency in a second language) as low essentially eliminating London, Sydney, Kingston, Geneva and Washington.

Using this language criterion, we also shelved my favorite destinations because we decided it would not be practical to learn Greek, Nepali or Turkish because those languages are suitable for one country only. So Athens, Kathmandu, Istanbul and other such locales got ranked medium as a not-too-shabby consolation prize if we did not get any of our high bids.

The second criterion we considered was gaining some equity; in State speak, equity essentially is how many bonus points you get in bidding on your second post, the less desirable the post, the more equity you get.

In hindsight, however, we were not very consistent in applying this as Port au Prince, Haiti, with its 45 equity points (the second highest number as equity tops out at 50 and seems to be awarded in intervals of five) was only a medium on our list while Hermosillo only had 10 points at the time we bid. Apparently it was boosted to 15 recently, so we’ve got that, which is nice.

One final contributing factor was the Mexico issue. On our bid list, there were about 15 Mexican posts, meaning almost 20% of the 148th would go somewhere in Mexico. To show that we were at least considering the possibility of moving to Mexico, we ranked some of the destinations high such Hermosillo, Merida and others (I think Tijuana and Guadalajara) and the rest were medium including Mexico City, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, and the dreaded Ciudad Juarez, which four members of the 148th were assigned.

Weeks after submitting our final bid list rankings, Flag Day arrived. Sitting in the audience with my sister-in-law, her husband and a copy of our bid list, we waited in anticipation of the announcement with thoughts on Maputo, Mozambique; Montevideo, Uruguay; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Lome, Togo; and a few other destinations sticking out prominently in my mind.

Even before the first flags were distributed, they announced a few posts that would not be filled, some of which were on our high list. This got me excited that if they were not filling all of those on our high list, it must mean we have one of our highs. (I later learned that this is not necessarily true).

Slowly, the process seemed to drag as first all of the D.C. posts were distributed, and they were numerous. Then a few of our highs were given out. Then a couple of posts I dreaded (and silently cheered) were given to others.

Then Montevideo was gone followed by the Brazilian posts and Lome and a few other African posts that fascinated me.

Our high list was depleting, as we were in the latter half of names called off until it seemed we were down to Maputo. I was certain of it. I think Natalie was certain of it, too, as we would exchange glances from time to time.

Then Maputo was announced, and it was not us. As I crossed it off my printout, I quickly scanned to see what our remaining highs were. Then I saw Hermosillo, and it seemed that as soon as I discovered that high on our list, almost instantaneously, the master of ceremonies announced “Hermosillo, Mexico” and before she even added my wife’s name (which she missed pronounced our surname), I looked at my sister-in-law and said this was us.

Natalie and I made a classic mistake, which was to focus to the point of obsession only a handful of posts, when really, the entire list is a possibility. She later confessed she did not even remember ranking Hermosillo as high, and when the ceremony ended and we went to meet Natalie, there was a few seconds where the disappointment could be seen on her face and I worried she was going to have a breakdown.

But by the time the post-ceremony happy hour ended, and after a few Coronas, she was genuinely excited about Hermosillo. (A quick aside, during the happy hour, I asked the bartender if she had any Mexican beers, and she said no. I questioned further inquiring about Dos Equis or Corona, causing her to reply, “Oh, I do have Corona.” How does a bartender not know the origin of Corona? Dos Equis, I was willing to forgive, but Corona? Really?).

So that is our cautionary tale about how to prepare yourself for Flag Day as well as some advice on filling out a bid list.

EFM: Even Follows to Mexico

In the spirit of hating government acronyms, and I promise not to dwell much longer on the topic, EFM also denotes the slightly begrudging manner in which we received our first post assignment.

This posting headline saps a little of the anticipation for you the reader, so I won’t delay in announcing we were assigned to Hermosillo, Mexico. I’ve quickly learned that unless you’re from Mexico, and maybe from the American Southwest, Hermosillo means nothing to you.

And on Flag Day, i.e. A-100 lottery drawing day, it meant nothing to me other than we were moving somewhere in Mexico.

Go ahead and do a Wikipedia search of Hermosillo; I’ll wait as it won’t take too terribly long to read up on the northwestern city.

Fine, I’ll give you the highlights, if you can call them that. First and foremost, the city is known for its hot temperatures making it one of the hottest cities in Mexico. For seven months out of the year, the average temperature is at least 90°F; three months average more than 100°F. We’re talking averages here. The records inch very close to 120°F. January is the only month the average low dips below 50°F.

When first describing Hermosillo to friends and family, after bemoaning the heat, I tell them this is essentially Mexico’s Detroit without the violence, racial tension and the Lions. In other words, they have a Ford plant, but this one actually makes cars. There also is a hint of Texas as Hermosillo is home of the carne asada and all things beef.

It also is a city that enjoys its baseball franchise, the Naranjeros (Orange Growers), which has won 14 Mexican Pacific League titles, or about as many titles as all of Detroit’s sports franchises combined (I could be way off as that was just a guess and one more cheap shot at Detroit).

To be fair, I’m hardly the first person to judge this city harshly. We bought the July 2007 edition of The Rough Guide to Mexico, and it summed up Hermosillo like this: “While it is an interesting enough to experience such a stereotypically Mexican town, there’s no reason to stay here long.” Long is a relative term, but I assume the authors would determine two years to be “long.”

But before I wear out my welcome before even arriving, I should add that Hermosillo was ranked somewhat highly on our bid list though for those going through the process, you quickly learn that not all “high bids” are created equal.

I also should say that I was intrigued by several of the other Mexican posts available because I do have an extraordinary fascination with the American-Mexican War of 1848. Bizarre, I know. So some of the other possibilities such as Matamoros or Monterrey were more appealing to me because they played prominent roles in the beginning of the war (the first major battle was the siege of Matamoros).

Learning Spanish also should prove to be quite a valuable skill as well. And there are some beaches along the Gulf of California (or Mar de Cortés to the locals) only about an hour’s drive away at Bahía de Kino. And I hope to learn to make a tasty mole sauce among other Mexican dishes.

So while I’m justifiably skeptical of what two years in Hermosillo will entail, I refuse to be entirely disappointed and plan on making the best of the experience.