Administrative Note and More Bullets!

I've been getting a few new faces stopping by here, and so I thought I'd probably clarify my position on the Comments section.

The way I see it, the Comments section is for the readers' use. Generally, it is anything goes unless I start getting really terrible, hateful comments or if I start getting spam. At that point, I'll reassess the posting process, but let's hope I don't have to cross that bridge.

Also, because I view the Comments section as your territory, I generally do not comment in that section. My feeling is that I've already stated my opinions or views on the topic, and I don't want to be trying to get the last word in. That said, I'll post in the Comments if someone asks me a question directly or if it is apparent people are not understanding my message.

But I do read all of your comments, and they are much appreciated. I enjoy getting some of these conversations started. I also receive e-mail notices when a new comment is left, so even if you are commenting on a really old posting, I still am aware of it.

Now, on to some bullets:

• It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas here. There has been a ground/surface/sea packages spotting in Nogales, and the sleigh...er...truck is loaded and ready to make the trek south. Just because they are a bunch of sadists, they are making us wait until Monday to deliver the goods. I assume it works this way at all posts, but Natalie will take a Home-unpacking Holiday Event (HHE...dead to me, except when it is a holiday) on Monday. There will be dancing in the streets! And coffee for everyone!

• Today is the day I've been dreading ever since right before we left Crystal City for the long drive southwest. On just about the last day possible, I got a very short haircut, secretly hoping it would last two years. Alas, I made it almost two months, but I concede it is time. For my entire childhood and into young adulthood, only one man cut my hair. It was a bit of a traumatic experience when I went to college and finally had to get someone else to do the job. It almost felt like I was cheating on my barber. Then I moved to D.C., and for the first time, I had a woman cutting my hair. Another unnerving event for me. But today, when one of Natalie's colleagues takes me to visit Miss Arizona (not the beauty-queen contestant, I assume), it will be the first time I will get my hair cut by someone who doesn't speak English. Maybe I just need to shave myself bald and avoid this stress.

• Here's a little leftover item from looking back at our arrival here. Would it be too much to ask to get the Internet ball rolling before we arrive. I'm guessing in some of these developing nation posts, there is probably only a single provider, so there really isn't any reason why someone at post can't make the necessary phone calls or whatever so the Internet will be waiting on us instead of vice versa. We actually had two options here, sorta. There are two providers, but if you want anything close to American service, you have to go through TelMex. And TelMex has three plans, but if you want anything close to American service, you have to buy the most expensive plan (about $85 USD per month). Still, we didn't have to wait terribly long - less than a week - but still, this seems like an unnecessary amount of dead time.

• Google AdSense received Strike 1 a few days ago. The ads, apparently, aren't the same depending on where you are reading from, so what I see here in Mexico can be different than what you see in the States or where ever else you might be. But I saw an ad for a quasi-religious group that almost made me pull the plug on this operation. Without repeating its name and accidentally give Google an excuse to hit me with it again, it is a group that serves Hollywood types that believe you have to give the organization money to learn stuff. Oh, and it was founded by a former Si-Fi writer; if you need more clues, Tom Cruise is a member. Anyway, in case anyone else noticed this, let me say that I do not endorse said group, and I will trying to see if I can't block future ads from them.

• Mexican culture, like several European cultures, dictates that when a woman is involved in a greeting, there is cheek-to-cheek air kissing. A little awkward, but when in Rome, right? I still find myself forgetting time to time and there is either an awkward pause before I remember my manners, or an even more awkward handshake only because I forgot my manners altogether. That is when I greet a Mexican woman. What is the protocol for greeting an American woman in Mexico? I've seen Natalie's male colleagues approach it either or, so I suppose it is a preference thing.

• Finally, I think a marketing genius invented the slogan, "It's a dry heat." This is the first or second most common marketing expression I've heard, with "What Happens in Vegas" being in the running as well. So in D.C., the summer is high 80s to low 90s (barring a heat wave) and humid. And it is miserable to go outside. You feel like you are getting steamed. Here, it is mid 100s to mid 110s (barring a heat wave) with just a little humidity (we are in the rainy season, after all), and it is miserable to go outside. You feel like you are getting baked. So either way, you're cooked and better off staying inside, which, by the way, is what most people do here in the late morning through early afternoon. So much for that dry heat baloney.

Why a Maid Isn't in the Cards

An appropriate subtitle: Because I was a stubborn ass, penny-pincher in the States, and that isn't going to change just because I'm in Mexico.

I appreciate the thoughtful suggestions, but this one just won't work with me. I actually gave it a long, serious thought the other day, and I found myself getting physically ill.

I'm sure maids are great and they help a lot people get through the day-to-day living in a foreign country not only through their cleaning services but also through the insights they can share into the local culture and language.

A.) Hiring a maid would put me out of a job. While the freelance work trickles in ever so slowly, I'm not bringing much to the table financially. But I can save the house a little money by doing all of the cooking and house maintenance instead of outsourcing it (by the way, I dropped the term cleaning because that is a losing battle. As soon as I stop sweeping one corner and move on, that corner is already getting dirty again. So house maintenance it is.) This goes beyond contribution, too. It is hard to replace the satisfaction of doing a job well, even if it is only unskilled labor.

Consequently, my toys have changed quite a bit. This is my cleaning collection to date. Seems like every weekend I add a new piece. And the Swifter Jet is on its way.

2.) Not only would hiring a maid put me out of a job, but maintaining the house is a large part of my day. Given the chores on my list, we're talking at least two hours of work - usually more.

c.) Have I mentioned yet that I'm cheap? Just for the same reasons I can never bring myself to buy a second coffee pot, I can't justify buying something I already have or paying for a service I can do myself.

IV.) Unlike many other countries, the culture here is too different from American culture. Even more so here than in other parts of Mexico. The people here have been or want to go the States often to do their shopping or to go to Disney Land or live (legally or otherwise). They really are not all that interested in Mexican culture. And other than a few bizarre ingredients, the food isn't that exotic either. I have faith in my ability to pick up on a few of the differences without an instructor.

• And finally, I have alternatives for learning the language skills. I have the Stone. I will be attending a weekly course at the Consulate for Expat Families in Mexico (EFMs). And to top it all off, I'm in the process of signing up for the Distance Learning Program as suggested by a fellow male EFM, or BRO if you'd prefer, from Locke'd Up Abroad. See, I am capable of taking some suggestions.

And if I still can't handle Spanish after all of that, then I'll consider the maid thing again, with a healthy side of Pepto to help me swallow my pride.

EFM: Evidence For Moods

If you were reading through the comments in the first part of the leaky ceiling story, the last one on there might have seemed like an overreaction.

In actuality, I'll Take Mine...To Go, Please! was responding to a comment I had left on another blog. To quote Shannon from Cyberbones:

You know that handy little chart that floats around diagramming the stages of acceptance at a new post? If you are not FS it goes something like this: honeymoon, depression, resigned acceptance, happiness. Well I completely skip the honeymoon period everytime.

I added her comment section that my honeymoon period is over and I feel stuck in the depression. (Not to worry, family, that is an overstatement. This is not a call for help.) I also asked for a copy of said schematic. Well, ask and you will receive, which is where I'll Take Mine...To Go, Please! came to the rescue. (And thank you very much for that!)

OK, so first off, how did Natalie spend from September 2009 through June 2010 in A-100 (introduction to the foreign service, essentially) and Federally Supervised Instructions (FSI) without ever receiving a copy of this thing? How did I attend three or four FSI courses and never receive this thing? Sure, learning about how to seat guests at a state dinner is a skill I use everyday, but in hindsight, I wish they offered a course on coping with cultural adaptation instead of etiquette.

So moving across the chart, I didn't really have the pre-departure ups and downs. I wasn't excited about pack-out day or living in a hotel for 10 days, but it had no bearing on my emotional well-being.

I definitely enjoyed an initial honeymoon stage, or as I like to think of it, becoming accustomed to this awesome house - leaky roof aside. But after about a week or so, I began to slip into what the chart refers to as culture shock/acute homesickness. I don't know if those words feel appropriate for what I was actually feeling or not, but you get the picture. The emotional well-being red line dipped.

(Important case study note, in which I'm the case study: The chart, while cool and scientific looking, is a generalization. In my particular case, I think my honeymoon and culture shock stages were more intertwined and instead of a nice smooth curvy line, mine is more jagged with more ups and downs. Even in the culture shock area, there are still good days; it's just that the bad days are a little more intense than bad days back home and a little more frequent.)

So because FSI has failed us all by its lack of cultural adaptation class, I'll offer my four lessons from my own struggles.

1. I wish I would have been more studious in learning Spanish. This is 100% my fault, and I accept the blame, but that isn't helping much right now. I've been using the Stone a bit more (still don't particularly like it), and Spanish class is to commence soon at the Consulate. I hope ironing out this inability-to-communicate wrinkle will make life here better, but I'm not putting all of my eggs in this basket.

2. Speaking of eggs in a single basket, I wish I wasn't so reliant on a single client for my freelance work. The problem with working with this magazine - other than the fact that the editor holds a personal grudge against me - is that both the editor and publisher are lousy communicators and fear confrontations. So are they not responding to my e-mails because they are angry with me, are just being lazy about hitting the respond button, or do they just not want to tell me they think my story ideas suck? Another situation in which I saw the red flags before coming here, but I decided to leave it all to chance that it would work out.

3. I miss my stuff. I'm not really a possessions-oriented person, but I miss my coffee pot, food processor, toaster and/or toaster oven and cookbooks. I also miss our DVD player, DVDs (and VHS tapes) and books. I feel like Steve Martin from The Jerk. "I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray...And this paddle game ... And that's all I need. I don't need one other thing, not one...I need this." (And yes, that is my second movie reference in as many posts.) So I wish we had better planned our air freight.

4. This is the big one - managing expectations. I'd like to say I came here with no expectations. I thought I was coming here with no expectations. But after the first couple of weeks here, I found myself saying to myself, "This is not what I expected," so I must have expected something, right?

I had heard Hermosillo described as a small town within a big city. I really have no idea what that means. But I grew up in a small town. I went to college and had my first jobs in a small town. Hermosillo is not a small town by any stretch of the imagination. In a small town, you can count the number of stoplights on two hands or less. In a small town, there is two or three main roads that go no further than two miles without leaving the city limits. In a small town, you can live anywhere and still walk to what the locals refer to as its downtown.

Hermosillo has almost a million people here (some anticipate that the 2010 census will push past 1 million). Sure, there aren't any skyscrapers like in big U.S. cities, but a small town has like 50,000 people at most, not a million. And it is spread out. There are a couple of downtownish shopping areas, but none in walking distance from where we live. Not that you would want to walk in this heat anyway, but still.

In truth, having seen a few pictures of our home before we arrived, I didn't have high expectations for it, so I was pleasantly surprised when we got here. The few descriptions I had of Hermosillo had me expecting something else, and given my current standing on the emotional well-being line, I guess that wasn't such a pleasant surprise.

But with any luck and some hard work, will be getting the rest of our stuff soon and I'll get a better grasp on Spanish. And maybe the working situation will improve - it seems to ebb and flow. And after some time, I'll get used to this version of a "small town." For starters, just having this chart bumped up my emotional well-being line. It was refreshing to know that this is such a common experience there is a scientific-looking chart to describe it.

EFM: Embracing Foreign Methods

Being able to adapt. Accepting other cultures are not inferior - just different. Willing to try new things.

All pretty basic stuff if you want to enjoy your stay in the foreign service. And a lot easier to say than to actually practice.

On Thursday (our first month in the books) I found myself in the grocery store by myself (for the second time) and having some difficulty buying food to prepare for dinner.

In my cart, there were some fruits, a package of chicken breasts and some processed foods. Staring at it, I couldn't think of a thing to make with what I had and I found myself growing irritated and depressed simultaneously.

Which led to my come-to-Jesus moment. My cart was bereft of local staples. During my previous solo grocery trip, I took note of some of the subtle difference between American and Mexican grocery stores. Some of the differences in the aisles and some of the different products available. But I was still pretty certain I would be cooking my foods. The stuff I was used to doing.

Now granted, once my toys arrive in our ground/surface/sea freight, that will make it a little easier to go back to cooking what I know, but for the most part, those toys just increase cooking efficiency. In other words, I'll probably still be facing the same problems of not knowing how to work with what they sell here.

Throwing caution to the wind, I went back to the produce and started filling my cart with some vegetables. They have a lot of tomatillos here, and in different places, so these must be important. Let's pick some up. Have to have some chili peppers, right? How about a couple of serranos, then. Onions are important in every culture, let's get one of those, too.

A brief side story: I don't know much Spanish, which can make grocery shopping a real treat at times. So I grabbed a reporter's notebook for this trip and wrote down the names of all of the foods that I didn't recognize or wasn't a 100% sure on. Then I looked them up on SpanishDict when I got home. The notebook will be my grocery shopping Bible. Best translations to date, a toss up between "chicozapte" (a delicious American fruit, which is odd because I'm not familiar with this fruit) and "grasa mixta comestible" (which literally means edible mixture of fat, but in practice, this is lard).

Now I have some stuff I can work with, but I still have no idea how to blend this altogether to make something "comestible." I try a few Internet searches with lines like, "These are my ingredients" until I finally came across a Web site I favorite'd immediately, www.supercook.com Go play with this Web site. It is incredible. You just enter the ingredients you have, then you can highlight the stuff you want to use, and it is filtering through various other recipe Web sites what options are out there for you.

I ended up with grilled chicken breast and a roasted tomatillo and tomato salsa. Not too bad.

But I was on a role now, so I needed to make a side, too. I love black beans, but I can never cook them well. So I did a few searches and apparently every one cooks canned beans. I wasn't interested in canned bean recipes, I have dried beans. Through the magic of Internet surfing, I eventually found the Web site to the American Bean Association which offered great tips on cooking dried beans.

I found that one of my fatal flaws was adding salt to the beans while they cooked. A big no-no that leads to very dry beans. And here I was just thinking I wasn't letting them soak long enough, which, by the way, the whole soaking over night nonsense is just a myth. Instead, add beans to hot water, bring to a boil, and let the boil continue for a couple of minutes. Then remove from the heat, cover and leave it alone for about four hours.

Using these tips and what I had in my pantry, I made my first successful black bean dish. And there was much rejoicing not only because now I can cook one of my favorite beans, but because I finally decided to alter my methods to fit the environment.

Grocery Shopping

I have completed my first out-of-the-house, flying-solo task since arriving here. I managed to drive to the grocery store and go shopping all by myself.

It only took about two and a half weeks, but I finally built up enough courage to drive about a half mile or so alone and rely upon only my own poor Spanish to communicate. Of course, one of the good things about shopping is that there really is not much of need to converse. Baby steps.

Getting started, I thought I would like grocery shopping a little more than I do. I figured this would be something similar to shopping in the United States. I was counting on there not being many American products, which is no big deal to me, and at first glance the layouts of American and Mexican grocery stores are fairly similar. You usually begin with produce and baked goods, there is a butcher usually along the back walls and then aisles of food.

Sadly, most of the produce we find is second rate, unless we go to Costco (annual membership, $14 USD), which easily has the best quality. There really aren't any leafy greens other than romaine, no russet potatoes and the corn is much starchier than American sweet corn. (That was a sad moment as we tried to enjoy grilled corn on the cob.) But otherwise, it was fairly similar to the States.

The snack aisle doesn't differ much either, other than they don't keep their salsa with tortilla chips (totopitos), and they don't seem to carry pretzels. Foods also are packaged differently here. For example, we bought a box of crackers (essentially Saltines) and instead of finding long sleeves of crackers inside, they are wrapped in packs of six. We have a box of 45 wrapped packets of crackers. Seems excessive. Lots of American candy bars and cookies seemed to be packaged this way as well.

Mexican grocers don't carry much wheat flour, but they do have a lot of corn flour. And I still have yet to find active yeast. I guess I'll be ordering that online (I love homemade pizza dough, pitas and pretzels). They also seem to like marshmallows here, as almost half an aisle is nothing but them. And the 'mallows come in the typical small size, the larger size that you'd use for grilling s'mores, and then a super jumbo size that are larger than my fist. The other half of that aisle is usually gelatin and various Jello mixes.

They don't sell cases of pop cans here, not even at the Costco. But they do sell bottled pop in 1, 1.5, 2 and 3 liter bottles. And they lover their juices here. The big brand is JuMex.

The butcher has every cut of beef imaginable, and some of the unimaginable, too. We can usually fine chicken breast and some pork (though I haven't found pork chops yet), but no turkey. I've found sliced turkey breast for sandwiches and turkey dogs, but that is it. I wonder if they import some for Thanksgiving, or if we will be eating Thanksgiving tacos this year.

In the dairy section, the only familiar brand of cheese I've seen is Sargento, which also happens to be my favorite, so that works well. But they also have a pretty good selection of local cheeses, and the Manchego here is really all I need in life. They have a much smaller yogurt selection than I'm used to, which is a shame because I don't drink milk opting for yogurt instead. It is much runnier here, and all of the varieties seem to be plain, with bits of fruit added. In reality, this is probably because it is more natural than the artificial flavors and thickening agents in my Dannon Light and Fits, but this stuff will take a little getting used to. Or I'll start drinking milk.

With my cart full, and I detoured to look at some DVDs, because I was delaying the part I was dreading the most - check out. Finally, I would have to interact with a person. As different as many of the products might be, in the end, it still is all food, and that is something I'm comfortable with. Even if I couldn't fine any thyme (very limited on spices; probably have to drive to Nogales to get that kind of stuff, or order online). And I knew at the minimum they would ask if I wanted plastic bags or the cardboard boxes. Neither of which I know the Spanish for. I wasn't thinking this far in advance when I started the car. I was just worried about getting to the grocer instead of ending up in Mazaltan or some other place I'm not supposed to drive to.

The cashier said something, and in the only word I picked up on was "Americano." Not what I was expecting. I was hoping I would hear the word "plastico" in there somewhere so I could repeat that phrase. So I just said "Por Favor" and he looked at me, and started scanning my stuff. Problem temporarily averted, I assumed.

Then the bagger/boxer said something to the scanner, and he said something back, and I saw a plastic bag in his hand, pointed at it and said "Si, bola plastico." (I had bought some trash bags, and thought the word on there was bola. It's bolsa, but close enough for an obvious non-Spanish speaker, right?). But I got plastic bags in the end, and tipped the bagger. (Thanks for the heads-up on that, Bryn).

Mission completed. And I got home, unloaded, and had a beer.

FSO: Finished Spanish Orals

Excuse me while I boast a little.

Today, Natalie passed her Spanish exam completing a sweep of her foreign service tests. Ever since the first test during this process of getting into the foreign service all the way through to this final exam, she passed everything on her first try. In a related story, Jesus was struck down by lightning.

(Just kidding. About the stories being related, that is. Jesus really was struck down by lightning. And Natalie really did pass all of her tests on her first try. Just saying.)

A little while ago, I wondered aloud as to what the difference was between a 2+ and 3 in the Frustrated Scales, Inc. (FSI). Well, while I'm not sure what the difference is in assessing a 2+ compared to a 3, but I can tell you the difference in results - about four more weeks of Spanish.

During this whole process, I've met a lot of very intelligent people in the foreign service, and some trying to get in. And there are not very many who can lay claim to passing all of their tests on their first try.

I couldn't be happier for or more proud of her while she has made the foreign service testing her bitch.

So what did this all mean? Well, we have an official countdown now. We are leaving Crystal City on July 9, and on July 15, exactly one month from today, Natalie will have her first office job in about 10 months.

Now, I guess it is time I start learning Spanish, too. At least I know someone who meets the government standards as a proficient Spanish speaker.

Upon Further Review...The Stone

BOSTON - I’ve decided I’m going to dedicate this week to updating some older posts in part because circumstances and opinions have changed, and also because it is becoming increasingly difficult to be creative enough to think of new posts. (Did I really post images of keratatic eyes on Saturday? I must have been really tired. Sorry)

Today, I need to go back and talk about learning Spanish and Rosetta Stone because now that I’m seeing a bunch of former colleagues, after they realize I’m not in Mexico yet, they are curious about what I’m doing with my down time and the proceed to recommend I try the Stone.

I’ve talked a little about the Stone back in the early days when I was a little more naïve and thought I would spend hours every day sitting in front of this laptop practicing my Spanish.

That is what I should be doing, but things come up, I procrastinate some, and frankly, the Stone program isn’t that great or user friendly, which makes it easy to put off.

Before proceeding any further, I need to state that 99.9% of my Spanish failures are my fault alone. I haven’t taken it seriously enough, and I can blame only myself. But I don’t want to use the rest of this space making fun of myself, so I’m fixating my angst at the Stone.

What I’ve realized is that what the Stone does best is market itself. When I tell people I’m on the Stone and have been a bit underwhelmed, they all express shock because they’ve heard it is the greatest thing language teaching device ever derived. “How could the Stone, with its extensive marketing campaign, not work miracles?”

This disbelief reflects the genius of the Stone’s marketing campaign. Everyone wants to believe that learning a foreign language can be done easily. “So all I have to do is shell out $1,000 (or whatever exorbitant amount the Stone charges), insert the CD, and I’ll know Spanish? Sign me up!”

This point was driven home a bit during Easter weekend when I was talking about learning Spanish with Natalie’s aunt. She said when she was in high school, they were promoting the subliminal, sleeping tapes to learn Spanish. Another miracle-based, no-work-involved Spanish lesson.

For the Stone to be successful, you need to dedicate a couple of hours per day, every day. Guess what. With that kind of time commitment, you could probably pick up a Spanish lesson book out of your local library and learn and retain the same amount of knowledge.

OK, so you say you are willing to put in the time. Great start, but I find the second big problem with the Stone is that it isn’t really user friendly. You buy the Spanish Stone, and all you get is Spanish. No English instructions. I think the reasoning here is that they can sell the same Spanish Stone in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, etc. These Stone people are pretty clever like that.

Also during Easter weekend, I showed my mom the Stone, and has a teacher, she simply said, “I can see why you don’t like using this.” It should be added that I never said I didn’t like the Stone, but during weekly phone calls, when asked about Spanish, I would say it is coming slowly and that I’m not really putting in the time

And during Snowstorm 4.0, Natalie decided to try it out to make sure she wasn’t forgetting what she had learned before the GREATEST SNOWFALL HUMAN EYE’S HAVE EVER WITNESSED. She, too, complained a bit and became more sympathetic about my plight, which has since worn out.

The problem is that you don’t really learn the language. You learn expressions and vocabulary. You don’t learn grammar rules or culture understanding, which are both huge factors in language. Hell, you barely learn conjugation. In this regard, that library book is probably more valuable.

I think the Stone is a great supplement for learning a foreign language. As the lead tool, or stand alone tool, it comes up way short. Especially considering the price tag (thanks, tax payers, by the way) and gaudy claims you hear on TV.

Day One at Home

I got my first taste of what life will be like in Mexico as I spent my first day in my new office, the living room.

Sure, there were a few difference between working at home in Crystal City and working at home in Hermosillo. For example, while it did reach a sunny 61 F here, it was a sunny 74 F in our future home. And their low only dipped to 50 compared to the nearly freezing 37 here. Oh, and everyone I interacted with spoke English, but otherwise, yesterday was a microcosm of my future life.

The day got off to a rude start as I had wanted to sleep in until 7 a.m., but Natalie was less than quiet getting ready in the morning. For almost five years, I've been getting up before her to go to work, quiet as can be, and on this my first morning of getting to be the later riser, no dice. To her credit, she improved a thousand times over this morning.

After seeing her out the door, I started my new morning routine - making my own pot of coffee. While I'll be saving a lot of gas money and time not having to drive to and from work, I will be incurring new coffee costs as there was always as much free Starbucks coffee at work that I could drink. At home, I use Guatemalan coffee beans I bought through a vendor I met at the Crystal City's farmer's market last summer. Now, I like coffee, but I don't love coffee, but if I don't get two cups in the morning, I start going through withdraw by lunch time, which is marked by a throbbing headache.

Then I took Tiffy on her morning walk, and came home to get our breakfasts. I don't think my being home altered Tiffy's schedule too much, as I imagine this is how she spent her days while home alone. She didn't pester me at all.

Fed and caffeinated, I spent much of the morning getting organized. This included lots of e-mails. Some of it was work related, some personal and some foreign service oriented. The main task was to get an extension from Free Spanish on Internet (FSI) for another three months of Rosetta Stone access. I've been in touch with our Career Destruction Office (CDO; after much discussion, this has been accepted as an alternative to the Official Unofficial Acronym Chart's designation as Curmudgeon who Decides Overseas post), FSI and some other group, and I hope this gets resolved today.

After a couple hours of this sort of work, I went a jog until I nearly puked. I made it five miles, but before you say "good job," let's not forget I need to get to 9.3 miles by the end of the month for the Cincinnati minimarathon. That pretty much wiped me out for the rest of the day, but I ate lunch, checked on my e-mail accounts to make sure I wasn't following behind on my communications, and ended up watching TV for an hour or so.

Of course, this is when Natalie came home from work, finding me sprawled on the couch in pajamas. This is how I get judged.

All in all, I felt like it was a good start. I need to create a routine to make sure I get everything done, and yesterday went a long way to doing that. This is an exciting time right now, and I don't want to squander the opportunity to start good habits to maximize my situation.

A Call-to-Arms for Spanish Assistance

Rosetta Stone. My Spanish lifeline, yet also my biggest hurdle.

For the uninitiated, part of the FSO training regimen involves necessary language training. So the government (thanks, taxpayers!) provides intensive language courses that essentially become the forever-studying-for-overseas' (FSO’s) fulltime job.

Kindly enough, the government (thanks again, taxpayers!) also opens the door to us, eagers-for-mastering (EFMs) a foreign language, if space permits. Of course, the other qualification is if the family’s economic situation permits.

But as I have to work 40-hour weeks to pay the bills, the government (really, taxpayers, you are outdoing yourselves!) provides an online version of the Rosetta Stone for spouses unable to give up their jobs and attend classes.

In the early going, I was a big fan. I still remain relatively impressed with the program, but it suffers from a huge drawback. No English. I hope I’m not giving away too many secrets, but the program works by using images and matching the images to the Spanish words. Up until my specific gripe, which is coming shortly, I’ve actually preferred this method because the pictures are more memorable than an English translation.

But the problem arises when the lessons get more complex, and they are trying to describe a verb that doesn’t really provide an action. The first encounter was the verb tener, “to have.” After a few images, I was able to piece that one together, but how do you illustrated someone having something?

Now, I’m only up to the second chapter, and I’ve reached a sticking point. The offending sentence: Yo quiero a mi padre. And several variations with third person subjects like: El nino quiere a su perro. And then the corresponding pictures show either a person hugging his/her father or a boy hugging his dog, etc.

As we all remember from Taco Bell commercials, when a chihuahua says “Yo quiero Taco Bell,” it means it wants Taco Bell. But we’ve never heard that dog utter “Yo quiero a Taco Bell.” What does that “a” mean? How does it affect the verb, querer?

The best of I’ve gathered is that it means “love,” but heaven forbid Rosetta Stone from providing a glossary of terms to address any confusion for their images’ inadequacies. So if anyone speaks Spanish, could you please help me with this translation?

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.