Happy New Year everyone!
We’ve just wrapped up quite a month of celebrations down in Belize. First off, we celebrated our 4th
wedding anniversary. The traditional
gift is flowers and fruit. Andrew gave
me a collage of photos we’ve taken of Belizean flowers (so creative!) and we
enjoyed some wine with our dinner that evening.
Flowers AND fruit covered! Good
to carry on traditions.
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| Happy anniversary to us! |
Heading into the holiday season, we attended all sorts of
festivities. We also hosted our second
annual “White Tapir” gift exchange party.
We had about 30 people at our house to carry on that tradition. And at work, we donned our ugly sweaters to celebrate the season.
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| Nothing says "It's Christmas" like tasteless clothing. |
Leading into Christmas, we hadn’t planned on going anywhere
or doing anything special. But with just
a few days warning, Christmas Eve was proclaimed a Federal holiday, and we
wasted no time booking tickets back to Portland so we could celebrate Christmas
with family and friends. It was our
first Christmas in Portland since 2015. We
were there for four nights, and managed to catch up with quite a few friends,
including at a happy hour at the neighborhood watering hole. And it was fun to celebrate some Christmas
traditions with my parents that had been on hold for the past few years.
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| Our car's temp reading the week before Christmas. So, yeah, let's head somewhere cold and rainy instead. |
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| We weren't the only embassy folks heading out of town for Christmas. We ran into a few others at the airport bar (of course). |
We welcomed the new year with a progressive party on the
embassy housing compound. Five different
houses hosted the evening festivities, with each featuring a particular
cocktail and appetizer. It was a great
turnout and almost everyone who was in town attended. Perhaps a new tradition has been born.
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| The first stop at the new year's eve progressive party. |
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| Now we're getting into it. |
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| The full cast of progressive partiers at the last stop just before midnight. |
Of course, if the progressive party does become a new year’s tradition, we
won’t be here to see it. We’ll be
departing Belize in five weeks. Between
now and then, I’ll be wrapping up work, packing up for our move, selling our
car… and hoping the government is open for business again soon. There are inherently a lot of unknowns in
this line of work – What will my next job be like? What will the people be like? What will our house be like? But now, Will I get paid? is also a great
unknown. I’m not among those who are furloughed - I'm still
reporting to work. But who knows if the folks who process our paychecks are working too. The government shut down for a few days about this time last year too. Apparently,
and sadly (and embarrassingly), government shutdowns are also becoming a
tradition. I’ll hold out hope for a
speedy – and reasonable – resolution.
In the meantime, I
wish you all the best in your new year’s resolutions as well, and all the best to you for a happy and healthy 2019.
