And suddenly it’s been almost a year back in ‘Merica. Somehow, the months have just kept rolling by. I hardly noticed the time passing… other than the weather, which went from sweltering humidity when we arrived in DC last August, to arctic tundra in the first months of 2022, and now back to the muggy heat again.
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| A stroll around the DC sights early on during our time here - and complete with face masks. |
My “job” while we've been in DC has been mainly to “learn” to speak and read Indonesian. Getting paid to go to school? I mean, that’s not a bad gig. But it’s been intense. Beginning in September, I had daily instruction with a teacher and a few colleagues, and then “self-study” assignments and homework. It’s like I’m in college again, except every class is the same. Every day. All week. For nine months. And, except most of my training has been online. It’s been a slog.
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| View from the bottom... |
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| ...and the top of the Washington Monument. Quite a view from up there! |
Before I returned to DC last August, we all hoped COVID was behind us and we would soon be back to “normal” – including the State Department, which mandated all employees must report back to Washington DC for training so we’d be ready to attend in-person classes as soon as the coast was clear. But as reality set in that this pandemic was not done yet, my “classroom” remained a weird little windowless room off the kitchen of our 1-bedroom apartment. I dubbed this glorified closet “the language lab.” Meanwhile, Andrew has also been working from home. His “office” is our dining table. We’ve definitely been winging it.
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| We tried to get out of our little apartment as much as possible. We didn't have a car but were able to keep ourselves quite entertained with DC's assortment of museums and monuments. |
But what is really nice about long-term training is that, in general, my evenings and weekends are free. No late nights, frenzied deadlines, or turns on the duty phone* that come with overseas embassy jobs. That’s given us lots of time and opportunity to reconnect with family and friends – both the 2-legged and 4-legged variety – from California, Portland, DC, Belize, and Zimbabwe. So wonderful to celebrate birthdays, holidays, and other special occasions with lots of people we haven’t seen for awhile!
*All officers rotate through week-long assignments as “duty officer.” During that week, in addition to our day jobs, duty officers remain on-call after hours to answer calls from U.S. citizens who have an “emergency.” What has become been clear from my duty officer experiences to date is that Americans think everything is an emergency. Alas, most calls are, in fact, not a major crisis, and the answer is usually, “Please call back tomorrow during normal business hours.” Another category of calls includes things that are what I describe as self-imposed emergencies. These include Americans who have made bad decisions – gotten arrested, run out of money, gone off their meds, all of the above – and now need the U.S. government to fix their problem, usually sometime between midnight and 5am. I’m looking at you, Belize. Then, there are the actual emergencies. If it’s a policeman on the other end of the duty phone, it’s going to be a long night. I got duty calls about U.S. citizens who’d been in car accidents, had strokes, died, been murdered... I’m looking at you again, Belize. So yeah, it’s been nice to not be duty officer for over a year.
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| And, of course, we also got to reunite with many of our favorite 4-legged friends too, like Mokum! |
We’ve also revisited favorite stomping grounds, museums, bars, and restaurants, and found some new ones. And I didn’t realize how much I missed the changing seasons, especially when the northeast hardwoods donned their best autumn colors and the cherry blossoms worked their magic. It’s been fun to be here again to see all of that again.
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| Autumn put on quite a show. |
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| One of about six snow storms that hit us this winter. We almost needed an ice axe to use the crosswalks. |
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| But the cherry blossoms in the spring make it all worth it. |
We also sprinkled in several side trips over long holiday weekends, including Philadelphia, New York City, Chapel Hill, Tampa, and even Merida, Mexico. (A perk of this job is meeting so many awesome people who end up living all over the world. We’ll never run out of places to visit!)
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| A ladies weekend getaway to Merida, Mexico in January was a great way to beat the winter chill. |
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| We got in a quick weekend trip to NYC too to see a couple Broadway shows, play tourist... and catch COVID. (We're both back to 100% now, but that was definitely not the souvenir I'd envisioned.) |
And we got to mark the holidays with a full dose of Americana, including a trip to Harpers Ferry with my parents over Thanksgiving, and a Christmas and New Year’s celebration at our friends’ 200+ year-old stone house in rural Virginia.
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| The houses in our neighborhood put on quite the Halloween displays! |
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| A (zbsolutely freezing) day in Harpers Ferry with my parents during their Thanksgiving visit with us. |
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| Some holiday festivities in DC... |
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... and then Christmas and New Years at our friend's circa-1780s house in rural Virginia.
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But all good (and not so good) things must come to an end, and so too does our time here. Tomorrow we'll leave DC for a little rest and recuperation in Hawaii before we make our way on to Jakarta, Indonesia at the beginning of July. We were also able to squeeze in one more quick trip to Portland last month to make the rounds with family and friends there before we set off. This is always the hardest part of this job. As much as I’m tired of the almost year-long training, and the cramped apartment, and the routine… and as much as I’m looking forward to a new job, and uncharted territory, and a fresh start… I always get a lump in my throat leading up to our actual departure. Leaving behind the known, and the comfortable, and many of the people I love is never easy. But having Andrew by my side to be a familiar face and a reassuring voice strengthens my resolve. It’s not an easy transition for him either, having to figure out how to get up and running with his job in a dramatically different time zone every few years. I’ll always be grateful that he agreed to go on this crazy ride with me.
And with that, our latest installment of This American Life comes to a close, and the first episode of This Indonesian Life will soon begin. Stay tuned for the first chapter, coming soon!
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| See you in Indonesia! |
