a not very state department christmas

by Alex Posted on December 30, 2010

Oops — Andy and I ended up giving one another one of the same presents! These snazzy, “I survived language training at FSI” mugs:

Other Foreign Service-related gifts?

This cool picture from my aunt:

And this bizarre novel my mom found; it might very well be the only English-language book set in Benin:

The year is 1896. Legendary leopard hunter Brendan Donivan battles to protect his adopted homeland’s sacred civilization from the colonial expansion of the British. All the while, New York anthropologist Elle Bowie arrives to study clitoridectomy and — you guessed it — ends up falling in love. “To a guy who wears a skirt, no less,” explains the back cover.

Fine literature, I’m sure. =)

Those three were really it, which I think means we’ve finally reached a point in our Foreign Service lives where not everything revolves around this crazy lifestyle we’ve signed up for and the anticipation of what it’s bringing next. It’s about time. I got quite a bit of winter gear even though this might be my last winter in a while. Andy also got the new iPhone, even though I’m still not convinced he’s going to be able to use it in Benin.

As for Abbey, well, she’s pretty bummed that the yet-to-be-born baby is already scoring more presents than she is.

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andy 1 – french 1

by Andy Posted on December 20, 2010

That title is a little misleading. It sounds like we’re even. I really wanted to call this post “Oh yeah, well French is a dumb language for jerks and I didn’t want to learn it anyway.” But Alex told me I wasn’t being diplomatic.

I took my French exam today. The results: 2+/3.

What this means is that I scored a 2+ on the oral section and a 3 on the reading section. Since my goal was a 3/3, it seems like I passed one section, but barely missed out on the other.

But alas, it’s not so simple.

You see, in order to get bonus points on the management register, I needed a 3 in the oral section. The reading section doesn’t matter for bonus points. I could have eaten the articles instead of reading them, but as long as I scored a 3 on the oral section, I’d have gotten my bonus.

So what now? Well, since I’m an EFM and not an FSO, my French days at FSI are over until I’m actually hired. I can still take the phone test to get points on the management register in the traditional route, but right now I’m a little too burnt out on French to really think about that. What I will need to do, however, is find a way to maintain my French skills (or lack thereof – signed, The French Department) until we go to Benin. That seems like a good activity for after the holidays.

Alex wanted me to add two more things. Despite not quite achieving my goal, I’m proud of how far I’ve come in just six months. And French isn’t really just for jerks.

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the holiday letter & other traditions

by Alex Posted on December 17, 2010

Abbey is famous! Well, at least among those who will be receiving holiday greetings from us this year. See for yourself:

Unfortunately we underestimated how many stamps we’d need, so quite a few people aren’t going to get a special one. Darn. Not that anyone probably cares about a stamp with Abbey on it nearly as much as we do.

But I must say, personalized stamps were a great invention. A total racket too, but still pretty great.

Anyway, this was our first time participating in the whole holiday letter tradition. We resisted at first — and with good reason, it ended up being a huge amount of work — but we decided that being married with a real job and a baby on the way… that’s about as grown-up as it gets. It was now or never.

Mostly, we decided to do it for the baby. My mom used to send out a Christmas letter every year full of funny anecdotes about my sister and me. I love going back and reading them, and I’d love to give the baby the same thing, even though his/her role in this letter is just a cameo, swooping in and making me suffer for a few months. But still. At least now I have documented evidence of such, which hopefully I can leverage in the future — say, when he/she is an ungrateful teenager. Yeah. That sounds good.

With the baby coming, we’ve also started to think about other traditions we want make sure to take up, such as things we each grew up doing:

  • Eating chili on Christmas Eve (Andy)
  • Eating cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning (me)
  • Reading the holiday book together as a family each year and having everyone present sign it (Andy)
  • Having a real, live tree with tons of ornaments (me)
  • Midnight mass (Andy)
  • Advent calendars with delicious candy (me)

You get the idea.

We’ve also started thinking up some new traditions we’d like to incorporate into our holiday repertoire, like:

  • Volunteer work Christmas afternoon
  • Writing a thank you letter to someone who had a big impact over the year

I’ll be curious to see how the Foreign Service shapes our holiday traditions (I’m guessing a real, live tree isn’t going to be an option in Benin, for instance), but for now…

Happy holidays from all three and a half of us!

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take that, french language

by Alex Posted on December 14, 2010

Good news for you Foreign Service folks bound for Francophone countries: Perhaps FSI’s French Department is finally relaxing its standards, because today they deemed me proficient in the French language! Me, who admittedly was making good progress at first, but then who, well, in all honesty, pretty much took a break for a few months to focus on feeling miserable and making my husband feel miserable about the misery he caused. Oh, the joys of the first trimester.

This is how it feels to be done with French. (If only the weather outside resembled this picture, I'd be totally set.)

What makes this even more surprising is that I performed horrendously during my exam today. I totally forgot all the complicated tricks I had up my sleeve to try to seem more advanced than I really am. Worse yet, I made dumb mistakes I never make in class. I don’t know why this happened. Nerves, perhaps? It certainly didn’t help that my examiner just so happened to be the one person in the whole French Department who intimidates me, with her perfect accent and seeming disdain for every word that comes out of my mouth. (She subbed for my class a few months ago for one very, very long day.) Although, to be fair, she was perfectly nice during my test this morning, even during my exit interview while stressing several times that despite passing, I still really, really need to work on my accent.

In any case, I got my 3/3. This is good news because:

  • I’m ready to say au revoir to French at FSI. It’s tiring. I need a break.
  • I’m really proud of myself for passing. Even without the pregnancy, it was unlikely. With the pregnancy, I really thought it was impossible.
  • I get the rest of the week off. Helllllo, Christmas shopping!
  • Passing and moving on to other training will result in a longer Christmas break than if I’d remained in French. Sweet!

However, this isn’t all good, because:

  • Since I can’t go to post until after giving birth, I’ll have to do something work-related in DC until May. Frankly, as much as I’m ready for a break from French, more class would have been a lot easier than what I’ll likely end up doing when my other training ends in February: a bridge assignment at Main State.
  • French class has no dress code. Main State does. Have you seen maternity business suits? Yeah, me too. They’re horrible. And expensive.

In the long run, I’ll probably kick myself for getting my 3/3 on the first go — not just to avoid a potentially exhausting bridge assignment during my third trimester, but also because my French still definitely needs work. The idea of having intelligent conversions in French as a representative of the American government, well, that terrifies me. Trust me, no matter what FSI says, I’m not ready. For that reason, more training wouldn’t have been so bad.

But oh well. For now, at least, passing feels pretty good. As does all the lounging around I have planned for the rest of the week!

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what’s next

by Andy Posted on December 6, 2010

As we’ve mentioned before, we came to DC not knowing how long we would be here. At first we thought it might just be three months. Then it became 11 months. Then it became 15 months. For that whole time we’ve been thinking about where we’re going next.

When we were in France last month, before we’ve even left for our first post, I thought about why Paris would be a good second post for us. We’ll be able to speak French. We’ll probably be ready for a change of scenery from West Africa and it’s a big embassy, making it a perfect location for a tandem couple.

And that’s what I’ve noticed during our admittedly limited experience with the Foreign Service. We’ve spent the whole time looking ahead – to A100, to Flag Day, to Benin, to our second post. Will it always be this way, or is it just because everything is new to us? When you know you’ll be moving every couple of years, hopefully to someplace exciting, how do you focus on where you are? So that’s my question. What can we do to make sure we always appreciate where we are and aren’t always just waiting for the next big change?

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role reversal

by Andy Posted on December 2, 2010

In July, after our first few weeks of French, Alex and I had the following conversation:

Alex: It seems like nobody passes the French test. I’m nervous.
Andy: I bet you’ll do fine, stop worrying.
Alex: Be quiet. You don’t have to pass the test. You don’t even have to take it.
Andy: Um, here’s our dog, play with her for a while.

Well, fast forward to five months later and the roles have reversed. While Alex still has to take the test, the pressure is mostly off of her. After all, we’re going to be here until August no matter what. What’s another month or two in French class but a chance to improve her speaking and avoid the need to buy maternity suits for a bridge assignment at Main State? Besides, almost nobody passes the test the first time around.

Me on the other hand, now I’m starting to feel the pressure. Let me explain. As an EFM, I have no real obligation to take the two-hour end of training exam. I don’t have to achieve a certain score in order to go with Alex to Benin. If I wanted to, I could just decide that today was my last day of French class and spend the rest of December sleeping until noon, hanging out with my dog and eating cereal directly from the box.

But I do have motivations to continue. First, the better I speak French, the better I will be able to conduct important business in Benin, such as getting our car tuned up or arranging for golf lessons on the country’s only golf course. And unlike Alex, my French training will likely end with my test on December 20 even if I fail. Typically EFMs aren’t able to get additional training.

Second, if I manage to pass the oral section of my end of training exam, that will give me bonus points on the management register. That means I won’t have to take the phone test that most FSO candidates take to get an extra boost. But if I don’t pass the oral section, I’ll still be able to take the phone test right away, and I’ll have a pretty good idea of my weaknesses.

So lately, the roles have been reversed. I find myself feeling a little stressed while Alex is more relaxed. I’m the one up early doing homework, grumbling when I’m interrupted, and she’s getting an extra hour of sleep.

Bon chance à moi.

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what’s in a name

by Alex Posted on November 30, 2010

I didn’t give much thought to whether or not I wanted to change my name before Andy and I got married, and then once we did I said, “Oh, I’ll probably do it,” and went ahead and signed the box attesting to such on our marriage application. But a week passed and then a month, and I never followed up. Why? I don’t know. Something about it just didn’t feel right. Andy didn’t have strong feelings about the matter either, which made it easier to just let it slide. “I’ll change my name when we have kids,” I finally declared, not thinking the whole us-having-kids thing would happen so quickly.

But, here we are, soon to have a kid. And so I find myself returning to the great name debate. I just can’t decide: should I or should I not change my last name?

In the should camp:

  • I like the idea of families having one common name, both for camaraderie and for convenience.
  • Andy’s last name comes far before mine in the alphabet; that’d sure be nice.
  • Even though Andy doesn’t have strong feelings about the matter, he’d prefer that I change it.
  • I would no longer mistakenly receive emails intended for a certain similarly-named Ambassador.

In the should not camp:

  • My sister and I grew up with a different last name than our mom, and it really wasn’t that big of a deal.
  • As irrational as it is, it kind of feels like getting rid of my current last name would be erasing my life and accomplishments from before.
  • In truth, I’ll miss the casual exchanges with said aforementioned similarly-named Ambassador.

Another complicating factor is that my middle name is a family name too, and I’m probably even more attached to it, so making my last name my middle name isn’t a great option. And I’m not a fan of hyphenation either, unfortunately.

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language learning while pregnant

by Alex Posted on November 28, 2010

Since joining the Foreign Service, I’ve been casually polling FS moms about when’s a good time, career-wise, to get pregnant. The consensus seemed to be that no time is perfect, so you should do it whenever works best for your family. However, over and over I heard that if you could manage to coordinate a pregnancy with a long-term stint at FSI — say, during language training — then that would be a pretty sweet deal.

It wasn’t that advice alone that made this seem like good time for us, but alas, here we are. And now I’ll let you in on a secret: being pregnant during language training isn’t necessarily all that sweet of a deal. Admittedly, I haven’t experienced pregnancy under any other circumstances, and I’m sure there are always challenges, but still, I think this must be especially rough. Let me explain.

Pro: The hours are good. You spend 4-5 hours a day in class (depending on the language) and then so some homework and lab work whenever it’s convenient for you. Not too shabby. This works especially well for doctors appointments and such.

Con: This schedule requires a great deal of initiative, which can be hard to come by if you’re not feeling well.

Admittedly, it’s probably a wonderful arrangement if you’re one of those lucky people who feels more or less normal during your pregnancy. Like my mom. She had absolutely no morning sickness whatsoever while carrying either my sister or me, so I naively assumed I’d be the same. Well, unfortunately, the maternity gods had something else in mind. Darn them.

From week 5 to 13 I felt nauseous and dizzy and tired pretty much constantly, and threw up several times many days too, even though I was able to eat basically nothing. Despite this, I managed to miss only 1/2 day of French class in body, as hard as that was to pull off. Knowing that any sick time I took now subtracted from the amount of (paid) maternity leave I could take later was good motivation.

So, I showed up. I went through the motions of what I was supposed to be doing. And I think if I had been working a normal job, while I clearly wouldn’t have done my finest work ever, I would have at least gotten by. But with language learning, showing up and going through the motions doesn’t cut it. Even though I was at FSI physically, I was definitely not there mentally. My body was in triage mode: focusing on keeping crackers in my stomach instead of hurling them on my classmates took precedence over the nuances between lequel and dont. (Dear classmates, you’re welcome.) In language training, if you’re not able to absorb the information, you’re not getting by; you’re getting nowhere.

Before I started feeling bad, I was also doing a fair amount of studying on my own too, but these last two months I’ve spent the majority of my non-class hours sleeping. (And bossing around my husband, Andy insists that I add.)

From week 13 until now, week 17, I’m definitely feeling better, but I’m still not 100%. As much as I’d love to give the same amount of effort to my French studies as I did the first few months after I started, it’s just not possible.

Come to think of it, language training during pregnancy might not be so bad if I were the sort of person who was able to alter my expectations of myself accordingly. Unfortunately I am not that person, which I guess is the real problem. (And, I’m sure very few of you fellow FSOs out there are that sort of person either.) So, I’ve been feeling horrible physically. And on top of that, I’ve been feeling guilty for not being able to study very much. And as a result of that, I’ve been feeling frustrated about not making as much progress as I’d like.

Yes, there are definitely certain advantages to being pregnant during language training (being in DC rather than some far-flung country for medical care is another of them), but it’s not a completely painless journey. I just thought you should know.

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