Arrived!

A week ago I was still in Juarez. I was mostly packed, due to my wonderful spouse. But I was still working, still driving everywhere, still crossing an international border fairly frequently for mundane reasons, and still sleeping in my own bed.

I'm not there anymore.

After a bit more than a year away, I have returned to DC. Things are different here. I walk to the grocery store, to restaurants, to the metro (!!!!). There's a great library system here. My inner transit nerd is rejoicing about how much I don't need a car. I'm getting a bikeshare membership. And I'm officially in the Foreign Service. 

There are drawbacks, of course. Arriving so quickly means that there's been numerous difficulties with IT at work and getting my apartment all set up at home. It's always fun to arrive in the middle of the night on a Saturday and arrive at a furnished apartment that doesn't have towels. There have been Metro to Target runs and grocery shopping trips in the middle of the night. And my lingering cough from Juarez has not liked the fact that you can't really take sick days during training. Saddest of all is that I'm likely facing over a year apart for the person I want to spend the rest of my life with.

We'll see each other approximately once a month, starting in August. It won't be enough, but we will maintain our relationship the best we can through modern technology. These are the sacrifices we make so that both of us can have a career. Hopefully on flag day, we'll have a good idea of when the next time will be when we actually will be living in the same location. 

I know that all (or at least many) of my A-100 classmates are going through some of the same things that we are. What do you tell your friends and family when they ask how long you'll be in DC after you tell them you're moving there? "I don't know, I'll find out five weeks after I arrive there?" I can't imagine how you'd communicate that level of vague to a child. But orientation is not a time for anything other than complete flexibility. 

Maybe after this weekend I'll feel a bit more coherent. I'm running low on sleep and high on uncertainty.  The only thing I know, from observing the experience of my spouse's class, is that it gets better. So for now I'll just hang on. It's going to be a crazy ride.

Entre Un Mundo y Otro

Mentally these last few weeks are turning out to be a strange endeavor. I've moved many times in my life, once with State Department help, most of the time on my own. But with the exception of going abroad for limited periods of time, I've always had a period of transition, usually by driving, with which to mentally prepare and get myself in the proper headspace for the new place.

This time is different.

Allow me to explain. Because I cannot allow more than three calendar days between my current federal job and A-100 (to keep the benefits that I've already accrued) I will be having my last day of work next Friday, flying to DC next Saturday, and starting A-100 the following Monday. This gives me exactly one day to get reoriented to the time-zone change (I'll be starting work at what feels like 6 AM for me) and a very different way of living from Ciudad Juarez. Some are the changes will be good, like the ability to walk, bike, and just generally live without a car. Some will be not so good, like the fact that I'll be away from my spouse for who knows how long. But it very much will be different.

So I'm trying techniques to get myself ready, like envisioning my life in my new apartment and planning my commute to work. The only problem with this is that at the same time I'm trying to remain pretty fully engaged here in CJ. It's a jarring dissonance that everyone has in the Foreign Service, and I think it's one of the reasons that officers are mandated weeks and weeks of home leave before their transition from one post to another. It's almost as if Congress realized that people moving all over the world are going to tend to be workaholics and might just need to be told to take a few weeks to relax and transition.

But the first move, the move to join the service, is not like that. And so while I'm wondering about my future classmates and my route to work in two weeks, I'm also Fourth of July, one last Mexico trip, and CJ despedida (farewell) planning. And if you've ever worked a Fourth of July party in the Foreign Service, it's no joke. Not to mention the necessity of training my replacement in EVERYTHING I KNOW. So, my future classmates, if I seem a bit distracted those first few days of class, I apologize. My head (and my heart) may still be in Juarez. 

Just an Ordinary Day

The big impending move is starting to get a little more real. The other day I received my travel authorization, which set in motion a whole bunch of moving parts. Now there's a giant pile that I can only describe as "stuff" in my house that will be packed up and shipped out next week. Yesterday I made decisions on plane tickets and arranged for a ride from the airport next month. And every day I receive new emails of forms to fill out and return to Washington to make the transition smooth.

Yet there's still quite a lot to do here as well. We're trying to figure out car maintenance issues before I go. I'm working on transition documents that should theoretically teach my replacement at work everything that I've learned over the past year. There are favorite restaurants to visit, fun events/parties to go to, and souvenirs to purchase (perhaps to go into that giant pile of "stuff" to ship. And lets not forget that it's Fourth of July season, which means that everyone at the consulate is going a little bit nuts to make sure that the event goes well.

The thing that makes this whole move a little bittersweet is that I'm starting to get closer with a couple of people who are going to be remaining at post. When I first got the invite to an orientation class, my initial reaction was one of jubilation. This was my ticket out of a place that I've never fully taken to. And don't get me wrong, I'm still really, really excited. But it's starting to sink in that I really will truly miss the combination of people here. There are many things about the physical environment in Juarez that I don't like, but the people, locals and foreign service, are what make this place great. And I'm a bit sad to be leaving this community.

On the other hand, this move gives me the opportunity to develop a network of my own. And I'm extremely excited to return to a place that I've lived multiple times in my life and I love. So sad + excitement = bittersweet. Ultimately I think it's a good thing that there's going to be so much going on over the next few weeks that I'm not going to have too much time to brood over it.

La Lingua de la Familia

Ever since I encountered someone who didn't speak English at home (probably in Kindergarten) I've been fascinated with bilingual families, immigrant or otherwise. In a way, my inner drive to join the Foreign Service stems from two factors relating to this fascination: 1) the urge to be the first person to welcome immigrant families to what I consider one of the greatest clubs in the world, American Citizenship, and 2)a somewhat less altruistic goal to understand what the heck all those people are saying right in front of me in a language I can't understand. Over time I think my motivations have moved more from motivation 2 (lets call it the Nosy Norman phenomenon) towards motivation 1 (the Welcoming Wilma that I think should live within all Consular Officers).

When I was a child, Nosy Norman was definitely a huge part of my personality. My first best friend was Indian-American, and Nosy Norman manifested in my constant questioning of his culture, the history of his parents, and what the lyrical words of Gujarati that he would reel off to his parents meant. Were they talking about me right in front of my face? Turns out, generally no, people mostly talk about the same things from day to day, regardless of language. Gossip yes, but usually what my friend's mom was telling him was that he needed to do his homework or what they were going to have for dinner that night. Nosy Norman's interest was constantly being evoked, however, when my friend would tell stories of how boring it was to go to the Hindu storytime sessions that his father would hold for the local Indian expatriate/immigrant community. I had to be careful not to let Jealous Jimmy take Nosy Norman to the extremes, even though I would have this irrational moment of anger that basically said "how DARE you not recognize how awesome and unique this cultural experience is in our really, really white bland little mountain town, and why don't I have an awesome immigrant father who can tell me stories from the old country?!?!?"

Throughout U.S. history, immigrants have had to strike that balance between integrating into/adopting the dominant culture and maintaining their individual ties to and cultural memory of the "old country." In my case, I think that my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents consciously made the decision to minimize their Italian and German heritage, probably as a result of World War I and II. So by the time I was growing up, my "immigrant" experience was limited to half-remembered stories and a fondness for Pasta Fagioli. All that is to say that I'm happy that we're not really living in pre-1960s America, where the goal for many families seems to have been "be the blandest, meat and potatoes, Cleaver family that you can possibly be." Over-generalization, I know, but I do feel glad that we're living in an age where being different or having a different set of cultural touchstones is celebrated, rather than condemned.

And so we turn to Welcoming Wilma, who I hope will become a larger and larger part of my personality as I move forward in my career. Oh I'll still continue to have that secret thrill when I overhear someone speaking in X language that I know and I can smile to myself and think "I KNOW what you're saying!" But even if I'm serving in a place where I don't have a clue what people are saying (entirely possible in my line of work) it's still going to tug at my heart each time I'm able to say, with full sincerity, "congratulations, your visa has been approved. Welcome to America." Although I know that not every consular officer feels the same, almost every one that I've met has had a heartwarming story about reuniting families or approving that one visa that they knew would make a difference in people's lives. Especially if I'm going to make this a long-term career, I hope that Welcoming Wilma will stick around for the duration. I know that an open attitude is what makes this a career worth having.