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. 

La Ultima Ves

The last month is always the worst. When the time draws near to leaving a place that I've lived for an extended period of time, there's a couple of warring instincts that alway arise within me. First, there's the strong sense of denial; the feeling that there's no reason to rush and that inertia will carry us through the end.  There's also that ambivalent feeling on whether to invest time and energy on new friends, new experiences, and new plans in the current place. And then there's the temptation to start saying goodbye.

I had planned on delaying the farewells to people until the last possible moment. But really, what is the last possible moment when you only see some people once a month or less. How does one say to a friend, a tailor, a shopkeeper, a favorite waiter at a restaurant: I'm leaving, and I don't know if I will ever see you again. So this will be the month of farewells. I will be constantly wondering if this will be the last time that I eat at my favorite burrito stand or see a movie at the VIP theater.  

Though I haven't scheduled my pack-out yet, I'm already planning my last weeks here. Going to see a few last baseball games since they only cost 50 pesos. Planning a trip to go see those New Mexico wineries that people always said I should go to. And I have to go the tailor to get my suits ready for training. There are last minute souvenirs to get, and farewell dinners to plan. 

This is the career we've chosen. Every two or three years we're going to be leaving a new place. There's no getting around the summers of goodbyes. But for every goodbye, there's a hello. For that, I am thankful. And hopefully, some of those goodbyes are going to be hasta la proxima ves, not adios.

Nuevas Fronteras

What with the run up to training, winding down activities here in Juarez, and making some last minute trips in the area that I won't get to do over the next year, it's been pretty busy here in casa bonita land. But in the spare moments that I've had to think about the Impending Crazy Life Changes of Doom (tm),  I'm realizing that I'm really, really excited.

There are things I'm not going to enjoy. Though the spouse and I've been apart before in our relationship, for extended periods of time even, I am NOT looking forward to the prospects of being apart for up to a year (and up to three years if we get sent to different posts).  The department will try to place us together, but it makes no guarantees and most tandem couples end up spending at least some of their careers apart. 

I'm also not looking forward to wearing a formal suit to work every day for six weeks in the humid D.C. summer. 90-100 degree heat with 90 per cent humidity is not the time to be wearing a three piece suit. And yet, that's what they make you do in training, at least until you get an assignment and start long term language training,  where the dress code is a bit more relaxed. 

But I am excited for returning to D.C., a great city that I've already lived in a couple of times. I'm happy that I'll be living in a new neighborhood, and that I'll be able to get back to a city where I can walk and bike around safely. And D.C. is pretty close to many of my family and friends.

I'm really looking forward to meeting my classmates in person for the first time. Already I'm impressed by the few that I've met online. They have such amazing resumes and a real diversity of backgrounds.

But the day I'm most excited for will come about five weeks into training. The day every FSO remembers like it was yesterday. I'm talking about flag day.

Every officer has bidding stories and could-have beens about where they wanted to go or actually went on this tour or that. But the first time is different. The first time, the training coordinators gather together all of the new officers in a room and call them up, one by one, to announce where in the world they will be going. The officers know the list of potential positions,  but there are always surprises. And the way that the announcement happens is by the coordinators handing each officer the flag of their destination. Thus flag day. Every officer I know has preserved the flag of their first post for posterity. And while I couldn't have been prouder of the spouse last time when they called her name and presented a flag of Mexico, this time it'll be my name that they call. 

To me that flag represents the security of knowing where I'll be going. And the knowledge of whether the two of us will be together for our next tours or not. But most importantly, that flag means the ability to plan ahead, something that's rare in the Foreign Service.

I can't wait.

Stories That are Mine to Tell

Joining the Foreign Service, or really any government position, occasionally feels like joining a really exclusive club. One where you occasionally get to do REALLY COOL THINGS, usually do very mundane things, and sometimes have to do not so great things because the law says so. But the reason that I call it an exclusive club is that even though we are doing the public's work, there's so much of what we do that we can't talk about in public. Things like the privacy act, HIPAA, classified stuff (usually not as "secret" as it sounds), and operations security make it difficult for us to talk about our jobs, whether we process claims for Medicare, or research cures for cancer, or negotiate labor deals, or find ourselves abroad interviewing people for visas to go to the U.S. This leads to a couple of interesting consequences. One: because we're often prohibited from broadcasting what we do at work without going through the "proper" channels, we tend to blog more about our personal lives, feelings, travels, etc.  Which, combined with the clearances for dissemination to the public being so slow leads to number 2: The public really, really doesn't get what we do.

Theoretically, it's really easy for people to put themselves in the shoes of one type of public worker, a soldier.  I don't want to get into how frequently off the media's depiction of what the modern military actually does, but suffice it to say that every American has had a pretty well-rounded exposure to what the military does, good and bad, through education curriculums (particularly history), movies and TV, publicity campaigns by the military branches themselves ("be all you can be" or your local military recruiter), and personal interactions. But other government branches don't always have the positive press nor the universal exposure that the military has. And it shows. 

 In modern times this has lead to an almost constant assault on public workers, at all levels. You don't have to look very far to see it, from the demonization of teacher's unions to the sequester. And so much of it is because politicians, in there infinite wisdom, choose to rabble-rouse rather than take a principled stand to support the good work that public servants do. Us in the bureaucracy, we make this very very easy, by becoming insular and taking the easy way out. Rather than tell our stories we stay silent, because it's to difficult to find the stories that are the stories that strike the balance between political and private. We don't take the time to distill the stories until they are general enough that they can become public. And because we are public servants, we try to stay out of those political battles (even though we definitely have an opinion).   So the public at large never hears the stories on the front lines of the immigration debate from the point of view of the consular officers making those life-changing decisions, because that would infringe upon privacy rights and put us in an advocacy role. Nor, unless we resign, does the public hear the rigorous debates about U.S. Foreign Policy as it applies to country X or Y that occur behind closed doors. 

Upon taking office every person who works for the government takes the following oath:

"I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter."

To me this means that I will always do my best to serve the people of the United States. And I will try to do the work that they are paying me to do with their best interests in mind. In the meantime I will seek out the stories that are mine to tell.

Albu-quirky

One thing that the spouse and I had a major hard time when we first came here is getting out of the bubble of America that the consulate community provides here in Juarez. It's only going to be natural to  invite people in a similar situation out for dinner or a drink after work. And that could, in turn, stretch to  an activity for the rest of the evening (watching movies, starting a group based on a 8 year old Korean drama, crossfit, etc.).  And all that hanging out with your coworkers and their families sometimes leads to a feeling of being trapped under the weight of office gossip and shop talk. There's only so many times one can discuss how immigration reform may or may not affect our jobs, and at this point we've pretty much exhausted all but the most extreme visa interview stories. So about two or three months after arriving here, the spouse and I made a pact to devote a portion of our salary specifically to get us out of the area and satisfy our itch to travel (a small part of why we joined the Foreign Service to begin with).

With the security situation being what it is, we're pretty limited in where we can go in Mexico. Basically, if we want to go anywhere outside of Juarez, we have to fly. But wait, you say, isn't El Paso right across the border? So in theory shouldn't you have flights to both countries and endless possibilities? Two cities mean twice the fun, right!? Survey says: not so much. If El Paso and Juarez could merge their populations and fully integrate their economies (more than they already are) perhaps there could be one large airport that could serve as a hub for both countries and drive down flight costs. In reality, each city is an isolated outpost pretty much in the middle of nowhere in both countries. So flight options are limited and much, much more expensive than we thought before coming here. As a consequence of this we've tended to alternate our flying adventures with more targeted driving long weekends to various parts of the Southwestern U.S. But we typically wait for long weekends as, once again, El Paso is REALLY isolated. For instance, the nearest town of any size outside of the Juarez/El Paso/Las Cruces, NM area is Albuquerque - more than 5 hours of driving away. Coming from the East Coast, where one could drive from DC to NY in less than 4 hours (and hit Baltimore and Philadelphia, not to mention numerous beaches, our friends and family in NJ, and issue-specific locations like Atlantic City on the way), this isolation is a bit disheartening. 

Side note, this issue may veer into a special sub-category of problems that the spouse and I label "diplomat problems." Little things that make us un-empathetic that crop up in conversations, because the only people that understand are the people who work with us. "Problems" like  "oh the maid that I'm paying to clean my government-provided house that is too big for me to clean by myself is drinking all of my orange juice" or "the waiters at the VIP movie theater that most people here can't afford take SOOO long to bring my drinks to my lazy-boy during the movie (that I'm seeing before people in the U.S. because international releases!)." In a way, the spouse and I feel a bit chagrined to complain about our lives here. Many are not as blessed as we are. We can afford to get out of town once a month. We can hire a maid to clean our free house (which is why we can afford to do these things...) that is realistically too big for us to maintain, not in a location we would choose on our own, and completely not in keeping with our pre-Foreign Service lifestyle. Et cetera, et cetera. 

But even though these problems are not the same as those that people living paycheck to paycheck have, they still have a real effect on our mental health. And so, to stay sane, the spouse and I go on vacations where we can experience things that we really, really can't in the CJ/El Paso area. Things like walkable city streets, museums, humidity, shopping (really, we once drove 3 hours out of our way while on a trip to Tucson to go to the Ikea in Tempe), mass transportation, biking, and so forth. So spouse and I headed to Albuquerque last weekend to celebrate Mexican Mother's Day (a friday holiday here) by walking around the town, going suit shopping for the upcoming A-100, going to museums, and generally celebrating the fact that we were not in Juarez. Highlights of the trip included seeing the Adam West Batmobile, walking to brunch(es), and  reading about the history of dinosaurs, computers, and El Camino Real (which sounds like the Casino Royal... but is NOT). Also, attending/mocking the concert of a one-woman synthesizer hipster "band" with swaying scowling apathetic hipsters who were pretending to hate the Enya and Radiohead monstrosity of "music" being produced but in reality loving every second of it. Albuquerque is unashamedly quirky, and for that we love it.  

Dia de La Madre

With my head already in DC, it's sometimes easy to forget that I'm still working here in Juarez. Since spring and late fall are the two times of the year when the climate is somewhat forgiving here, there's all kinds of events popping up. More, in fact, than my spouse and I can commit to going to. 

For example, this weekend restaurants all across Juarez will be jam-packed with tons of Juarenses taking their mother's out to brunch to celebrate Mothers' Day. It's a big deal here, big enough to merit a three day weekend starting Friday. Neighborhoods will be taking up a collection to hold picnics and raffles in honor of Las Madres, special deals on everything from furniture to movies, etc. etc. According to my Mexican coworkers, it's more subdued here in culturally mixed Juarez (most of the population look to the U.S. as much as Mexico culturally and economically). In states south of here like Durango, entire cities and small towns shut down as mothers march in a parade/procession. 

We're not really going to be observing the madness this year, as we'll be taking the opportunity presented to us by a three day weekend to head to the good ole U.S. of A. It's just starting to sink in that we're going to be apart for a variable amount of time that could last up to three years, so spouse and me are making a joint effort to spend as much time as we can exploring more places (or in some case, places that we've already been to but would like to see more of). Plus we've found that in order for us to stay sane, we need to get out of chaotic, in-the-bubble CJ about once a month. It allows us to go to tranquil places where you can walk outside without fear of getting shot or, more likely, getting run over. And we get to placate one of the urges that prompted us to join the foreign service, the need to explore new places, to seek out new places, to boldly go where no man or woman in our families has gone before. 

So Happy Mothers' Day to all the ladies out there. We'll be celebrating, in our own way.