I Want To Be An EFM When I Grow Up

 I knew the first or second time that I was referred to as an E.F.M. (Eligible Family Member) that I would end up wrestling feelings of resentment and that I would have to contend with my own desire to make a contribution while living here or abroad.  Please don't picture me as an executive or even a full-time employee prior to this move. I was not. I home schooled my youngest child (in order to teach him English) and taught art to kids and did a lot of volunteer work. But I have learned that no matter where I am or why I'm there I must find my own stride, or it can find me, either way works as long as I'm doing something I love to do that lines up with my skill set or calling in life. I care about people and love being at the right place/right time to make a difference in someone's life. I've found my calling is usually centered around advocating for people or by giving someone an opportunity to express themselves through art.

Kitties in an Old Town gift shop window- I couldn't resist taking this picture! 

I'm not a domestic goddess by any stretch, I'm not a seaweed spa kind of lady- but I'm open to giving it a try- oh, yeah!  I am a creative, artsy sort of person. I could learn all day, listen all day and/or engage in a cause that I feel compelled to be a part of until I'm so tired I can barely function. That's why I simply can't imagine living the next 20 years in Sean's shadow or waiting for him to get home before my day really starts. Thankfully, he would never want or expect that of me either. Hopefully these descriptions help explain why the last few months have been oh so dreary and dull for me. I AM SO BORED AND SO OVER THIS PART OF THE F.S. EXPERIENCE THAT I COULD JUST PUKE!

So, instead of going mad or shopping all day (just to get myself out of the apartment) I had to come up with a plan for my sanity. Sadly, I've not found my social outlet to be heavily centered around relationships made here at the apartments where we live. I've met a lot really amazing, interesting people that I truly enjoy talking to but it's rare to get together- fun when it happens but really rare.

Here's my personal recipe for not having a nervous breakdown at this point in our FSI training/waiting phase here:

Totally by accident that this photo ended up under that last sentence! Ha!
This is the cemetery behind Oakwood, Falls Church, VA.

1. Taking an art class! I signed up for an awesome photography class through the Art League/Torpedo Factory. It's been great and has forced me to get outside more than I really wanted this winter. I've been COLD but I've gotten out and am quite glad for it.
.

This picture was taken for an assignment based on manual white balance settings. 

2. Language classes! A few other Indonesia bound FS spouses and I have joined up and hired a man to teach us Bahasa Indonesia. Pak Alex has been a great teacher and has been a kind encouraging "guru" (Indonesian word for teacher).

Also- This coming Monday I start the B.I. fast course at FSI. I'm excited and can't wait to see what this new adventure holds. Learning Bahasa Indonesia is important for me because I plan on having lots of Indonesian friends one day soon.

Pachamama dancer in the President's Day Parade, Feb. 2013

3. Visit the doctor: Here's something people just coming into the FS will hear over and over by their Northern Virginia or DC area medical professionals- "Let's make sure we take care of that before you go overseas." 

Oh yes... if you bring up even the slightest health concern the doctors here will order a number of tests and if you want you can be running to the doctor for this or that several times a week for your entire nine months, or whatever, length of time that you are here:

Patient: Hey, doc- I think I have a wart on my ring finger. Can you take a look at this for me?

Dr: Yes. Hmmm. Well, by golly... that looks like a wart but actually it could just be the tip of an iceberg. We better remove that before you go overseas. Let's order an MRI just to rule out a tumor. And, let's do a stress test. And an ultrasound. I know a guy with a great clinic for warts, I'm happy to write a referral for you.

Plus, the obligatory follow-up visit one month later.

And there you go- one wart = five days of not being bored or in the house all day. It's amazing what your life can become if you let it.  Now, if I can just make these doctors' visits stop while I'm in language training.

 President's Day Parade, Old Town, Alexandria, VA- February 18, 2013

4. Volunteer. I have also discovered it can hard to find places to volunteer here in the NOVA area. You won't be alone if you hear "but you'll be moving in nine months, right?" at some point during your stay in this area of Virginia. Do not give up, keep looking! People do need volunteers around here but YOU have to look for them. I also recommend being a hearty participant in the school's PTA if you have kids in the schools here. Please, comment below if you know of anyplace that needs local volunteers, or if you want to learn about some of the volunteer opportunities that I've found here. 

E.F.M. questions I'm dying to know the answers to:

Will it be this boring once I get to post?

How do other EFM's manage to do what they love doing?

If you're out there, please leave me some sort of idea of what daily life is like at post... or how others have kept busy, contributing and growing personally?


-L

100 MPH in the Wrong Direction

If you would like to read a straightforward account of combat in Afghanistan, I highly recommend the book pictured to the left. I tells the story of various units as they rotated through a ridiculously difficult to defend outpost in NE Afghanistan.

This is not the book for you if you want your war stories in one of the following varieties: John Wayne stories about noble American troops always outsmarting and defeating their ignorant and immoral foes, or Vietnam War-type stories about our horrible soldiers who put babies to death in service of a war for oil or for votes.

Instead, guys with lives outside the service who are educated and dedicated are doing the best they can with what they have in service of a strategy that many recognize as misguided but over which they have no control. They aren't saints, they are professionals. Many have a love and respect for the local culture that begins to show results. These are the ones targeted most by the enemy who know that connections between the populace and our military would be the death of them.

The conundrum that lies at the heart of the book for me is that every time the soldiers at post use their initiative, intelligence and pride to overcome the shortcomings of a bad strategy, they only sustain the use of that bad strategy. After all, it can't be all wrong because look what our soldiers have achieved! That's what I mean when I say 100mph in the wrong direction. Our guys on the ground were working so hard to do their best, and they did, but every setback and death is, in the end, fruitless because the strategy itself cannot be overcome by our excellent tactics.

We had one of these at State recently, too. Here I am talking about Benghazi, and the results of the internal investigation. Because Ambassador Stevens was The Man when it came to Benghazi, he was less questioned in his decisions than most. After all, if someone had a question about anything in Libya, it was him they would ask.

The facility there was not up to the security risks that were present. But each team of Regional Security Officers (RSO's) would do everything they could to help upgrade security. What they really needed to do was evacuate the building when bad stuff happened earlier in the year and actually build a Consulate with the proper security measures. But that wasn't happening, so each guy did the best they could with what they had. And every success they had only made those who put the strategy in place more complacent. 100 mph of hard work by RSO's in the wrong direction of trying to make the facility safer when what they really needed was a new facility.

Do I have the magic strategy 8-ball that will fix all this? No, I don't. I just wish buildings, combat outposts, and other stuff didn't have to be named after dedicated members of the military and foreign service after their deaths in order to fix strategy problems, and I really wish their efforts to overcome  bad strategy with good tactics didn't result in a continuation of bad strategy.

-S

Not Home For The Holidays

Happy Holidays 2012- The McKeating Version


Establishing new holiday traditions sounded like a welcome
challenge for me because for years I've gone with the obligatory flow of cook this, go here, do this...all established long ago. However, I cautiously admit that I've dreamed of doing things a little differently- like having Christmas at our own house, not having to haul all the gifts to and fro, not having to add a "road trip" to the already exhausting drum beat of the holidays. It's a lot to do year after year and most of it falls on me. So, this holiday season I finally had my chance to do things the way I had envisioned but in all honesty the task proved difficult, depressing even -no surprise considering our sunlight deprived bunch.

 Here was one of my favorite moments of this holiday! Hannah and I were coming home from the store and we got stuck behind this wildly decorated Santa toting firetruck. It was just ahead of us and as we turned onto our street we could tell that it was turning into the Oakwood Apartment complex. It was blowing it's sirens and also blasting "Here Comes Santa Claus". I was as thrilled as any kid would be!

 

Hannah ran up five flights of stairs and down our hallway to get her little brother. Sintayehu grabbed shoes and ran outside in time to see Santa. All the boys waved at him and ran along side the fire truck as it slowly rolled through the parking lot. It was a huge, huge moment for all of our kids! There were firemen walking around and handing out candy canes, and telling people "Merry Christmas". It was an exciting and awesome moment. I literally teared up over it all.

Thank you, Falls Church Volunteer Fire Dept!


Maybe it's because we have all hit a wall of relative heaviness lately but the holidays seemed to bring it all to head. We are all missing our home, our old church, our many friends, our FAMILY, our way of life (way more laid back than NOVA/Northern Virginia)  which would be no big deal and expected if we were new to "change" or if we were normal people but we are not. Though we are new to the Foreign Service we are not new to change (big or small, we're usually game) nor are we shy of a challenge or two, in fact we have a bit of magnetic draw to such chaos, but right now I am really wondering how much more difficult it will be once we are in Jakarta? In all honesty, I've been shocked by our need for familiar comforts. I thought we were heartier than that. I thought we were a free spirited band of gypsies who are so grounded in our ideals than we could celebrate our Lord's birth anywhere but it turns out we may be more creatures of habit than I realized. I'm thinking our lack of holiday cheer is particularly concerning because we suffered so much just being away from "home" but we are still in the United States- how much more "un-Christmas-y" will it feel when we are in Jakarta, a majority-Muslim country without Target and without the usual repetitive Christmas tunes pumping through  Safeway's speakers?

Here is one thing that the kids loved- our Gingerbread House. 

I think it will take purposeful planning and effort. We will have to be the ones making our holidays cheerful, not expect someone else to do it for us. I don't think I realized how much my parents do to make our holidays meaningful.

Here are a few traditions we can do no matter where we live:

-Make an actual list of things I'm thankful in the days leading up to Thanksgiving.
-An Advent calendar and daily time to reflect on the miracle of Christ's birth as days draw nearer to Christmas.
-Cook the family favorites. Unfortunately for us, there is no restaurant that compares to our family's holiday dinners and I learned this year that those tastes are important, even though it is work intensive I will cook the usual's, even if I have to order specific items online.
-Sharing what you have with others is the true Spirit of Christmas, have others over and/or go to their event if you are invited.
-Be social and have friendly connections before the holidays are even a thought.
-Make fudge or other treats that remind us of our holiday favorites and give them out as small but personal gifts to lots of people.
-Participate in ex-pat community events, such as cookie exchanges or caroling (ie..check community calendar every few days).
-Go all out and decorate no matter how little space there is for a tree and no matter how little storage space is available for storing it all afterwards. Kids need Christmas trees, with lights and stuff all over it.
-Play your favorite Christmas carols and sing songs as often as you can (don't just listen to NPR or worry about what Congress is or isn't doing, or focus on terrible tragedies as events unfold).
-Buy a red or other cheerful holiday tablecloth and have some sort of centerpiece that goes with the season.
-Get family and friends to email favorite holiday recipes way ahead of time so that we aren't scouring the internet for one that is "close enough" the day before I plan to cook it.
-Talk about what each member loves and needs to make their holiday away from family as meaningful as possible, and do it.
-Plan the actual day, like Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day, and talk about our expectations ahead of time.
-Wrap presents while are carols playing in the background, make it a happy occasion :)
-Mail the extended family their gifts at least 10 days before Christmas, probably a lot sooner than that once we are abroad.
-Refuse to do it all by myself.
-Christmas gift shop with my spouse. Remind him this is a good thing, reward good behavior with Starbucks.
-String up or display all the beautiful Christmas cards that friends and family send us.


Here's what we will not be doing next time:

-Forget to charge the camera batteries.
-No laundromat nor studying on Christmas day after all the excitement has died down.
-No going to just "any" Chinese (or ethnic) restaurant that is open on Christmas day in place of a traditional homemade dinner.
-No trying to make up for any lack of holiday cheer by cooking all of our favorites all day for the WEEK after the holiday has passed.
-No more making homemade tamales all by myself!

Photo op after the play ended. One of my kids is in the group of shepherds :) 

Here is what we did right:

-Watched "Christmas Story" together as a family, my kids have it nearly memorized by now.
- Cooked a nice dinner for Christmas Eve.
- Went to a beautiful Christmas Eve church service, complete with a children's play and a candlelight round of Silent Night (Christmas Eve service is one thing we have longed to add to our family's holiday traditions).
- Gave our kids and each other meaningful gifts.
- Called relatives and shouted Merry Christmas as crowds of family shouted Merry Christmas back to us via speaker phone.
- Went to see Les Miserables- an amazing movie that basically pours Christ's message of grace and mercy out of every scene.
-Decorated some areas of our apartment with lights and greenery, made snowflakes out of coffee filters.

My New Year's Resolution?

 To make holidays in 2013 cheerful and meaningful, no matter where we are!


-L

Fun, State Department Style

Word came down last week from our language overlords that all sections in Indonesian language training would be attending a "Holiday Party" last Friday. We were told that the language teachers would be preparing authentic Indonesian dishes for lunch (woo-hoo!) and that we would be responsible for choosing and creatively presenting a holiday-related presentation to the class (boo!).

We have reached the point in our studies where we are vocabulary-building by the day, with less new grammar concepts. The level of pain we suffer depends on the reading level of materials assigned on a given day. Once in a while, they hit us with stuff that has us in our dictionaries for long stretches, but for the most part we are okay and learning our way to our required score by accretion, picking up a little each day. Complacency of a sort has settled in.

Well, just throw an opportunity to create a Powerpoint onto the table, and suddenly everyone is an over-competitive ninja. Transitions, shadow effects on block letters, and continuity between different contributions all suddenly became important. Each section kept their presentation secret while attempting to "accidentally" find where the others had saved theirs. We figured we would trot out our presentations, have some lunch, and hit the skids.

Instead the day before the event we were emailed a daily schedule that included many hours of "games" (we ain't talking about Monopoly, more like Jeopardy! Indonesia). In addition to our planned presentation there would be another extemporaneous one, and many more! Then the kicker: the head of Student Language Services AND the head of the East-Asia Pacific Languages Division would be joining the head of the Indonesian Section at the "party" to monitor our progress, I mean, join in the festivities.

Now, I have been to office Christmas parties before, and I can't say they were all tons of fun, but as long as you didn't drink enough to tell your boss what you REALLY felt or become the subject of an embarrassing picture or video, you didn't have to worry about work so much.

In my new job, attending "social events" and working hard at them is part of the gig. Yes, everyone will be in party clothes, and there will be yummy snacks and beverages, but brother, you are at work and don't forget it. For my classmates who were on their 2nd tour or more, this was no surprise. Being exhausted at the end of a party because I was working is a new experience for me. Here in the Foreign Service, we work in many different and dangerous environments, and do it for as long as the job requires. Today's Foreign Service is much more than the "striped-pants cookie pushers" of old. But we still ride to the sound of the champagne toasts in service to our country.

-S

The Great Seal

Somehow in the battles and shuffles between the different departments of our government since the founding, the State Department ended up being the guardian of the Great Seal of the United States. I have seen the contraption, used to place a big sticker-like thing (the yellow circle in the picture to the left) on official documents executed in the name of the United States. You know, things like treaties or, in my case, commissions for Foreign Service Officers!

A classmate of mine that is working at Main State sent out an email that he saw people using the seal and stopped to look in, only to see a commission for one of our A-100 classmates. So we knew these were coming, but it was still very cool. When I went to pick up mine, the folks in personnel said congratulations. I worried I would drop it on the Metro tracks or have it blow out of my hands on the way home. I managed to make it home without incident.

President Obama and Secretary Clinton's autopens signed the thing, and speaking as a nerd I have to say I find it very cool. I don't think either of them know that they have placed "...special trust in my Integrity, Prudence, and Ability..." but it's pretty neat having a piece of parchment that says so.

Seeing it helps put things like months more of language training in perspective, as I can see where the tedium today is a means to be able to act as a Consular Officer and Secretary in the Diplomatic Service in Jakarta next year.

-S

Mid-Term Evaluations Today

Well, today was the mid-term progress test in Bahasa Indonesia. Yesterday we had a listening lab exercise which went OK, but not perfect. Then today started with a speaking test that lasted about an hour. It included general conversation, then make a presentation/role play, and finished with interviewing one person in Indonesian about a topic and then relating the question and answer in English to another. High stress, and while I mispronounced a word or two and felt like I could have done better, I didn't throw up and fall off my chair. What does your first formal test in front of professional language instructors in an unfamiliar language feel like? This unfortunate video captures the feeling exactly:




By the way, his day job is bread seller, and "ding dong dang deng" sounds like Indonesian but those aren't real words. After the trainwreck, he asks for comments. They try to be nice, but it is hard. Then on his way out the host asks him to come back and counts 1, 2, 3... and we're off. Represent, 12582! Represent, my brother.

They said I was meeting expectations for speaking at this time. So, while I might get assigned to the short bus because of this, it won't be the shortest bus. Hooray! The reading went much better, or so I have convinced myself.

Selamat akhir minggu (happy weekend)!

-S

They Also Serve Who Conjugate Verbs...

Well, it's been since shortly after A-100 ended that I wrote a post. What's been happening since then? Bahasa Indonesia, that's what. And not just "where's the bathroom?" kind of Indonesian, but the "what did the Prime Minister of Japan just say about China's latest actions in the South China Sea?" kind.

The days go by slowly, but the months are rushing by. Here is a typical day in language class:

Ride to Work- on the bus to FSI to begin the day, small cup of coffee from the apartment;

Hour 1- into the language lab for an hour of listening practice, including BBC Indonesia, fill in the blanks from instructors, and soaps from Mivo.

Hours 2-3- Two hours of intensive speaking practice. Usually 15-20 new words introduced. 2nd cup of coffee, usually Starbucks Sumatra (yay Indonesia!).

BREAK FOR LUNCH

Hours 4-5- Two hours of intensive reading practice. 15-20 more words introduced. Diet soda also introduced.

HOME for 1-1.5 hour nap.

HOMEWORK 1.5-2.5 hours.

SLEEP.

REPEAT.

We have learned that if we work hard we will be able to put 15-20 words in the recognition (I know it when I see it) circle, and only 5-7 of those in the production (I can come up with it on my own) circle. With 40-50 new words a day, you can see that task #1 is avoiding the soul-crushing feeling of inadequacy as words flow by and you can't even remember them the next day.

I used to always be aware of the day and date. To make sure I am following the schedule, I still keep track of the day. But the date is irrelevant for the most part, so that part of my brain has been reformatted to contain the difference between masalah- problem and kesulitan-difficulty. Now, our classrooms don't look like the picture above. There are hexagonal tables, smart boards and the ability to play videos and be very interactive. But you know what? At the end of the day there really isn't any way to avoid just memorizing a truckload of words and grammar. Pimsleur Method, Rosetta Stone, subliminal tapes, all those just get you started. Between you and graduation is 7-8 hours a day at the coalface, plugging away.

It is getting better. I think I am doing OK, though progress tests this week will tell me if I am sniffing glue on that one. But it ain't because I am great at language. It is because I am reasonably intelligent. motivated by a desire to do well, and required to spend a long time on one thing. If I practiced free throws 7-8 hours a day I still wouldn't be NBA-caliber, but I would improve a lot.

And yet... I have begun to actually think in Indonesian. This is a huge step from translation, and to be celebrated. When I can dream in the language, it will get even better. Finally I will be able to tell a joke on myself in Indonesian, and then I will be on my way.

Terima kasih for reading, and sampai nanti- until later.

-S