El Espanol-o!

Today was both Halloween and the first "day" of language class. That latter is something of a misnomer, since we really just got oriented to language class. I'm so ready to start learning Spanish, I could scream. Or study.

All the language-class newbies gathered this morning to--wait for it--fill out forms! Then we broke into language groups. A few trickled out for Urdu and Vietnamese, more than you'd expect for German, a handful each for French and Arabic, not too many Mandarin Chinese, a goodly gaggle of Portuguese, then the half of the room that's starting Spanish left (about 75 of us, an FSI record!). We went to a mega-room to get assigned to small classes (max of 6 each) and went through some of the basics of texts, online and in-building resources, and class schedules. There are so many of us, they're hot-bunking the classrooms. That's a term you use on a ship when people share a bunk - when one person's standing a watch, another person's sleeping in their bunk. So one group has class in a given room from 8-10am, then we have it from 10:05 to 12:05. They come back at 12:10 to 2:10, and we get it again from 2:15 to 4:15. So a given student has four hours of instruction a day, four days a week, plus lots of time in the language lab, self-study, and area studies (Central America and Caribbean for me). Plus the odd Wednesday afternoon for doctor's appointments, banking, showings of Spanish-language movies, meetings with learning consultants (seriously, we get 'em!), and so on.

After the Spanish group session and lunch, we all got back together to undergo a battery of tests to determine our learning preferences. I felt like my answers were all schizo - yes, I want structure; no, I can't abide structure! I often can't separate daydreams from reality -- what?? We'll get the results in a few weeks. I can't imagine what it'll all mean or how the language instructors will use it. Maybe it was a trick, and anyone who said they think they'd be a great clairvoyant will be quietly shown the door...

I did a little homework tonight with a CD of MP3s that demonstrated the importance of stress and intonation. The difference between PApa (potato) and paPA (dad), for instance. Yea! The humble beginnings of my professional competency in Spanish, a language I never knew I wanted to speak until now. And I do!  Poor D. will have to learn mostly by distance learning. There were quite a few EFMs (you may know them as spouses; we know them as eligible family members) in our Spanish mega-group, enrolled in the full course. Pretty cool if you can make the time and don't have jobs or kids or dogs or unsold houses hanging around your neck.

Halloween itself was fun - went over to a colleague's apartment where we all pooled our candy, ensuring that there were tons of leftovers to replenish our depleted brain sugar reserves after language training for weeks to come. Bring on the estudio de idiomas!

Flag Day, at Last

Oh man, tomorrow is our swearing-in and I still haven't done the reveal from last Friday's Flag Day! Well, the best part was having D come to town, even though it was for far too short a stay. Still, it was nice to let him meet a few of my classmates and share, from several rows away, the thrills that were the ceremony. I'd filled out my "fantasy flag day" entry on the bus to and from our morning field trip. In addition, a few folks from our group put together bingo (actually, Oooooo-saka; sorry, inside joke) cards, which I tried to play while filling in the results for my fantasy flag day entry. 

But the big news is the process: all 93 of us sat in a group, with family and friends seated behind us. Our career development officers, A-100 course coordinators, class mentor, and dignitaries from the Foreign Service Institute were at the front of the room. Three banks of miniature flags were carried aloft to the front, and we were off. One by one, the image of a flag was projected on a screen, and someone (or many someones) called out the country. Then the post, job, and individual were announced. We'd been encouraged to make lots and lots of noise so the children in attendance wouldn't feel bad for being loud. We did not disappoint. It was mainly a blur, but I remember one classmate who was POSITIVE he'd go to a Mexico border post and was called for a post in Brazil. He practically danced to the front, although I suspect he'd have done the same for Mexico. One or two of the 17 posts we'd ranked high were called and claimed by others, then another high (and the one I'd ranked #1 in my head while reviewing our highs the day before) was called. I leaned to the classmate next to me and said "This will be me." 

And it was!! I was certainly in the top 5% of most visibly thrilled of the group. Looks like we're headed to Managua, Nicaragua, to do a little consular work and a little environment, science, and technology work. There are lakes, beaches, forests, and volcanoes. Crazy, huh? There's still about 9 months of training to go (Spanish from nothing to pretty darn fluent and lots of what they call trade craft), so there's plenty of time to get used to the new reality. So, about six weeks in. Verdict? Best decision (work-related) ever!!

Disclaimer: So many have described it better than I did, so I refer you http://www.travelorders.com/flag-day-stories/ for 50 very good stories about Flag Day.   

Flag Day Eve

I know you're all ALMOST as excited as we are to find out where we're heading, but you'll just have to wait about 18-20 hours. This whole week has seemingly been designed to distract us from thinking about it. We had a holiday on Monday and spent Friday and the rest of this week perfecting our mad skillz in public speaking and answering questions without necessarily answering questions.

Then this evening when I got back from work, the hubby had arrived, which is definitely distracting, in the best way imaginable! Bonus: free pint glasses at the Dogfish Head Ale House. And great beer to boot.

We'll keep you posted!

Two Things I Love About A-100

When is the last time you got thrown into a large group of people and were pretty much required to get to know them all and form a cohesive group? For me, it was my Peace Corps training group in the early '90s, and there wasn't nearly as much emphasis on creating a group, since we were headed to one-off two-year posts. I'm still in touch with a good number of them, but our careers have all diverged. This group will be colleagues until we quit or retire, and we'll benefit from the network of people scattered around the globe for information and job referrals. It finally feels like it's starting to gel; we've moved from learning one another's names and histories to developing stronger bonds (dare I say friendships?) with individuals and gathering in groups to analyze our larger group.

And the bonding continues apace. A chunk of folks went off the Outer Banks (North Carolina) for the long weekend. A huge number of the remaining went out for Korean barbecue on Friday night. And we had an American-style barbecue on Saturday night, where we met some of the members of the Foreign Service Specialists group, whose A-100 orientation overlaps ours. Met a diplomatic security agent candidate (their term of art, which I don't understand exactly, but it has to do with the requirement for lots of training before they start serving overseas) and an information technology specialist, who is also from Hawaii. 

The other thing that makes me grin on a regular basis is walking around the Foreign Service Institute and hearing conversations in so many languages, including many I can't identify. They don't discriminate against "boutique" languages, those spoken in just one or two countries. The instructors are all native speakers, so I've been delighted to hear West African-accented French. The woman who gave me my French test a few weeks ago was from Senegal. In fact, of all the crazy coincidences, she'd worked on the same project I did during my internship (although she was long gone by the time I was there).

OK, a third thing. I'm a learning junkie, and this job appears to be... trying to come up with a way to finish this sentence that doesn't completely glorify drug addiction and am failing. Anyway, I'll be learning on a steep curve for a long time. If I don't OD, I'll be flying high for a long time. 

Core Skills Rotations--Be Still, My Beating Heart!

This is when A-100 gets exciting. Well, it's actually been exciting all along, but this week is one of the best. First of all, because it starts with our first holiday. It's Columbus Day to feds who have the day off, aka Discoverer's Day to folks in Hawaii, but it's also Thanksgiving Day to our friends up north. For me it's an extra day to have procrastinated on preparing my "speech." That's the exciting part of this week's orientation. We have Core Skills Rotations. That's fancy talk for breaking into smaller groups, occupying different rooms than our home sweet home for the last 4 weeks, and not just sitting there like baby birds with our mouths open. The 4 days of core skills started on Friday with Composure Under Fire, a simulation with about 10 classmates of answering tough questions in tough situations. I was representing a newbie at the embassy in a South American city and had to field questions from a group that had been protesting U.S. policy outside the embassy just moments before. Whew!

Another highlight of the week is public speaking, in which each of us gives a 5-minute talk to an imagined audience at an embassy about something related to our job. I'm up tomorrow so drafting that talk is on today's agenda. They'll videotape our talks and give us pointers, playing back the best and "most-improvable" sections for us, in front of all our peers, of course. Can't wait!

There are a number of other, less intimidating sessions sprinkled throughout the week as well. The finale for the week is flag day. Finally. You'd think we'd all be sick of talking about our most desired posts, what the pet restrictions are in various countries, and how we prioritized our bid lists, but you'd be wrong. The first move away from D.C. feels like when the job really starts, even though many of us could be here close to a year for language and job training. Another reason many of us, including me, are thrilled is that our far-flung spouses are coming to town to share the delight or despair that day. D arrives Thursday; yea!!

This and That from Week 3

Two great happenings this last week:
1) My old work email got shut off on Friday! Moving 6000 miles, living in a corporate apartment, being away from family and pets--none of that made it sink in, but having the old email account go away really drove this change home. Yea!
2) I ran clear around a lake (just under 5 miles) on a trail, starting in the ankle-wrenching dark. All the other runners beat me back by at least 15 minutes, but I did it!

Other cool stuff since my last update? We spent two whole work days out in the country wearing regular clothes - no suits! It was leadership and team building and it defied your expectations of what that entails. Without violating non-disclosure agreements, perhaps I can tell you that there were mild explosives and the challenges reminded me a bit of my fave, Amazing Race.

Today I was dragged kicking and screaming out of my apartment (yesterday consisted solely of bad, recent movies on TV and catching up with Castle online) to attend the Turkish festival and hit some museums in DC. Warhol Headlines at National Gallery of Art, a quick peek at the photo I contributed to the Oceans Hall at the Natural History Museum, and a reprise of the Nam June Paik exhibit. Much better than more TV, although I'll never get caught up on Project Runway at this rate.

Week four starts tomorrow. Flag Day is at the end of week five, so it's just a matter of surviving until then. Lots of lectures about policy and interagency responsibilities. Should be absolutely fascinating...

For those of you considering a career in the Foreign Service, you need to be invited to a class by the time you're 59 (check the fine print on that yourself if you're close). The next FSOT (Foreign Service Officer Test) is administered October 1-8, so it may be too late if you haven't already registered. They offer it three times a year. Go read up: http://www.careers.state.gov/officer/