Waiting for the BEX

So, I took the feared BEX exam in Bengali on Thursday afternoon. I am now still waiting for a response from BEX. Sigh...

The Diplomat and a couple of his FSI friends have decided to go to NYC for the upcoming weekend, where we still own an apartment (anyone in the market for a 2-bedroom in NYC???), and paint the town red like only 40 year old married men with kids can. It will be so wild. OK, it won't--he actually asked me for suggestions what to do. Awesome.

This just on--Passed Bangla Bex!!!

Wooo, hooo, now THIS is exciting news folks! So, that means I am released from my Russian BEX. With that, the last piece of our tandem puzzle falls into place.
Oh yeah, besides the small detail that my Bangla final is this Friday. Um, brrrrr....

And so we're back from camping

The Diplomat and I have camped quite a few times back in our childless days. In fact, we'd like to think of ourselves as quite the campers, really! Before you conjure up some unreasonable picture of us in hiking gear, roasting fish we have just caught barehanded after trekking for 25 miles along perilous cliffs and sleeping in hanging tents off said cliffs, let me make something clear: our style of camping is shameful. We pack our car up to the brink with coolers full of meat and other exciting food, a $25, 2-person Walmart tent (it got traded for a $50, 4-person Target tent this year), a queen-size inflatable mattress, fluffy pillows, humongous sleeping bags, various libations and board games. Upon arrival in the quiet, serene beauty of our camp site, we back the car into the site and immediately take the contents of the car out until the site begins to look like the NYC studio apartment of a particularly hung-over 25-year old bachelor investment banker on a Sunday late morning. We spend the next 2 days sitting around in various positions around the camp site, poking the fire incessantly and ingesting impossible amounts of food and such libations, while playing intellectual games like Cranium all through the night. On Sunday morning, we swiftly pack the circus back into the tiny trunk of the car and drive off in clouds of dust back to the city, feeling rather re-energized and quite good about ourselves already.
This past weekend wasn't much different except for two things:
1) We were now bringing a very unsuspecting toddler to the scene and we were meeting with friends who have two twin boys about Son's age,
2) We got introduced to ticks. And not in a good way.

I had full intention of relaxing this weekend. I had even naively and somewhat sheepishly brought along a book "to read in the shade while resting" as I happily announced to the Diplomat while packing. I remember looking mournfully at the book all weekend as I dealt with Son while he, along with two other very active boys whom he befriended instantaneously:
--ran around digging up ants
--shoved his head into an old concrete water pipe shouting toddler obscenities inside
--rolled around the ground enjoying a nice dust bath
--screamed that he wants juice, chocolate milk, water, bread, cheese, horsey, poopy, his cars, his monkey and a myriad of other tangible and at times, intangible paraphernalia
--ate half of a watermelon and then spent the rest of the evening peeing the woods
--refused to take an afternoon nap, while I tried to have one to the tune of three toddlers crying loudly for 45 minutes
--demanded to poke around the fire
--ate pebbles
--refused to wear his shoes
--demanded to wear shoes
--hugged me with sticky watermelon fingers and ran them lovingly through my hair.

Still, we had a blast. And then our friends initiated us into the world of ticks. I'd rather have stayed ignorant. As I said, we have been camping in the woods for some years now and never really thought about them or even knew what they looked like. Until today when our friends took out a massive tick off the thigh of one of their sons and I almost fainted while watching them. Several hours and numerous paranoid body reviews later, I have successfully harvested three ticks off me and one off Son. To the Diplomat's horror, I have not been able to find any on him so far which leaves him morbidly convinced that he is a major tick carrier but that they are hiding in his hair only to re-appear when he is at least suspecting. He makes me check him for ticks on the hour. It is worse and far more repetitive than CNN newscasts on a breaking news day. We have for now vowed to never camp again.

In other, just as repetitive news, I took and passed this week my BEX exam in Bulgarian with 5/5 which apparently puts me at the level of an intelligent native speaker. Well, why, thank you!

A Class in US Protocol and Etiquette: "Eat the Goat Eyes!"

I had a rather entertaining weekend. As I had previously mentioned, I spent my Saturday at FSI taking a somewhat notorious 6-hour class called "U.S. Protocol and Representation Abroad." Oh boy! I was excited. I love hosting and entertaining, and all the formality that comes with our new job, so I simply could not wait to hear all the neat rules that govern all that in the Foreign Service. I thought you’d find it entertaining if I filled you in on the major points.
The day started on a rather upbeat note when we were sent in an adjacent room to practice lining up to and schmoozing at a (coffee) reception. Apparently, sitting in line to a reception is an art in and of itself--what with the shaking hands with the hostess, then with the guest of honor and then being literally whisked away by the line mover. Yes, a line mover--his job is to move a guest quickly out of the line after all the hand-shaking has been done and the guest decides to freeze like a lonely, petrified deer in headlights when faced with the room full of other people, merrily chatting away while balancing tiny plates with hors d'oeuvres and large glasses of wine. The goal of the exercise was to find a specific person (we were given a name) in the crowd and learn something interesting about them. As a result, about 35 people spent a frantic 15 minutes drinking orange juice and coffee with a cookie while trying to find out their appointed person unobtrusively and thusly introducing themselves to everyone else. Moral of the exercise: do NOT dip the cookie in the coffee (yes, some did), do NOT put the coffee cup on top of the OJ glass, eat a snack before you leave home (apparently, it is undesirable to get drunk fast at formal events, who knew) and dress appropriately (we were told the startling truth that Americans tend adhere to, um, rather relaxed dress code at formal events overseas--so, when invited to a BBQ in Latin America, put on some high heels and a slinky dress to be on the safe side, or an unnecessarily expensive linen suit, if applicable) and for all that is holy to you, do NOT eat and drink at the same time. Oh yes, and say good-bye when you leave. None of us did.
Then we were given a trillion rules on how to address folks and how NOT to introduce people to those of higher rank. It appears that it is rather inappropriate to say to the Ambassador of Panama (with whom you happen to play tennis regularly and know way too much about already), "Say Jose, this here is my man Sergey, a Third Secretary from the Ukrainian Embassy, he has just arrived and is looking for some good buddies to have fun." We were told that you NEVER, under ANY circumstances, call an Ambassador by his first name. Even if he begs you to. Even if you are dying to. Unless he is your husband (and even then I am not sure...).
Then we were given a 20 minute lecture on handing out business cards--a frightening and rule-filled process.
Mercifully, soon after that we were given a break to forage for food. We came back to a video from the 1980s (my God--the hair, the suits, the dresses with ginormous sleeves, the massive women's eye-wear, HOW EVER did all of those ever come out of fashion?!), which illustrated for us the proper decorum during business lunch, as well as the correct way to eat certain foods during such important meals. The examples included cutting a watermelon, eating strawberries without cream, eating strawberries WITH cream, eating MIXED fruit, snails, fish with bone, fish WITHOUT bone, and so forth. In the end, I just felt bad for the poor fella, who kept eating food after food during his presentation. I swear I could notice him nearly gagging as he was served food #67--a boiled egg--after he has just eaten a steak, a fish WITH bone, a chicken leg, some pasta, a pile of berries and a soup.
After the break, we were ushered into another room to decipher the fine art of proper dining. Our teacher was a wife of an Ambassador with an impressive list of diplomas in protocol and etiquette from all over the world. She was originally from Mexico and spoke impeccable English with fabulous Latin accent, which along with her apparent passion for her subject (she literally told us, "I am VERY passionate about this!), made the 2 hour presentation most entertaining. I thought she was superb!
She had lined one table with every imaginable dining-related instrument known in the world--from Chinese chopsticks' resting thingy, to strangely shaped Dutch spoons for serving mini appetizers, also called Amuse-gueule spoon (see illustration here http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivomathieugaston/5335627065/), to forks for eating lobster, shrimp, snail, oyster, and any other sea critter that had the audacity to hide behind a shell, various types of fish and game, to a knife resting thingy, to even hooks for hanging your purse at the table. Another table had an elaborate setting for a semi-formal dinner. After we ooh-ed and ahh-ed for 15 minutes, we took our seats and the education began. One after the other came rules at an amazing speed and even more amazing logic:
--you serve food hovering from the left and remove it from the right
--a man escorts a lady to the table, pulls the chairs and she MUST enter it from the right hand side
--do NOT bring drinks to the dining table from the cocktail hour (try to tell THAT to young wedding guest)
--the host pours wine 1/2 to 2/3 of a glass and once your wine is over do NOT ask for more, you lush, wait for the host to notice and pour you some
--serve sherry with the soup and remove it promptly with the removal of the soup even if the guest is desperately clutching to his miniscule sherry glass
--couples should split upon entering a party, not stick to each in fear
--keep your elbows together-"You are not flying anywhere!"
--split couples at the table UNLESS they are only engaged (I suppose the rule came from the fear that if you split them, they might get interested in someone else during dinner? I imagine that happened at a few formal parties and British put an end to the nonsense)
--and for the love of Pete, NEVER EVER put napkin rings for a formal dinner!
We received a demonstration on eating a soup (I volunteered; I did wrong) and given the stern warning "Do not scuba dive in the soup!"
We were also told that no matter how detesting the food on our plate is, we MUST eat a bit, and then "Divide and decorate"--cut things in pieces and strew them around the plate to make it look like we ate a lot.
And finally, NEVER offend the host by not eating something out of disgust--our brave lecturer told us that she had eaten it all--rats, snakes, monkey, donkey, horse, bugs, ears, guts, butt and really bad salad, but she swore she would never ever eat eyes. And would you know it--once, as she was entering the dining hall at a particularly festive and formal diplomatic party, there they were--from her dining plate two appetizer goat eyes were staring plaintively at her saying, "Don't eat me!" (her words, not mine). But then her husband, the American Ambassador, looked her just as plaintively and she knew what she had to do--eat the damn eyes. And so she did. Now THAT is what I call a brave diplomat.
Filled with horror and awe, we moved on to the last part of the day--a lesson on seating arrangements. At least we got that part right. With head bursting with formalities, I picked up the Diplomat and Son and headed over to a party for FSI bloggers. I can safely say that NONE of the above-mentioned rules were observed there. Everyone ate and drank at the same time, often with their mouth filled with both, children ran and yelled all over the party room at Falls Church Oakwood, and we all gesticulated wildly while holding forks and knives (do not that, “you are at a dinner, not conducting at the Met Opera with a fork!!”). Nevertheless, extremely good times were had by all. Especially since someone had brought in an exceptionally fabulous desert of graham crackers and custard crème on which I overate.
This week will see me take the BEX Bangla exam on Thursday at 1 pm. I need some MAJOR luck on that one.

PRACTICAL INFO ON THE CLASS:
It is open to EFMs but since there are a lot of people wanting to get in, you have to sign up for it ASAP and wait for approval. The class is offered roughly every 2 months or so, on a Saturday. The next one will be on 4/2/11.

How to Become a Foreign Service Officer: Part III--the QEP personal narratives

You have now taken the FSOT, and then you have spent the next two or so weeks trying desperately to remember some of the questions that you think you did wrong and google them obsessively for answers. Then you spend a week checking messages on the FSOT yahoo boards where everyone speculates wildly when the results will come out. You begin fearing that they will come out at a point when you have absolutely no access to Internet--the State Department is so advanced nowadays that it has a website where you can log in to get your Congrats/Regrets letter. And so you find yourself sitting at Heathrow Airport, on your way back from a skiing trip, with a screaming Son who is running around the airport windows gesticulating at planes in utter delight while all you can think of is that most likely the results are out and you have no way of getting them. And then, in a stroke of genius, you pull out your cellphone and turn it on (thank God, you have a GSM) and yes, there it is--a message from a caring Diplomat who has nobly gotten into my email account in New York, seen my results and left me a voicemail in case I check it at my stop-over in London. Thank you! You proceed to scream, "YES, YES, YES, I DID IT, I AM SO F..ING AWESOME" while the elderly British couple next to you at the airport look at you disapprovingly in a VERY reserved manner.

The next step is the writing of several personal narratives for review by the Qualifications Evaluation Panel (QEP). You have about a month to submit your essays, which generally address you intellectual, interpersonal, communication, managerial and leadership skills. No, I cannot publish the questions, come on now! There is a character limit of 1300 characters per essay, which includes spaces. It is shockingly little, about 200 words or so. And it takes forever to polish and fit within the limit. My suggestion would be to start writing right away. The idea is to take examples from your life that demonstrate such skills. The examples do not have to be you leading the UN in spontaneous liberating action somewhere in Africa, or being Dalai Lama's right hand, or writing the next shocking physics theory or speaking 36 languages, including Martian and negotiating peace with the little people of the Moon. The idea of the essays is to show that you have enough common sense, stamina and emotional maturity to live abroad, communicate with people different from you, show some initiative and creativity when things go hairy (and I mean situations like when you have to deal with the notorious Washington bureaucracy, not like riots in Egypt, which I would gladly take over the bureaucratic process) and retain your sense of humor while doing all of that.

Be creative. Don't try to guess what the reader wants to hear. If the question explores your intellectual skills, do not necessarily dwell upon your heroic efforts to solve Fermat's Last Theorem before you were beaten to it by Andrew Wiles. Write instead about some problem you had and the awesome creative, last minute solution you found to it. Interpersonal skills will deal with your ability to communicate with people different from you. Again, don't rack your brain for examples from your ground-breaking water project in the villages of the Zanzibar, where you learned to speak Kiunguja in a matter of weeks and danced with colored sticks around the ceremonial fire every night (unless you actually have, in which case more power to you!). Talk about your crazy Argentinian roommate, who danced tango while sleepwalking and covered his walls with soccer posters, your Wisconsin colleague and his cheese-eating habits at work, or your prim British inlaws.
Whatever you choose to write about, keep it simple and VERY much to the point. You will have so little capacity to write that every unnecessary, albeit colorful detail, will have to go.

Do not underestimate the QEP essays--they are a very important part of your application. Start writing right away. Keep thinking of better and better examples. Ask you grandma. Ask your boyfriend/spouse/best friend for such examples. People sometimes know us better than we know ourselves. And then ask someone to read your creations. After you have read them over 345 times, your judgement about their literary and stylistic quality might have suffered just a bit. Take the criticism in stride. Re-write. You are awesome! Submit. Do not panic. Wait.

In other news, I have officially accepted my offer to join the March 28 A-100 class. I will be a proud part of Class 160!!! I also received my salary offer, which was surprisingly good and made me instantly go online and search for small but meaningful gifts to buy for myself. Finally, for those of you taking a BEX language test and finding yourself later on desiring to change the language to another one for whatever reason, I learned the following very important tidbit--you can swap languages for bonus points (if the languages carry the same or more points, obviously) until you actually join FSI. So now I am fervently studying Bangla and count on your joint well wishes and some mad luck to pass on March 3. In a demonstration how fervently I am studying, I am taking tomorrow as a mental day off. I promise to think to myself in Bangla all morning. Or not.

A BEX test and a weekend in NYC

It has been a while, I know. My life has been a tad crazy, if I may say so.
Last weekend, the Diplomat and I dragged our poor child to the Shenandoah Valley, where we spent a weekend playing tennis, getting massages and drinking with a couple of good friends.
In our defense, Son had a blast playing among the fallen leaves around the rented house and experienced his first pumpkin carving, courtesy of our good friends. I attended two tennis classes. The name of the first one should have given me a good hint NOT to attend but hindsight is always 20/20, right? It was called "Sweaty Tennis: Drills" and a 23-year-old "tennis pro" made me and another 2 middle-aged women run around the court for our lives in the span of an hour. It could have made a very odd episode of "The Bachelor" where older women run around a tennis court to compete for um, a tennis ball from the young bachelor. The worst part was that he kept giving little yelps of encouragement to the other women, who in turn kept yelling back to him in utter delight. 20 mins into the session, I was ready to keel over and throw up, while the perky cougars kept running around screaming, "Yeah baby, give it to me baby," to the amused youth. I chose a different session the next day. I also went and got a massage. They gave me a masseur. His name was Randy. I think it is a very unfortunately chosen name for a masseur. I am just saying. Oh yeah, and the Diplomat lost his wallet. He does that often.

The week that followed was as crazy as ever. On Wednesday, I was told that my work project was over and I spent an entire evening dreaming with the Diplomat about my impending freedom. On Thursday morning, I was told that the client liked our work and I was asked to stay for another month. In a momentary lapse of reason, I accepted. I had a very serious conversation with myself after that. One part of me argued that the price of shoes has been rising and hence, additional income at the price of my sanity is key. My other side tersely retorted that sanity is, after all, very important and money is not. Shoes won.

On Thursday morning, I took a phone Russian test administered by the Foreign Service Institute, the notorious BEX oral test. Now, let's see if you think the test started auspiciously for me:
1) candidates are expressly asked NOT to call from a cell phone, but from a landline.
2) I call from home, my FSI-sponsored home with FSI-paid for phone line. Connection is terrible.
3) The assistant asks me to call back. I do. The connection is just as awful. She proceeds to connect me to the testers.
4) During the transfer, the connection drops. I call back frantically.
5) She connects me again. The testers are on speaker phone and the connection worsens considerably. I get nervous as I can only hear 35% of what they say.
6) I humbly beg to call from my cell phone, explaining that I can barely hear them. They concede.
7) I call back form my cell phone. The connection is fantastic and we proceed to discuss a variety of fascinating topics.

I am now waiting for the results, which are crucial for my place on the notorious omnipotent Register of diplomatic hopefuls. If I pass, I go on the top of the list and the moment the FBI completes my security clearance, I will get "the call" to join the Foreign Service. If I do not pass, I will not speak to myself for a very long time.

This past weekend, we drove up to NYC so that the Diplomat can get a new driving license. Son received a brand new haircut from a fancy children's salon, where he sat perched in a red racing car instead of a chair, watching Thomas the Train, while the hairdresser cut his locks. I took a very fuzzy picture with my phone camera, something I never do. If I ever figure out how to get it out of the phone, I will post it. It was overall a very good experience, and I highly recommend to any parent who dreads his child's haircut on a salon to go to a specialized place--it is a bit pricier than your local barber who looks like a very old Mafioso, but well worth it.

I am happy to say that in the span of three days, I managed to see a good deal of my good friends in the city. On Friday, we had drinks around 5 with Mr. U, then had over our fabulous neighbors for drinks and pizza, while discussing their marriage plans for this winter. On Saturday, we drove to Brooklyn to see A+F and had brunch at a slightly pretentious eatery (which did not have any regular sugar substitutes but only a suspicious and foul smelling green powder). On the way back from Brooklyn, around 1.30 pm, the Diplomat dropped me off on the Upper East side where I met my fabulous friend from law school who is also a great Fat Cat aficionado. We had one giant margarita each. At 3.30pm, after squeezing a manicure, I met the lovely S for a glass of wine on the Upper West side. Pleasantly tipsy, I went back to Riverdale, where at 6 pm, I met the Diplomat and we went to visit our Bulgarian neighbors for a round of beers. We finally made it home around 8, put Son hastily to bed, waited for the babysitter, and went out for a night on the town. We found a brand new restaurant on the UWS, Tolani, which served "favorite foods from around the world" and so we had the pleasure of drinking Austrian and Tasmanian wines, while eating a Thai salad, Belgian mussels, Greek appetizer and a goat curry to end. Around 11.30 pm, we were joined by the fabulous J for one last glass of wine. Utterly exhausted, we dragged our butts to bed at 1.30 am.
We spent most of Sunday afternoon in traffic on the way back to Washington, DC while Son insisted on watching a particular short video teaching kids to count cars 46 times in the back seat. Son is obsessed with counting. Apparently. He spent the rest of the drive peeing every 30 mins. which, of course, meant that we had to stop on the side of the highway every single time.

Tomorrow, I have a day off work. It almost feels like cutting school in 10th grade! The Diplomat and I might even go see a movie while Son is in daycare!

In Arlington, all quiet

Ok, nothing interesting is happening in our lives right now. I mean, NOTHING!
I am knees deep in Bangla study since my exams are approaching fast--I take my BEX on Thursday, and my final FSI test on March 11. Gulp...
We had our second round of shots for Dhaka on Thursday, which excited me to no end since ANYTHING out of the routine life excites me nowadays--I mean, how pathetic your life has to be for you to be excited on account of a rabbies shot? Son took it like a man, and all three of us walked out of the FSI clinic with lollipops sticking out of our mouths.
Another noteworthy event in my life was the realization that Son can draw an awesome circle. I am not saying that he is the next president of the United States, but I am putting it out there that he has some skills. According to the milestone charts for his age, that is pretty darn advanced. Apparently, so is balancing on one leg (see here , and so I have been making the poor child stand around the house on one leg just to see if he can. He could. I guess he IS presidential material after all...
Tonight, I sent the Diplomat to have beers with his FSO buddies. He was giddy with anticipation and warned me that he might come home pretty late. I rolled my eyes, put Son to bed, ordered Chinese, studied some Bangla until the food came, and then started two of my most favorite things--eating Singapore rice noodles and watching Grey's Anatomy. As I was just relaxing and getting into the show and the food, the Diplomat came home, grinning silly like a tipsy Cheshire Cat. It was only 10.30 pm. I guess one's standards for a "late night out" slowly deteriorate with age. Turns out he and two other devoted hubbies like him went to a neighboring bar and spent the majority of their time talking about babies (so I was told). Um, wha'?

Finally, tomorrow will be a pretty thrilling day--I will spend 8 hours at FSI taking the very useful class of U.S. Protocol and Representation Abroad, along with a bunch of my wife friends, and then will go to a potluck party with my fellow FSO bloggers! I cannot wait to learn how to address the Ambassador's wife or how to seat people around the table. THAT would have been rather useful to me last weekend when we hosted a dinner at home. It must have been a good dinner though regardless of my table seating arrangements since the guests came at 8.30 pm and after a pleasant Scotch nightcap and a cigar smoke left at 2 am. Which would have been OK if Son hadn't woken up at 6.30 am a mere 4 hours later. Cheers!