Home Leave 101

“The purpose of home leave is to ensure that employees who live abroad for an extended period undergo reorientation and re-exposure in the United States on a regular basis.” -Foreign Affairs Manual. Since I am on home leave for the very first time, I thought I would take an opportunity to explain exactly what it

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Disney Interlude

Just when I thought I was going to PCS back home to El Paso as quickly and cleanly as possible, Angeli convinced me to take a couple of days off and take the kids to Disney Paris on our way back home. After digesting some of the costs, which were mercifully blunted due to us

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The Department Won’t Hug You Back

A common expression in government work is don’t spend too much time hugging the government, because the government won’t hug you back. Basically, don’t kill yourself for your job, because at the end of the day, the government doesn’t see an individual, they see a replaceable position. Very early on in my time in Nouakchott

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Mauritanian Thoughts

With my tour in Mauritania over, I have had some time to digest my experiences, and figured this would be a good opportunity to write about my thoughts and impressions of the country while it is still fresh. I want to be clear, as with every post on this blog, the thoughts here are my

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Wheels Up Nouakchott

Short and sweet this week as we are actually PCSing from Nouakchott back home to the U.S., where I will start my congressionally mandated home leave, and the girls resettle into our Texas home. I’ll cover my thoughts on the end of my first tour in another post, but let me just say that it

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Kudos

Short and sweet this week. I want to say thank you to all of you that continue to read this blog and send me questions. Over the last 3 years, many of my readers have started their own Foreign Service journey, and when they have been onboarded are kind enough to reference my blog as

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