This week I am handing over the reins to my lovely wife Angeli. Last week she was kind enough to leave me in Nouakchott and travel with some of our embassy friends to the Canary Islands. I thought the best way of rubbing it in my face in a lasting fashion would be to have
That’s the view from my rooftop deck. It isn’t anything overly special, but since getting our patio furniture back, we have definitely taken the opportunity to enjoy it with the wonderful Nouakchott evening weather. I would have never guessed moving to the desert I would have a house with a view of a pretty large
This last week I was afforded a fairly brief opportunity to head back to the United States (specifically Minneapolis) for work to attend Comprehensive Advanced Life Support, a class that the State Department has their new hires participate in at some point in their first couple of years at post. You can find some info
This week for the first time in nearly 6 months, I slept in my own bed. I moved from Texas in early April to Washington D.C. and then to Nouakchott in early July. During that time I have been sleeping on government furnished beds, which aren’t exactly as luxurious as the fancy cooling hybrid mattress
I am often asked through this website or through friends and family if there have been any negatives to the job, lifestyle, or in general since joining the Foreign Service. I am a positive guy by nature, and I definitely try to keep things light and positive here (mostly because I don’t want to offend
I was recently sitting across from a foreign ambassador at a dinner event, hearing some of the most fascinating stories of their careers, when I realized I was living in a fascinating story myself, right then and there. Later that evening, while I was replaying the night in my head, I found my mind wandering
This week we will take little pit stop to answer a question I have received a couple of times now regarding hardship posts. Here we go: I keep seeing the term “hardship post” thrown around, and was wondering what it actually means and how it is determined? A Hardship Post is basically anywhere in the
Yes, I know that’s a dolphin, not a fish. Just a cool pic and a great metaphor for what life is like in the Foreign Service. A Sunday morning trip to the beach yielded an amazing opportunity to see a dolphin pod hunt a large school of fish, and we were treated to a wonderful
Today’s post is going to talk us on a cultural journey of a different kind, and we are going to spend some time talking about bidet’s, why they are so great, and why the United States is woefully behind the rest of the world when it comes to bathroom hygiene. If you have spent any
