This week Nick is on a TDY (temporary duty) assignment abroad, so he was once again kind enough to let me take the wheel. I am going chat a little bit about what employment is like in the Foreign Service, and the process for getting hired as an eligible family member (which is basically any
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
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
It has been a month since we arrived in Nouakchott, and as I mentioned this past week, things are settling into place nicely. My eldest daughter has made some great friends, my wife has been offered a job with the Embassy, and even my baby daughter has decided to start crawling and pulling up to
Over 3 weeks into arriving in Mauritania and I feel like I am getting in the swing of things. Both at work and with our free time. The work routine is becoming a bit more predictable and the administrative tasks are becoming more routine. In our free time, we’ve found a steady rhythm of going
It’s been a little over a week since we got to Nouakchott and it has been an eventful one. The first order of business was settling into our house, which has been going well. We still have some things to unpack, but it’s humming along. It probably won’t feel like “home” until we get our
