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
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
How do you reconcile working for the government if you don’t agree with their policies or the direction things are going? What do you do if you strongly disagree with or even despise the current President or Secretary of State? This is a question I have been asked dozen’s of times since applying to join
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
Moving Stinks. It doesn’t matter where in the world you live, or how far the move. Moving is really tough. Just prior to our move to Nouakchott, I was able to sneak home for a bit and help with the final details of our move. Once there I had the common moving realization that we
