Woof. In one months time I will be in Mauritania, settling into our new home, and starting my first assignment. I’m so excited to get there, but it feels like between now and then I have a million things to do, and not enough time. Let me try and explain what a PCS (permanent change
This last week of orientation featured a lot of self directed learning, and proved to be a fantastic week for my family to come from Texas for a visit. It was a jammed pack week of monuments, museums, a quick trip to Williamsburg, and good eating. It’s difficult to articulate how wonderful it was to
Not much to report on over the last week. I completed counter threat training, which was almost like an awesome summer camp where you get taught life saving skills and how to drive a car in a ton of really fun scenarios. As someone who loves to drive, it was an absolute blast being able
This week marked the end of orientation, and boy was it a productive one. As mentioned in the previous post, I learned my first assignment will be taking me to Nouakchott, Mauritania. I remain incredibly excited about the assignment, and perhaps more importantly, my family is too. My eldest daughter couldn’t be happier to be
Well, after 6 weeks of orientation, the day our class has been anxiously awaiting finally arrived, and in a whirlwind of information, nearly 200 individuals learned exactly where they will be going across this globe of ours. I am happy to announce that my first post with be in….. If you’re seeing that flag and
The penultimate week of orientation was another solid one. More quality information shared, more socializing, more good eats, more sporting events. The last two weekends have also been Embassy Open House around DC and Embassy Row near Dupont Circle. What this means is several embassies open up their door, let you look around, and have
Another meagre update. Orientation hums along and I get another week closer to learning my first overseas posting. We are just a little over a week away, and the feeling in the class as a whole is that it can’t come soon enough. I’m just glad I’m in MED at this point. Since we don’t
Not much to update. Another week has gone by, and at this point the general orientation is halfway over. I’ve really been enjoying getting to know my classmates better, and all of our instructors/speakers have been wonderful. It’s somewhat daunting when you join such a large bureaucracy, but it is so comforting knowing that the
Week 2 kicked off with a bang. To start the week, everyone met with their “Career Development Officer”, talked about the country bidding process, and then in short order, we were given our “bid list”. What this essentially means is we were all given a list of countries that we could/will move to. From there,
The first week is complete, and boy was it a whirlwind of information. I have to admit that compared to actual patient care, it’s been quite easy, but even learning the basics about a large bureaucracy like the State Department can be pretty overwhelming. It definitely gives you a sense of scale in terms of
