Home again, home again…

/ cdncarolina / 5 Comments

Sometimes you can’t miss it when the universe is trying to tell you something.

Last Saturday we left Turkey after three wonderful (albeit crazily covid-y) years in Istanbul. It’s been a struggle to keep my tears in check for several weeks now. Whether saying goodbye to a dear friend, or simply cresting a hill on the way to work and catching a glimpse of the Bosporus shimmering in the early morning sunlight in the distance, this has been a hard and teary goodbye.

Bright and early Saturday morning we left our house and the tears started before we’d even exited the parking garage. B and C – both of whom have been more excited about this move back to the US than I – were gazing firmly into the future while I was focused on the last views of our compound, and then the mall, and then the neighborhood, step by step away from what has been a wonderful life and tour. In so many ways I was not ready to leave.

I made it back to Dulles without breaking down too much, but as we entered the immigration hall I glanced up to the ever changing “welcome” sign – which greets visitors and saw “America’ya hos geldiniz” – Turkish for “Welcome to America.” The tears started again. I tamped them down as we approached the CBP officer at Immigration.

“How long were you outside the United States?” he asked.

“Three years, we’re PCS’ing back from Turkey,” B answers.

“Really?” the CBP officer says. “Welcome home! My mother’s family is from Turkey. I went there for the first time last year – it’s an amazing place,” he continues.

Tears start welling up in my eyes again as I’m thinking “Yes, it is.”

He quickly waves us on and we head to our luggage carousel. On the way, we pass a man holding a folder with a large “Turkish Airlines” note and logo (we arrived via United).

We arrive at our hotel and while checking in, the young man at the desk asks where we live.

“Here, I guess,” I respond. “We’re just returning from an overseas tour and our house is empty.”

“Really?” he says. “I’m a foreign service kid – welcome home! Where were you posted?”

“Istanbul,” I say.

“So cool,” he says. “I hope it was a great tour.”

A few minutes later, in our room, a knock at the door announces the arrival of our bazillion bags (well, really, 12, but it feels like a bazillion when you are used to traveling entirely with carry-on luggage).

“Hi,” says the bellman. “My name is Ali, where are you folks coming in from?”

“Turkey,” I say.

“Really?” he responds. “My mom lives there – in Izmir. How long were you in Turkey?”

“Three years,” I answer. “We were posted there. How do you like Izmir?”

“Love it,” he says. “It’s a beautiful place, but I really love Istanbul.”

Indeed.

As we waited for him to bring in all the bags, fighting the exhaustion of an almost 24 hour travel day, I realized that there was message in all this. The universe was trying to tell me that I did not leave Istanbul behind completely. She – and Turkey – are all around. At the little kebab restaurant we passed on the highway, in the baklava being sold at a restaurant in the mall, in the thousands of Turkish immigrants and visitors all over this city and the United States (some of whom are here because I approved their visas).

And, this morning, as I drove B to his first day of work, we joined the throng of traffic on the George Washington Memorial Parkway and I caught a glimpse of the Potomac River. Then I also realized that, while I am definitely going to miss the majesty and strength of the Bosphorus and the quirky hilly maze of Istanbul, I do love this beautiful capital city of ours. I love its green spaces and orderly traffic and youthful vibe – and its own little river that shimmers in the morning light, and is worthy of gazing out at.

Duty Calls

/ cdncarolina / 3 Comments

Growing up, the phone in our house often rang at 2 a.m. My mother spent much of her career delivering babies, thus we spent much of our childhood hearing (and generally ignoring) middle of the night phone calls. They were as routine and unremarkable to me as any other phone call. It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized that calls after bedtime were out of the ordinary for most people.

My revelation came when, after getting a call from a drunk friend at 1 a.m., I found my roommate standing transfixed at the end of my bed.

“Who died?” she mouthed to me.

“What??” I said (probably too loudly and no doubt looking at her incredulously). “Why would someone have died?”

It turned out, according to my roommate, and somewhat surprisingly to me, that apparently for most people any call after 10 p.m. automatically portends some level of doom.

As the years have gone by I’ve thought a lot about how something as unremarkable as a phone call can be experienced so differently by two people. I’ve also realized that my roommate was right and middle of the night calls are not normal for most people.

But, like many things in Foreign Service life – at least overseas – what is normal for “most people” is not normal for us. I have gotten used to middle of the night calls once again, because every six months (and in some posts much more frequently) almost every officer at every post in the world gets to be The Duty Officer.

The Duty Officer is the de facto “on call” person after-hours at every U.S. Embassy and Consulate on earth. Bottom line – if you are an American citizen in trouble – no matter where you are outside of the U.S. – you can call the closest Embassy or Consulate and someone will answer the phone. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. 365 days a year. Every evening (usually after 5), every weekend and every holiday, the person who answers the phone will be the Duty Officer.

B and I had back-to-back “Duty Weeks” recently – his over a holiday weekend – so we were treated to the unmistakable duty phone ring (loud and insistent) several times every night – and multiple times, day and night, during every weekend/holiday – for two weeks. It made me not only appreciate the dedication my mother had in accepting middle of the night calls for almost 30 years, but also the State Department for providing us, and all our fellow U.S. citizens, a human being at the end of the line 24 hours a day, every day, during times of crisis, trouble or, sometimes, just inconvenience.

The calls we get range from Americans who have lost their passports, to being denied boarding on a flight (this has been especially common during COVID times), to reporting a loved one missing. Sometimes the calls are, in fact, because someone has died. Sometimes they are because someone has been arrested. Occasionally they are calls from someone in the U.S. who is traveling to Turkey next month and “is just wondering what the situation there is right now?” Needless to say, these can be particularly frustrating and it’s difficult not to say “Well, the situation here is that we are 7 hours ahead of you, so you are waking me up at 3 a.m. to ask this very much “non-emergency” question, but otherwise all is well – enjoy your trip!” Tempting as that is, however, we simply answer the question and wish the caller well.

And, while I’m pretty sure many Americans have no idea that the duty phone exists, or who is answering the line if they call the “emergency” number at a Consulate or Embassy (or what time it is there), even fewer understand how limited our ability to help can be. Because the calls we receive are generally from Americans who are in Turkey, it can take some time and effort to remind them that they are in a sovereign nation that controls its own immigration, customs, visas, and all other laws and regulations. Likewise, we don’t have control over private companies (US or Turkish), so if Turkish Airlines decides not to board a passenger, our most useful guidance is usually “continue to work with Turkish Airlines.” That sort of “non” help can be extremely annoying to our callers, but in truth it is the best we can do in most circumstances.

As anyone who has braved international travel during the pandemic knows, things can – and do – change rapidly and significantly, so these types of issues occur daily now. B and I even found ourselves at the wrong end of the head spinning travel advisory flip-flops this summer. We were supposed to fly from Spain to Bulgaria to visit friends, but, the day before our scheduled travel, Bulgaria decided that Spain’s COVID numbers were too high and Spain went from being an “orange” country to a “red” one. No Bulgaria for us! But as we learned – and as we routinely tell our duty phone callers – such is life when you choose to fly during a global pandemic.

Regular (right) and EPDP (left)

It is also eye opening to realize how many things about international travel that we take for granted are mysteries to people who are less used to customs and immigration regulations. We routinely talk to Americans who didn’t realize that American citizens are required to exit and enter the United States with a U.S. passport. Because the U.S. has no consistent exit controls (as opposed to, say, Turkey, where your passport is stamped not only every time you enter the country, but also every time you exit) many dual citizens leave the U.S. on their foreign passports (not having obtained a U.S. passport) and then find that they cannot return home without getting an emergency U.S. passport while they are overseas. Every day my colleagues and I process at least one (and sometimes as many as 5) “EPDP” (Emergency Photo Digitized Passport) for someone who has arrived in Turkey without a U.S. passport, or has had their passport lost or stolen. At least once a week we have someone who has recently been naturalized who believed they could travel with just their new Naturalization Certificate.

Sometimes the duty calls are really difficult – parents whose children have been taken by the other parent, families calling because a loved one has died in Turkey, people who are searching for friends or relatives they cannot reach and who they believe to be in trouble. Twice in the time I’ve been working in “ACS” (American Citizen Services) we’ve had elderly Americans who have been stranded in the “transit” area of the Istanbul Airport because they missed their onward flight. One woman spent almost a week lost in the airport. Her family (and I – through them) knew she was there because she was going twice a day to the same snack stand and getting herself some food and coffee with her credit card, but beyond that no one could get in touch with her. Because of COVID we are not allowed into the airport at all – and we are never allowed beyond passport control. Without knowing where this woman could be found we could not convince the Turkish airport authorities to look for her. Eventually, one of her children flew to Istanbul from the U.S., then had to buy an onward ticket to an other destination so that she could enter the transit area. She found her mother and got her home, but it was a very stressful week for everyone.

From the FTC scam information website

We also get a lot of calls from victims of scams. Most are romance scams and many are incredibly elaborate. The caller usually believes that his/her finance (even occasionally “spouse”) has been transiting Istanbul when they have been involved in an accident, or have been pulled over by security/the police/customs because they are carrying large amounts of money/gold/medical equipment. They tend to follow a similar story line – the person is believed to have been working for the UN or NATO or the U.S. Military in a war zone (Syria most often) or on an oil rig in the Black Sea – and, after being paid with cash/gold, they are on their way home to reunite and marry the caller. The victims often have copies of a passport or ID card that they send to us as “proof” that the person exists, but, inevitably, we can see at a glance that the passport has been tampered with electronically. It can be heartbreaking to try and convince someone who believes they are in love – and are often older individuals who appear to be really lonely – that the person who has been wooing them – and to whom they have often sent thousands of dollars – is not real. According to the FTC, romance scams cost people a total of $301 billion in 2020 – yes that’s a B! Sadly, often the victims have been duped so effectively that nothing we say or do seems to help and we routinely have people who continue to email us begging us to help their stranded American “fiancee” even after multiple calls and emails from us confirming that the person is not a U.S. citizen.

Being the Duty Officer is never high on anyone’s list of fun things to do, but it is one very tangible way that those of us living and serving overseas get to see how our work can directly impact – and sometimes help – American citizens. I have noticed in the weeks since B and I finished our most recent Duty Officer service that we both jump any time we are out and about and someone happens to have the same ring on their phone as is programmed into the Duty Phone. Luckily, that only happens during the day and our nights are back to being phone call free – that is, I suppose, until the next time one of us is the Duty Officer.

The very hungry FSOs…

/ cdncarolina / 1 Comment

When C was a baby we, like many (many) parents often read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle to her. To this day, one of my favorite “Baby C” words (which she still sometimes trips over) is “calipitter” which we heard again and again as “Read calipitter!” We are LONG past that book (we’re more into Percy Jackson and Wings of Fire now), but the lessons of making our way through apples, pears, plums, oranges, strawberries, chocolate cake, ice cream, a pickle, Swiss cheese, salami, lollipops, cherry pie, sausage, cupcakes, and watermelon (we’ll skip the leaves, thanks) seems to be the story of our lives lately.

The epidemic and its “knock on effect” for a lot of people, including us, has been to spend more time baking at home, cooking at home and, not surprisingly, eating at home. We had one glorious weekend early in our time in Istanbul when we joined a visiting friend of ours at a couple of scrumptious restaurants (one of which was a “gerçek” (real) American” BBQ place called The Rusty Fork – baby back ribs, pulled pork and bacon – a rare and wonderful treat in a predominantly Muslim country). We also joined her on a food tour in the back alleys near the famed Istanbul Spice Bazaar where we were treated to dürüm – a Turkish wrap usually filled with kebab meat – and pide – a “sort of” Turkish pizza (but not really) – in local haunts that we would never have found on our own.

On that tour, we also tried roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, a traditional pumpkin dessert with a tahini dressing (not so sure we’ll be tasting that again…) and we had a çay (tea) at pretty much every place we went. The Turks love that C drinks tea and she loves that they make sure to always give her lots of sugar cubes to go with it. It was all (except that pumpkin thing) delicious.

Eventually we wound our way back to the Spice Market and I bought WAY too much fennel seed (you’d think I would be adept at using the metric system after 2 years in Australia and 18 or so years in Canada, but alas…) while C was treated to various candies and sweets by the vendors lining the historic covered alleys.

In retrospect, we have been desperately glad that we had that opportunity to do some “outside” eating, because, since then, we’ve been pretty much confined to our apartment for meals. We are very (very) lucky to have a small café in the complex from which we can order pretty good food to be delivered directly to our front door, as well as the myriad of apps in Istanbul that will deliver food to you faster than I sometimes think possible. The delivery from “Getir” is so fast that last week I realized I had forgotten to buy pasta for dinner (spaghetti, so somewhat necessary) and Getir delivered it to me before the noddle water had boiled.

This easy access to ingredients – both from Getir and, every Thursday, from our local bazaar – has fueled our eating/cooking frenzy in the last few weeks (the hours of bingeing on The Great British Bake Off might have had some influence as well…). I’ve made challah several times with our upstairs neighbor, and since my recipe makes two loaves, I’ve also make challah cinnamon rolls several times. Last weekend B decided he was going to master puff pastry – from scratch – so we’ve had two straight weekends with sweet and puffy palmiers for breakfast. I’m working on perfecting my homemade dill pickles, bagels, hummus, ice cream, and chimichurri, and I’ve made it my mission to try to make every type of cake I can find and figure out which one is best. So far I’ve managed angel food, a butter cake, a genoise and a classic “sponge.” Next on my list is a chiffon – but I’ve got to take a bit of a break lest I have to buy a whole new wardrobe for me and B.

Anyone see a sugar/carb theme here?

All this cooking and eating has been a respite – and joy – in the midst of what continues to be for us – and so many people – increasingly difficult and sad days away from our families and friends. The vaccine for COVID has been a light at the end of the tunnel, but with the new variants causing chaos in so many places, it feels a bit as if the train has stopped moving with that pinpoint of light still unreachable in the distance.

Luckily, today I received a copy of Modern French Culinary Art in the mail which, apparently, is the bible of French cooking – so I’ve got a whole new crop of recipes to try. I’m not sure how many of the savory dishes I’ll attempt (open faced pickled tongue sandwiches or chicken mousseline forcemeat (!?) anyone?). But I’m willing to stay home just a little while longer to try out apple (charlotte), pear (à l’Imperiale), plum (pudding), orange (tart), strawberry (chantilly cream), chocolate cake and all the others right through to watermelon (cocktail with wine). With any luck by the time I make it through all the sweet things I want to try we will be able to emerge from this COVID cocoon and our “calipitter” days will be behind us.

Kediler ve Köpekler (Cats and Dogs…)

/ cdncarolina / 5 Comments

I am not a cat person. Or, at least, I have spent most of my life professing not to be a cat person.

This is, in part, because I’m basically deathly allergic to cats. Within minutes of coming in contact with them my eyes start itching, I sneeze uncontrollably, and, most troubling of all, it becomes difficult to breathe. As a result, I have become pretty good at avoiding cats over the years.

However, Turkey is testing my cat avoidance resolve because, well, you just can’t avoid them. Around every corner in Istanbul you are likely to run into a cat – or several cats. Most are wild – although I hesitate to say “feral” since they are fed and cared for by pretty much everyone – and no one in particular.

There are wild dogs too – though they are HUGE and intimidating, and don’t lend themselves to “petting” and fawning over. Some of them seem friendly enough, and most just ignore me as I walk past them, but I’ve had a couple of encounters where I’ve been barked at by a street dog, and, on one occasion, I unexpectedly came face to face with an entire pack (ok, well, maybe 5 dogs…) coming out of some brush as I walked up a road. They left me alone, but I’m not going to lie when I say it took a lot of effort not to high-tail it in the opposite direction.

My observation is that the cats are better treated than the dogs, but overall they are all treated well given that they don’t belong to anyone. Mahatma Ghandi once allegedly said that the “greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated,” and if that is true, then Turkey can be judged pretty highly. All along the streets – both main thoroughfares and alleyways – you see bowls filled with fresh water and small piles of food. Feeding the animals from your table at a restaurant does not seem to be frowned upon and old ladies in the street always look at me fondly when I speak to the cats as I’m walking to and from work.

What’s amazing is that it is not just food and water that are provided. There are cat beds and dog houses in front of the grocery store and in nooks and crannies throughout the city. Cats lounge on the chairs set outside for guests at restaurants – and even those that are for sale outside of our local hardware store. Rather than shoo them away, people stop and pet them and offer them treats. And on our taxi rides around the city I’ve noticed that there is usually at least one ginormous dog sleeping peacefully in the middle of every sidewalk (or sometimes the middle of the street). We’ve also been told that vets do not charge to spay/neuter or take care of injured street cats, which is pretty remarkable to me.

The legends of why cats rule Istanbul (cause basically they do) are varied. One claims that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, would return as a cat. However, since no one knows which cat, they must all taken care of and well treated. Another story holds that Atatürk said “his successor would be bitten on the ankle by an odd-eyed white cat,” so everyone is on the lookout for a crazy looking white cat.

Ataturk?

In Islamic culture cats are also highly regarded and are the only animal allowed to enter the Great Mosque of Mecca. The Prophet Muhammad, in particular, was said to be very fond of cats and, by one account, opted to cut off one of his sleeves so he could rise from his prayers, rather than disturb a cat that had fallen asleep on his robe while he was praying. Another story claims that Muhammad was saved from a snake attack by cat, and that, as a reward, he blessed cats with the ability to always land on their feet. Then again, it may just be that cats keep to themselves and kill rats and mice – a pretty decent reason to keep them around a city with 15 million people.

Even our very private, very enclosed apartment complex can’t avoid Istanbul’s “kedi” life.

When we first arrived there were three kittens (the mother was around, but very good at hiding when anyone came to call) that the children on the complex basically adopted. The kittens were all given names (Ash, Scotch and Bandit) and there were daily excursions to visit them. One of the families took it upon themselves to take all three for shots and to get them bathed/treated for fleas.

As is my habit, I avoided them as much as possible for several weeks. Then one day I met a friend of mine at the “adults only” pool (which sounds much more risqué than it is – it’s really just the quiet pool without screaming children) and one of them, Ash, came and sat in my lap.

I didn’t realize until I sat there, with this sweet, soft, purring kitten in my lap how much I missed the companionship of an animal. The quiet, uncomplicated, unconditional love – even just for that moment – that they give.

This is the first time, in almost my entire life, that I’ve been without an animal. It’s hard to believe but we’re coming up on a year since Miller died, and we’ve vowed not to get a new dog until we finish our tour here. Thinking about that empty place in our lives, in that moment, sitting in the sunshine with that happy kitten in my lap, I wanted to scoop him up and take him back to our apartment and figure out a way to make that feeling last – without the accompanying wheezing and sneezing.

And then, two days later, as I was continuing to work through the logistics of how I could convince B, and not die in the process, the kittens were gone. Their carry case, their bowls and them – gone.

I asked the guard at the gate what happened to them and he told me that some people in the complex don’t like the cats, so they had them taken to a local park. Given that this is Turkey and there a 15 million (minus apparently some scrooge in my apartment complex) cat loving inhabitants in Istanbul I truly believe that the kittens really are in a park as opposed to this being the Turkish equivalent of “we sent the dog to live on a nice farm…” But I have been unexpectedly sad about their departure.

Our adventures this weekend – checking out cisterns (2), the Hagia Sophia and, of course, a kitten.

On my many walks around the neighborhood in the last couple of weeks, I’ve insisted on popping into all the local parks and gardens to see if I could find the kittens and confirm they are ok, but so far I haven’t had any luck. Hopefully, someone else is enjoying their cuddles and treating them as Mohammed would have treated them. In the meantime, we found some other cute kittens to love on our adventures this weekend. Only time will tell whether my allergies (and B) win out, or whether we’ll have a kedi in tow when we leave Istanbul in 2023.

By the way, if you want to learn more about the cats – and dogs – of Istanbul – check out these films.

Istanbuldayim (I am in Istanbul)

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I made it to Istanbul.

In even more exciting news – I have now made it out of my 14-day “self-isolation” unscathed and without COVID, so we are now free (sort of) to explore.

We still have to wear a mask everywhere we go in public (or risk a 900TL (Turkish Lira) – approximately $130 – fine), but that didn’t stop us from taking full advantage of a long weekend.

My first impressions of Istanbul were definitely tainted by our new reality – the airport was basically empty when I arrived, and B and C were not allowed to pick me up, so a Consulate driver took me straight to our residence with no sight-seeing detours (we detoured to see kangaroos when we arrived in Canberra!), and I then spent the next two weeks enjoying the view from our balcony (which, while lovely, mostly overlooks other apartments).

But since our “escape” from the balcony, we have taken full advantage of starting the process of exploring this amazing city. By Sunday morning it was clear to me that there is no way 3 years will be enough time to do Istanbul justice, but we’ll do our best to get to as many places as we can – both in the city – and throughout Turkey.

On Saturday morning we met up with a couple of Consulate folks and headed down to an area called Dolapdere in search of a butcher.

Now, there are a LOT of butchers in Istanbul. Just in the little area near us, we pass one or two “kasaps” (butchers) every block or two – so why travel 20 minutes by taxi to visit a butcher?

Because, according to an article B read, this is the last butcher in Istanbul who sells pork. In many respects, it is not hugely obvious that we are living in a Muslim country – Istanbul in particular is pretty secular, but pork is still not easy to come by, so, for us, a butcher shop with a possible bacon connection was worth the drive.

We ended up buying a couple of pork chops, some prosciutto – and, of course, some bacon. We had BLTs for dinner last night – and the bacon did not disappoint. We’ll try the pork chops later this week and see how that goes, but I have high hopes.  In the meantime, I also just placed an order with an online pork store called IstHAMbul (ha!) – and hopefully in the next couple of days we’ll have more bacon, some chorizo and some pork loin to test. Notwithstanding the ease of ordering online though, I enjoyed visiting the local store and patronizing this “last pork store standing.” 

After leaving Dolapdere, we wandered into Beyoğlu – one of the more touristy areas of Istanbul – and meandered along cobblestone streets checking out the mix of traditional places (carts selling roasted chestnuts, made-to-order fruit juice or simit (basically a Turkish bagel)) and modern stores (H&M, Pandora, Shake Shack). It’s an eclectic area and I am looking forward to going back – for more wandering and some shopping – soon.

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We also got sucked into a little antique shop on a side road and squeezed our way through tables full of silver, old Edison phonographs, and several huge gold colored busts of Ataturk. Our new friends also introduced us to a couple of art stores – where B and I conceded that our plan to *not* buy more art will likely soon be out the window.

Finally, we ended up at a restaurant called Anemon Galata that was on the 5th floor of a boutique hotel and overlooked the Golden Horn of the Bosphorus on one side, and the Galata Tower (built in 1348 – more about some of the historical things later) on the other. It was amazing to walk out and see views that are quintessential Istanbul – and the food was great too.

On Sunday we joined a group of new friends and went out into the Bosphorus on a yacht. We had a huge Turkish “kahvalti” (breakfast) and then just enjoyed the breeze, the views and – for some of us – the water. It was magical.

  • Our boat.
  • Not our boat.
  • Maiden Tower (Kiz Kulesi)

So it turns out I probably won’t have a problem finding things to write about during our tour in Turkey. My bigger problem may be finding the time to write in between all our exploring. Next weekend we hope to check out Taksim Square – and the Grand Bazaar (and some carpets!) – but in the meantime, we’ll enjoy the breeze from the balcony and work on planning our next “escape.”

Catching up

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What a long strange seven months it’s been.

It doesn’t feel like that long ago that I wrote the last blog post about landing back in the U.S. from Australia and how foreign and temporary it all felt. In an irony that will continue to haunt me, in late January we decided we were tired of missing Australia and our friends there, so we started making plans to visit friends, go out to restaurants, do a little traveling, and, generally, make our time in the Washington area feel more concrete and less temporary. We signed C up for skating and gymnastics, we enrolled her in several camps, and we all made some new friends, as well as spending more time with our old friends. We planned a birthday party for her with lots of visiting family, I planned a “girls weekend” with my sister and mother, we made reservations at several excellent area restaurants, and we all got excited looking forward to enjoying our time back home.

And then came March.

I know no one needs me to rehash what we’ve all been experiencing since then. Let’s just say that when I wrote that post about coming home, I never considered that life would feel even more strange and foreign six months later.  But, I can safely say, after being locked down in a pretty small corporate apartment for 5 months without seeing any family or friends (other than on Zoom, of course), that I’ll try very hard never to complain again about feeling isolated when I have the whole world to explore, and everyone I love to hug and visit whenever the mood strikes me.

 

We have been immeasurably lucky during this crazy time. We have jobs. We had somewhere to live. We had our health. Our families all had the same. And our training pretty much went on with barely a blip. We walked out of our classrooms on Friday and were right back in a virtual setting on Monday morning.

I was particularly lucky as I got to continue in Turkish training for an additional two months – enough to get a better score than I needed and, I hope, to ensure that I really can say a few words in Turkish when I arrive in Istanbul in a few weeks. I was also pretty lucky that B decided to try his hand at all kinds of interesting and delicious cooking – including Turkish manti – basically little bitty meat filled ravioli-like bundles of yumminess.

 

The language training department at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) did a really impressive job of pivoting, such that almost all the students I know – in a variety of languages – never missed a beat. I’m not going to lie and say that I preferred being virtual since, even though there are some definite benefits to it, I really missed the human interaction with both my friends and my teachers. Nevertheless, the lock-down’s effect on my learning was negligible, at best, and I’m going to Turkey better prepared than I expected to be.

B definitely got the short end of the training stick, as he had opted to test in Turkish 10 weeks early so that he could get to Post and help out as soon as possible since his position was unfilled at the time. He got the score he needed – and worked hard to get it, but then he didn’t get to leave early and ended up missing out on the extra language training many of us received.

His loss was our family’s gain, however, as he took on primary “Daddy School” duties with C, while I spent 5 hours a day on Zoom – speaking, reading and listening to Turkish. B and C developed a great schedule mixing up school and creative time, with some exercise (once a day they rode bikes to the Lincoln Memorial and back) and a little bit of Zelda playing. C’s Christmas present Nintendo Switch really came in useful during our isolation – as we all (me in particular, if I’m being honest…) spent long hours lost in the world of Zelda, exploring a place where people didn’t have to stay 6 feet away (except from monsters) and weren’t always wearing masks when you saw them.

 

In late June, I wrapped up my language training and B wrapped up his functional training and we spent three glorious weeks in Michigan and North Carolina hiking and hanging out on a beach or two. We *mostly* stayed away from people – making an exception for some family and friends – all of whom had also been in almost constant isolation since March.

 

Unfortunately for me, I still had 6 weeks of “ConGen” functional training to do before I could go to Istanbul, so in July I bid C and B goodbye (and good luck since they were the first people to go to post since March) and they headed to Istanbul. They’ve since survived their 14-day self-isolation, and have started to explore our new neighborhood.

I’ve promised myself that I really will get back to writing here a little more frequently. And, I suspect that, while Istanbul is, as C told me in one of our first calls, “more like American than I expected,” it will also, like Kinshasa, provide me with a rich and vibrant tapestry of new and different foods, people and cultural places to talk about (not to mention the literal Turkish carpet type tapestries that I am hoping to indulge in early and often…).

In the meantime, as anxious as I am to join them, I’ve got a couple of weeks left of ConGen to get through before I can leave. Once I finish learning the ins and outs of visas, passports and “special services” (intriguing, eh?), I’ll be on my way to our newest adventure with pen (or keyboard) – and, of course my mask – at the ready.

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Coming home

/ cdncarolina

7xSwzdEWSa2Ij6Y0fbsT4gIt’s a cruel irony of this Foreign Service life that coming back to the U.S. – home – often seems like the hardest transition we make. I’m not gonna lie, I thought was READY to leave Australia. I felt like I was ready almost before we got there. I cried when we got the assignment and somehow managed to convince myself that my initial disappointment in the posting should translate into two years of, basically, waiting to get home.

And now, here we are and I have come to the realization that our time in Canberra came to an end without me ever noticing how good it was until it was over.

My excuse for not writing for almost the entire time we were in Australia was that I didn’t want to be a negative Nelly. I didn’t want my posts to repeatedly devolve into a list of complaints about how Australia was “just” America light, or “Southern Hemisphere Canada,” and how I couldn’t wait to get back Stateside.

And then, all of a sudden, it was over and we were winging our (long, long) way back across the Pacific. I didn’t shed a single tear when we took off from Sydney. By contrast I bawled from the moment we left our house in Kinshasa until we were well over Gabon.

But now, almost 6 months after getting my American legs back under me I find myself pining for Canberra far more often than I pined for Kinshasa.

IMG_4379I suspect part of what I’m feeling is that in retrospect I’ve realized our Australian tour was wonderful in a million different ways that I was too stubborn to acknowledge while we were in the middle of it. But, in addition to that, I am desperate to get back to feeling “settled.”

Despite my near constant desire to get “home” while we were 10,000 miles away, now that we are back it feels less like a “home” and more like a rest stop.

rest stop

And, really, that is what this is for us – and for all our FS compatriots who are not officially “posted” to Washington. We are technically on “TDY” (Temporary DutY) in DC. Most of our “stuff” is either in storage or waiting patiently for us in (or near) Istanbul. We are living in a furnished corporate apartment – our second since we arrived in August – and we constantly have one eye on the calendar, the news and the things we need to do before we get to Turkey in the summer of 2020.

Oh yeah, in case I haven’t mentioned, our next post – starting at some point in August or September 2020 is Istanbul, Turkey.

So right now, our jobs are, quite literally, to learn Turkish. Every day B and I walk to a building in Arlington and spend 5-6 hours speaking, reading and listening to Turkish. It is çok iyi. But that’s a hikaye for another post.

That which does not kill us

/ cdncarolina / 2 Comments

Life in Canberra got a little more interesting last week. Spring has started springing and the magpies have started swooping.

Yeah, there was that whole other thing with the leader of the ruling party being ousted and a new prime minister being installed in the top Aussie spot, but I’m telling you the magpies are more interesting.

Feathery the Magpie

Feathery

When we arrived in Canberra last October we were given a notebook containing information about our appliances, a check-in list, and lots informational pamphlets about caring for furniture and living in our government owned house. None of this was much different than what we got when we moved into our Kinshasa house – except the sheet detailing the snakes and spiders that want us dead.

spiders

Everyone knows that Australia is full of things that want to kill you. Sharks, crocs, box jellyfish, the deadliest snakes on the planet, many of the most deadly spiders on the planet – they are all out there, lurking behind the next bush, tree or waterhole. But, almost a year in, we haven’t see a single snake (yes, I’m knocking wood right now…). We’ve seen a few spiders, but nothing that has struck fear in our hearts. And, being as we live in the “Bush Capital” we are thankfully far away from all the water-based Down Under terrors.

But, as we round out the first half of our tour, I’m starting to suspect that the things that are really likely to kill you in Australia are things that nobody tells you about.

For instance, there is no sheet in our book for kangaroos. Kangaroos won’t bite and poison you, but there are a lot of them and they are in the middle of the roads.

All. The. Time.

Watch out!

They are basically the equivalent of deer in North America. You round a corner and there they are: kangaroo in headlights. Like deer, roos move in an unpredictable way, so all you can do is slow down and hope for the best. So far I’ve had a coupe of close calls, but I’ve been lucky enough to avoid a kangaroo collision. Still, I’m pretty sure that if I meet my end on this tour, it’ll be because I ran into a big burly kangaroo buck on the road, not because a Red Belly Black snake got me.

And then there are the magpies. At this time of year, magpies strike fear in the hearts of Australians as the males become dive bombing kamikazes attacking pedestrians and cyclists that dare venture too close to their nests. As a result, from August to October, Aussie bike helmets start sprouting zip ties in an effort to ward off attacks, and visits to the website https://www.magpiealert.com/ become more frequent as people from all over the country log on to report areas where they have been swooped.

swooping helmet

Today we received a management notice at the Embassy with safety tips for staying safe from magpies including:

· Travel in groups where possible as the birds often target individuals.

· It is important to try to stay calm, if you panic and flap then this is more likely to appear as aggressive behavior and provoke a further attack.

· Try to protect your eyes with your hands, those large beaks are very sharp and eye injuries have been previously recorded.

· Remember magpies are urban species too, so there is generally no escaping them!

Am I the only one who reads this and immediately pictures Hitchcock’s classic film The Birds?

The Aussie magpie is about the same size as a good sized crow. They’re known for learning to recognize human faces – and remember them for years. They mate for life – and can live for up to 20 years – and establish territories for whole families, which, as a group, are called a “tiding.” As a side note, I can’t decide if a “tiding of magpies” is better than a “mob of kangaroos,” but in my book they both come close to rivaling a “murder of crows” and a “mumeration of starlings” as group names go.

When we moved in last year a small tiding of magpies came to call on us. Over the course of the year our favorite magpie, who C named “Feathery,”  has found a mate and they come to our house every morning, stand on our doorstep and “carol” to us in the hopes that we’ll give them some food – which, often to B’s chagrin, I almost always do.

My hope is that the friendship I’ve built up with Feathery and her family will afford me some immuity from the murderous intent of the local male magpies this swooping season. But, since I suspect I’m in far more danger of injury from my neighborhood magpie than I am from a roaming croc, I’m going to don my zip ties, travel in groups, and check the website…just in case.

Forgetting my place

/ cdncarolina / 3 Comments

Sometimes I forget I’m in Australia. Yeah, there are those kangaroos hopping across the street in the middle of town while I walk up to the U.S. Embassy (really, this happened to me this morning…truly bizarre), but most of the time it just feels like I’m living in Somewhere Else, U.S.A., or maybe Another Place, England, since we are driving on the other side of the road.

Kangaroos at the Embassy

I know it’s not a great picture – but the U.S. Embassy is about 50 ft to the right of this pic – and the roos just hopped right by it in the center of Canberra!

Things are just very normal and predictable and orderly here. Kinshasa was a constant assault on my sense of place. I KNEW 100% every day when I stepped out of my house that I was not in Kansas, or North Carolina, any more. It’s easy to forget that here. Easy to walk through Target and Costco, take C to swimming and other after school activities, and just forget that I’m not in a familiar country that I belong to, and that belongs to me.

But, strangely, there is one aspect of living here that leaves me feeling bewildered every time I try to wrap my head around it. Something about red leaves falling from the trees and chilly mornings requiring gloves and a hat – in May – makes my brain malfunction. Kentucky Derby in the fall and Fourth of July in the dead of winter?! Whaaaaat? My mind just short circuits at the thought.

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Our neighbor’s beautiful maple tree.

It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard to comprehend, especially since I spent the last two years in a constant state of summer. But, for some reason when it’s summer during Christmas and summer during July 4th, my brain was able to adapt. Something about the complete reversal of the seasons is throwing me for a loop. It feels like I should be pulling out my Halloween decorations and starting to think about buying Christmas presents, but instead we just celebrated Cinco de Mayo and are planning Memorial Day celebrations while at the same time pulling out our sweaters and winter coats.

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May hail storm from our front door. Winter is coming…

C is equally confused by having switched things up. Just this morning after I told one of our neighbors that C was in “Year 1” (first grade), she said, “I should be in Year 2.”  I tried to explain that, no, she would still be in first grade in the U.S. (and Kinshasa) because the Northern Hemisphere school year isn’t over yet and she wouldn’t start second grade until September, but that was beyond her ability to comprehend and she just stuck to her guns about being in the wrong grade.

It’s all fine and good now – I just sound a bit stupid when I tell people we are going skiing in New Zealand this summer and they look confused and say “Ah, but you should go in July, the skiing is much better in winter.” Luckily, they can’t see that inside my head there is a little crazy person running around in circles and waving her arms in the air at this kind of comment, so I just keep smiling.

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Someone is ready for skiing in July…

Who knows what will happen when we go back to the Northern Hemisphere – my mind may just implode when it tries to reverse course and think about July as summer again, but I’ll worry about that when the time comes. Since we’ll start bidding for our third tour in the next few months that time may be sooner, rather than later, but, in the meantime, I’m headed to Costco, with my coat and gloves on in May, and maybe I’ll see some kangaroos on the way to help me know my place in the world – at least for today.

Confessions

/ cdncarolina / 2 Comments

I’ve got a confession to make. It’s not as embarrassing as telling you that I haven’t written a blog post in 3 months because I’ve been playing Candy Crush (I swear I haven’t…B says: Yes, she has.) but nevertheless I am going to have to eat some of my literal words. Almost exactly a year ago I got on my high horse here. I really meant what I said then about the State Department taking advantage of family members, and failing to recognise the amazing pool of talent it has at its disposal, but it turns out that, when push came to shove, I wasn’t quite as willing as I professed to follow through on my threats to boycott all State Department employment forever and ever, amen.

Don’t get me wrong, I am still angry about the short-sightedness of the “new” State Department when it comes to hiring family members and I stand by my rant. But, here’s the thing, finding a job on the economy in a new country is hard. Sure, being in an English-speaking country makes it easier, but unless you want to work in retail, or wait tables, it’s not that easy to convince an employer to devote time to orienting and training you when you are going to bug out in – at least for us in our second tour – two years or less.

I told B that I’d just “be a barista” when we got here, but in Australia baristas are REALLY TALENTED. Like, coffee is a religion and it is hard not to worship at its caffeinated, frothy-milked-goodness altar. Starbucks FAILED in Oz – seriously. Unlike in the U.S., where it is shocking to me when I have to walk more than two blocks to find a green mermaid to wake me up, Starbucks came to Australia and it did not conquer. There are a few stores – in purely touristy areas in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – beyond that you can keep your tall, grande and ventis to yourself. Frankly, I am no more qualified to be a barista in Australia, than I am to be a doctor. I did take a barista course – which was seriously SO much fun – but again, coffee = religion, and the priests are cool 20-somethings, not uncool 50-year-old lawyers-cum-SAHMs.

My first few tries…

So what’s a girl to do? I considered reaching out to prior clients and lawyer friends in the U.S. and seeing if they needed overnight proof-reading, drafting, research, etc…, but that 14-hour time difference (which changes varyingly to 15-hour and then 16-hour – thanks, daylight savings) makes life complicated. I considered decorating cakes (after I took that course too), or making things to sell with all the African pagne fabric I brought back with me. But, when it comes right down to it, I know myself and I am not an entrepreneur. I am also much more likely to take the easy way out if it is available to me. I’m the person who Googles “easy” or “quick” before every recipe I’m looking for, so it’s not that shocking that I don’t want to start from scratch and build a new career here – especially one I’ll have to wave goodbye to in 24 months.

Maybe all this is even why I was SO angry about the alleged “corporate welfare” comment and the family member hiring freeze to begin with. The State Department pays a lot of lip service to all the jobs you “could” get as a family member as you uproot your family every two or three years – teach, work for an NGO, work remotely, write, work on the local economy and on and on – but the reality is that the effort, energy and time it would take to prepare for and invest in a new career every 730 days is daunting.

All of this is why, when the hiring freeze was partially lifted and several interesting jobs were posted, I got off my high horse and accepted the reality that, for an EFM who wants to work, but who also wants an employer who understands the vagaries of Foreign Service life there is really only one employer that qualifies – the U.S. Government. Applying and interviewing for a job was an interesting process – especially since the last time I did it was over 20 years ago – but ultimately I was offered the job as the Special Assistant to the United States Ambassador to Australia.

Things are complicated a bit by the fact that currently there is no Ambassador to Australia, but never fear – even without ambassadors, assistant secretaries and a myriad of other higher level State Department positions which have gone unfilled lo these many months, things continue to carry on – both here in Canberra, and in all the U.S.’s overseas missions. Foreign Service Officers, and the EFMs and local staff who work with them, know how to keep diplomacy moving – even when it feels like a rudderless ship. When no Ambassador is appointed to a country then the person who is the second in command, the “DCM” or “Deputy Chief of Mission” in DOS parlance, steps into the representative role as the “Chargé d’Affaires,” which, en anglais, means the “person charged with matters.”

For a little while we did have an ambassadorial nominee, Admiral Harry Harris, the current head of the Pacific Command (or PACOM, which sounds to me like a payday lender, but that’s another story…). A friend of mine “in the know” described Admiral Harris as “the coolest 4-star you’ll ever meet,” and I was looking forward to meeting and working with him, but as of last Wednesday he has been reassigned to be U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, and we will continue to carry on here in Oz with our fantastic chargé at the helm.  In June, assuming no one else is nominated and confirmed in the next two months, he will become my boss and I’m looking forward to working with him too.

In the meantime, things in Australia are good. As depicted in the photos below, we have continued to take advantage of the First World by traveling, enjoying the outdoors, welcoming visitors, and indulging regularly in the conspicuous consumption of food, wonderful Aussie wine, and consumer goods that can be purchased down the road, rather than requiring an Amazon Prime membership and a two-week wait. I promise I will try harder to write more often in the months of unemployment I have left, but you know that Candy Crush, she’s a jealous mistress…

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