The Christmas Letter

Whenever I do Christmas cards, I always include a reference to our blog.  In years past, its been an easy way to catch everyone up on our lives.  The blog was always full and up to date, and folks could read as little or as much as they wanted, to learn as little or as much as they wanted about our comings and goings, and my mental state.

But this year, at this Christmas, our comings and goings have slowed and my mental state is pretty stable.  The blog has been sitting empty these past few months, as there has been little of note occuring in our now typical American lives.  So, I suppose I ought to take a moment to sum up the year for you.

At the beginning of 2012, we lived in Shenzhen - a port city across the bay from Hong Kong, in the south of China.  Dave worked about an hour away from home, and traveled out of the country for weeks at a time.  On this project, he spent time in Abu Dhabi, Morocco and the Philippines.  He enjoyed the new places, but the time away from home was long and difficult for all of us.

Chinese New Year hit in February this year, and we decided to spend it quietly at home.  Dave's travel had been enough for all of us, and a week together in our house sounded perfect.  We took a day to explore Hong Kong Disneyland, a simple taxi ride and border crossing away from our home.  On that day, Dave received the invitation to join the United States Foreign Service.

We left China in March, and our family moved into a serviced apartment in Northern Virginia in April.  Dave was going through a 6 week training course to begin his career as a diplomat.  In May, Dave learned his first post.  His colleagues are in Cape Verde, Nigeria, India and more.  Dave is at the State Department building in Washington, DC.  We settled into our own house with our own things in June.

The first half of our year was a tumultuous whirlwind, and the second half has gone by so smoothly.  Lilly has turned 6 years old.  She is at her third school of the year, where she's enjoying the 1st grade.
Sophia has turned 5 years old.  She is at her second school of the year, and loving Montessori School.  Annika turned 1, and then 19 months, and enjoys her sisters and their friends.  Lilly and Sophia and I chatter quite a lot, so little Annika has felt no need to talk yet.  Lilly and Sophia has made lots of friends this year, and transitioned exceptionally well through all of their changes.  I'm looking forward to their staying relatively stable for the next year, until our next scheduled move.

In December of 2012, our family will move to Venezuela where Dave will work the visa line as a consular officer in the Caracas Embassy.  We hear that the schools there are fabulous, and so we're looking forward to another comfortable home.  We also hear that the crime rates are ridiculous, with murders and express kidnappings alarmingly commonplace, so we're feeling a little nervous.  We also hear that grocery stores frequently lack basic staples, like milk and toilet paper, so we're feeling the need to be well prepared upon arrival.

But Venezuela feels far away right now.  This season, we've filled our house with Christmas decorations and the smell of cookies baking.  We marvel at the Christmas decorations everywhere we go, and we're loving how festive the whole city feels.  We're soaking in the Advent story every night and the teachings and worship from a fabulous church.  We're excited about driving to spend Christmas with family - who we've seen multiple times this year already, and who we expect to visit with more in 2012.  We're resting in America this year, and feeling surrounded by God's blessings.

The Difference

We’ve lived in Northern Virginia for 9 months now.  We have moved 4 times over the last 4 years, and by 9 months we have been so well settled that I felt fully at home where we lived.  In fact, by 10 months I was beginning to plan my next move, so 9 months may have been the most settled at each home so far.  Living abroad, a girl makes fast friends.  Much like summer camp, everyone needs friends right away and we bond quickly.  It’s a very friendly and exciting way to live, and builds my social confidence tremendously.  Abroad, I’m likely to begin a conversation with someone in line at the grocery store and invite them to my home by the time I’m checking out.  In the states, I’m not likely to give more than a passing smile to the person near me in line - possibly I’ll accept a compliment on my cute baby, but nothing more substantial.

I’ve enjoyed making so many friends abroad, but I rarely make friends that I expect to be in touch with more than a year later.  My Christmas card list remains static each year, because people add quickly, but people fall away quickly as well.  It’s the nature of a life where everyone leaves at a moment’s notice.

So here, I’ve been struck by the difference.  I’ve joined a Bible Study at my church.  I liked most of the ladies in the group when I first began, but I left a bit disappointed.  I didn’t feel like we were sharing much with each other.  I didn’t feel like I was getting to know them very well.  I wasn’t really making friends at the beginning.  Its only now, after being in the same group for 4 months, that I’m beginning to build relationships with some of the ladies.  And I feel this happening in other places, too.  Another mom at school, with whom I’ve chatted casually every day, we’ve begun to make plans for the weekend.  Relationships are slowly beginning to build.  And I’m realizing that this is how it works.  Friendships don’t usually happen so quickly - they build upon shared experience, upon shared history, upon shared interest, upon honestly enjoying each other’s company.  I love the erasure of these things abroad - I don’t choose my friends, and I don’t judge my friends harshly.  But I’m enjoying the natural of these things here.  I have things in common with my friends here, and I can sit and talk about any number of things with them.

It makes part of me wish that we could stay here long-term.  I was nervous about living on the East Coast - how could it be as friendly as the Midwest?  But Virginia takes it cues from the South, and I have found it to be a very warm and welcoming community.  I would enjoy the chance to build relationships with the women I’m getting to know.  I’m sad to realize that the moms at school will follow each others kids through the next few years of school, and that the ladies at church could remain in the same Bible Study through the next few cycles.

I love the lifestyle that we have chosen, and I love the joy of meeting new people and building those relationships regularly.  But this month, I’m hungering for more.  I’m hungering for those relationships that build slowly and over a much longer period of time, because they build to be so much taller.  And I’m thankful for the relationships I still have with friends from high school.  I love that these people have been my friends for over twenty years.  They know where I’ve been, what I’ve struggled with, how well I’ve succeeded, and they can spell the names of all of my kids.  I’ve got that history with them - but I only see them once a year.  I suppose the grass will always be greener somewhere else.

Nearing the Countdown

Close friends will leave in a few weeks.  He went through A-100 with Dave.  While Dave was posted to D.C. first, our friend was posted to the Embassy in Cape Verde.  While Dave began working straight away, our friend continued in school and completes his Portugese studies with a test on Friday afternoon.  His household has already been packed up and shipped off to Africa.  They have arranged their plane tickets.  They have their black passports and their shots.  They have an arrival date for him, places for the family to stay while they wait for him to prepare their housing, and the first day of school has been arranged for their kids.

In walking with them through this adventure, it occurs to me that I will follow their trajectory one year later.  At this point, we expect Dave to arrive in Venezuela at the end of December next year.  That puts us at very nearly one year away from our departure, and the end of this season.  This date seems rather abstract to me - a year is an awfully long time.

Correspondence from the Caracas Embassy has made me realize that its closer than I think.  We received some wonderful correspondence from the CLO at the Embassy.  In the Foreign Service, the CLO is the Community Liaison Officer.  The CLO is not a Foreign Service Officer, but I believe he or she is generally the spouse of an officer.  Her job is to be the liason between the community and the embassy - this is an important job in a lifestyle where Dave’s employer will control most of our life.  Uncle H-- never provided any such liaison, and I must admit to looking forward to having such a contact person.  She sent a fabulous letter beginning to prepare us for the next season in our lives.

Venezuela is a consumables post.  That means that we have a budget for shipping in any grocery items that we may need, up to a certain weight.  The CLO shared that Venezuela experiences frequent shortages on staples like milk and paper towels.  Apparently they have loads of wonderful fresh fruit, but no lemons and no berries.  Apparently nearly everything is much more expensive there than here, and so she advised us to take full advantage of our consumables allocation.  Such a wonderful benefit - no more lugging chocolate chips and salsa in my luggage every time I travel back from the states!  But a crazy benefit as well.  How do I determine how much flour I use over a 2 year period?  What about how much honey or chicken stock?  My ultra-organized brain wants to set up a spreadsheet, and track all grocery purchases over this year to know what we use annually.  My mother brain knows that I would never keep up with it.

We have also received our Housing Questionnaire.  Each American embassy manages some sort of a housing pool.  In Venezuela, the housing pool is made up of high-rise apartments near the embassy.  Assignment of these apartments is by rank, family size, seniority, and luck of arrival.  But to avoid some of that luck, all 2012 new arrivals are asked to complete a Housing Questionnaire and return it within the next few days.  We are expecting a 3-bedroom apartment, and hoping that its near the school and the embassy.  Commute time is generally the highest priority in our household, and I’m excited that the embassy and the school are near each other.

We don’t have an arrival date set yet, although I imagine we will soon.  We don’t know yet whether or not Dave will arrive before the girls and I, although we may know soon.  Many things are still abstract, and the current goals are still primarily to study Spanish and to build up our kitchen and our spring and summer wardrobes.  But a deadline will be coming.

Getting To Work

Living someplace temporarily always give a different outlook.  Every good idea either begins or ends with “before we leave.”  We did a pretty good job of checking some of those off of our list.  We’ve already been to the beach and to Colonial Williamsburg.  We’ve begun checking off the museums of the Smithsonian, and we’ve eaten loads of burgers and milkshakes.  We’ve begun to stock our kitchen with wonderfully useful, long-lasting kitchen tools, although that list seems to grow faster than it shrinks.  We’ve begun the dirty work as well.

I have begun a relationship with an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor.  After facing sinus infections abroad, where I had little trust for my doctors and even less trust for my prescribed medication, I decided to seek a better answer to the problem.  I’ve been referred to a Speech Pathologist (rather interesting) and to an Allergy Nurse so far, and am on my fifth dose of antibiotics for the calendar year.  My understanding is that each Embassy employs a nurse or even a doctor to serve the Embassy community, and that many people feel comfortable using them as their family doctor.  I am looking forward to the rest that will come from having our medical professional provided when we arrive, but I’m taking advantage of specialists while we’re here.

The girls are taking advantage as well.  Little Annika has been to a Speech Therapist and an Audiologist, as she has not begun speaking yet.  Although we spend a lot of time running around meeting appointments and making them fit into everyone’s schedules, I am thankful to be surrounded by such a wealth of medical professionals.  Dave and I have been to a psychologist for advice on raising our kids, after some serious behavior issues have arisen in our household.  We figured that discipline issues are best addressed when the kids are young.  But also, that this connection may be valuable in the years to come, with all of the stress we have planned for our girls.

Also, Lilly and I have begun studying Spanish.  She takes an after-school class twice a week.  I work on Rosetta Stone whenever I can snatch half an hour.  My goal for Lilly is that she gain enough vocabulary to recognizes snatches of words and phrases once we arrive, giving her the confidence to learn more.  My goal for myself is to build my vocabulary and a bit of an ear for the language through this school year.  Once Sophia begins kindergarten in the fall, my schedule will open up considerably and I hope to begin a more intensive Spanish course that last semester here.

It is my goal for everyone in our family to speak Spanish by the time we leave Venezuela.  Annika will have no trouble - I hope she can attend a bilingual school when she is ready for preschool, and I plan to have her spend some time with our Spanish speaking ayi during the day.  I hope that Lilly and Sophia can build a relationship with ayi as well, and I expect they will have Spanish in school every day.  For myself, I hope to have enough language to get by when I arrive.  If I never train myself to work in English there, my language skills will build quickly.

The work has begun, but within a season of rest and plenty.  The goal is just to be diligent.

Adrenaline Junkie

I may have become an adrenaline junkie.  As compared to the chaotic intensity of the past few years of my life, the relative calm of the past few months is making me crazy.  Coupled with some real behavior problems and far too many minutes spent in the car with a cranky baby, I think I may be losing my mind.  After a rough bedtime this evening, I grabbed my computer and walked straight out of the house.  Only once I had pulled onto the highway did I realize that I have no idea what's open for computer-starers and headphone-wearers at 9:00 at night in my part of town.  The best I could find was a Barnes & Noble in Clarendon.  It doesn't make me feel any more interesting or adventurous, but it gets me out of the house, listening to my own music, and thinking my own thoughts until they close in an hour.

Actually, quite a few wheels have been set in motion within our household lately, and I have a number of half-written posts jostling around in my mind.  My organizational tendencies beg me to sit here and write a few different blog postings, keeping my thoughts need and tidy.  Lets just see if that happens.  But to run with the current theme, I must admit that now that we have settled into a quiet life in the suburbs, I'm getting awfully bored.  We haven't traveled for longer than a day since summer, and my feet are beginning to itch.  We live just close enough to the city to make me hungry for it, but just far enough away that I don't know which restaurants to explore or which places are kid-friendly.  I don't know which bars or coffee shops are open at 9pm on a Monday night.  It seems that I am itching for some major stress to arise, bring on another adrenaline rush, and make me start running again.

Dear Santa Claus

I've inadvertently recycled both of their letters to Santa this year.  But I think they were particularly fabulous this year, so posterity (and all of our friends and family) can view them digitally.


From Sophia:

Dear Santa,
I think that I'm only kind of nice.  Santa, I wish I get a good present.  I want a new puppy dog, some flowers, a teapot set, the stuff to be a witch (a real witch).  I want to know how to plant flowers.  I would like some Christmas placemats.  I want some more music cause I like to dance.  Christmas music, and Chinese music, and hopping music.  I want some drawing things like a box of markers with a bag of paper.


From Lilly:

Dear Santa.
I have been pretty good.  What I want for Christmas is a scooter, a basket for my bike, my own flashlight, clothing for my Lovey Bear, a new easel, a new real puppy, I want a fun zuh zuh pet town set.  I am going to put out cookies and milk for you.  And carrots for your reindeer.