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.