A (Still Fairly) Elite Club

As diplomats who have been PNGed (kicked out of the country where they serve), we belong to an elite club.  Although it happens occasionally, it doesn't happen to very many people.  Not everyone knows an officer who has been PNGed.

Unless, of course, you have served in Caracas.  President Maduro of Venezuela has kicked out 8 American diplomats in under a year.  Of those, three families only learned early this week that they would be in DC by now.

This afternoon, we hosted a party which required an exclusive ticket.  We enjoyed tacos and beer with a group of folks who had all originally planned to still be serving in Caracas today.  It was a full house, and I wish I could document here all of the stories that I heard and the conversations in the room - but they are not my stories to tell.  My story was posted here back in October, and I was struck today by how different each story is.  Coming back and worrying about a spouse's career is totally different from worrying about school-aged kids or from worrying about the people you left behind.  But everyone could identify with the wildness of leaving quickly, and could identify the time they realized they could be in danger, and the moment they felt safe.  For the record, it never occurred to me that we were in any real danger until a few days after we arrived in the US.

Watching Venezuela on the news and online this week has been painful.  Protests are happening in the places where we shopped and ate and drove regularly.  I can easily identify so many of the places, and can so easily picture them with real people going about their lives.  So many of my information gaps are filled with photos and comments posted on Facebook, which bring the news to a much more personal level - one of children's routines being disrupted and of families searching weeks to find fruit in the stores.  I feel for my American friends, who must be living in constant stress right now - with the threat of being forced out of the country at a moment's notice added to the challenges of getting food for your family and being barricaded away from medical facilities.  And my heart breaks for my Venezuelan friends, who don't have an escape route if things get out of control, who feel at home in such a beautiful place that they have no desire to leave, and who are watching their neighborhoods fill with protests and with tear gas and their country slip away.

I don't feel guilty for having left - it wasn't our choice, and our family is happy now in Virginia.  But I feel this magnetic pull in my gut toward Venezuela, this feeling like I should be there.

Our Good Girl

Little Annika is 3 and 1/2 years old, and she is about the best little girl you'll ever meet.  She's well behaved and has a sweet disposition, but she's also outgoing and very funny.  She'll introduce herself to people without hiding behind my legs, and frequently she will use the wrong name just to be silly.

But the past few days have been exhausting.  She's fighting a tiny little cold, and she's not getting her naps in.  Her sisters have been home all day because of the snow, and so we've all been moving nonstop.  And poor little Annika is getting very tired.  As a result, her behavior has been less than perfect this morning.

On our way back from the park for a nap this afternoon, she said sadly to me, I wish I was a grown-up.

Why do you wish that? I asked.

Because grown-ups never yell and scream, and so I would never yell and scream and I would always be a good girl.

Even on her bad days, she still surprises me by how good she is!

Our October Story

I've found myself telling our story a few times lately, and it occurs to me that I never posted it here.  I posted the reasons we were kicked out of Venezuela here, but I finished that post with the promise to tell the rest of the story another time.  And so, as I begin placing my head firmly in Indonesia, I will first share the end of our time in Caracas.

Feel free to refresh yourself above on the occurrences leading up to that Monday afternoon, but suffice it to say that Dave had been traveling the week before on official business.  We were just coming off of a relaxing, family-filled weekend and everyone was back into our normal 8-5 routine again.  Dave was at work, the girls were at school, and Annika and I were at home.  At 4:00, just as I was watching out our window for the bus to drive up the street with Sophia on board (Lilly was staying after school), Dave called.

When I answered, I took the phone to the window to watch for the bus.  He asked if I was sitting down.  This seemed awfully dramatic for Dave, and I was ready for Sophia's bus to arrive any minute, so I told him to stop being silly and get to the point.

We've been PNGed, he said.

Persona Non Grata is a person who is not welcome in a country by that country's government.  This had happened to another family a few months prior, so PNG was common terminology in our circles.  I laughed it off, and asked why he was really calling.

This went on for some time, Dave telling me he was serious in a rather shaky voice and me laughingly not believing him.  Now, as it happens, he had called on the house phone.  My cell phone was sitting on the table next to me.  As he assures me this is no joke, my cell phone buzzes.  Erin, a friend at the embassy, has just texted something akin to OMG!  I just heard!  Are you okay?  This is crazy!

Now, Dave is no prankster.  It was possible that he could fake me out on something, but he is not the type to enlist others in a prank.  Wait, as I stared at the phone, are you serious?

That's when I saw the bus.

As I stepped into the elevator to go downstairs, my phone began ringing again.  Being in the elevator, I couldn't answer.  I picked up Sophia and she and Annika and I went into the back garden for them to run around and blow off some after-school energy.  Within minutes, Anne was at the gate.  When I didn't answer the phone, she simply walked over.  She sat with me for an hour while the little girls swam in the pool and we waited for both Lilly and Dave to come home.

I remember this as an almost eerie calm before the storm.  Although I knew that I had more to do over the next 48 hours than would be humanly possible, it also seemed clear to me that at that moment it was important to allow Sophia and Annika to swim and play.

Anne left with the promise to help any way she could.  Dave and Lilly got home, and we quickly took Anne up on her offer.  We walked all three of the girls to their house for a surprise dinner date.  As Anne and Jesse are favorites of everyone in our family, this idea went over gangbusters and Dave and I easily disappeared back to our apartment to begin putting our heads in order.

Honestly, I'm not sure what we did with those hours.  But when the girls came back at 8:30 - their normal bedtime - our heads were in a better place and we were ready to break the crazy news to them.  We told them that the president of Venezuela had asked us to leave, and that tomorrow would be their last day of school.  Lilly bawled - the poor girl had struggled to feel comfortable at school in Caracas, and to quit now for another new school seemed like too much for her to handle.  Sophia felt excited about the airplane, and Annika felt excited about the hotel.  The younger two went to sleep looking forward to a great adventure.  Lilly didn't go to sleep at all.

The next day was simply amazing.  Lilly and Sophia went to school.  I had emailed both of their teachers about the situation, and they worked magic.  Each class had a farewell party with snacks and parting gifts.  Their classmates signed their uniform shirts and put together books with a message from every child.  They finished their day feeling valued and all smiles.  Dave spent much of the day at the embassy, quickly cleaning out of his desk, handing off projects to others, and setting in motion all sorts of projects which would have to be carried out by others.  Projects like having flights for future vacations cancelled and arranging for shipments.  He managed to sell our car within the day, which was an amazing blessing for us (but not yet a blessing for the family who bought it).

And I began packing.  Jeannine, another friend, had emailed me the night before with a schedule.  Friends had signed up for 2 hour shifts all through the day, and they began showing up at 9am with food.  Helpers stayed until midnight that night.  One gal picked up Annika and kept her until our Farewell Party late that afternoon.  Everyone else simply broke down the house.  We designated rooms for different items.  Everything in our master bedroom would be packed and carried with us to America.  Everything in Annika's room would be packed into an air shipment and sent to us as soon as possible (we received it in December).  Everything in the guest room would be packed into a sea shipment and meet us at our next post (we expect to see it around October of this coming year).  And everything else would be sold.  There was a lot of moving things in and out of rooms, and up and down stairs.  A lot of laundry to be quickly done, and folded and piled into the master bedroom for luggage.  A lot of toys needed to be organized and pricing needed to be discussed.  And a lot of hard decisions needed to be made very quickly - do you want to keep this?  what about this?  are you sure?

We broke around 3:00 to pick up the girls from school and say farewell to an amazing staff and faculty.  As a family, we headed to the embassy for a Farewell Happy Hour, and then we dropped all three girls with two family friends from church.  Once we got back home, we put the girls to bed and told our volunteer helpers to go home.  Anything left would have to go undone.  Much to their credit and to our very good luck, they refused to leave.  Jeannine and Grisel packed our bags late into the night, while we were still up backing up the computer and snatching old family videos from the Sell pile.

Dave and I spent about 3 hours in bed that night before heading to the airport the next morning.  And here is the next amazing part of our story.  At this time, flights could not be bought out of Caracas at a moment's notice.  One of the surprising aspects of the current economic system is that it can be very difficult to get a flight out of Venezuela.  But United found 9 seats on the first flight out of town that morning, and although they didn't bump us to Business Class they did give us access to the Admirals Club, where our overtired and highly stressed children had the privilege of disturbing many a quiet businessman from his morning newspaper.

Our day as superstars continued when we landed in - golly, I have no idea where we laid over.  But when we left the plane, officers from Homeland Security were waiting to escort us to our next flight.  They did this as a courtesy, and it was lovely.  They carried our luggage, they moved us to the front of every line, and they chatted with us through the airport.  Had we been there on a high travel day, it would have been particularly exciting.  But even on a quiet day, we appreciated the help and the gesture.

We landed in DC and were met by someone from the Andean desk at the State Department.  He and his son very graciously carried our bags and our sleepy children to a hotel just down the street from the Main State Department offices.  Where we slept.

It must have been 9:00 when we arrived, if not later.  As it always does, it took quite a while to get our bags and our children into our room and into suitable sleeping attire and into suitable sleeping places.  And by the time all of that was done, we were all exhausted.  And we all slept.

Cabin Fever

February has sunk its claws into our household, and I am going crazy.  Thankfully, no one in our house has been sick.  However, bugs seem to be landing in other people's homes with some frequency, leading to many cancelled play dates this past week.  Annika and I have been spending too much time at home, playing with toys and getting stuff done and being generally chill.  And by the end of an isolated week of chilling in the house, I'm finding myself with far too much energy and far too short of a fuse.  No doubt, those hot cups of tea and coffee are not helping.  Cabin fever is making me crazy, and leading me to seek out new projects.

The funny thing is that our temporary status here rather precludes me from many projects.  The apartment rarely needs cleaning, we keep the pantry scant enough that I only bake when I've planned ahead, and classroom volunteer positions were all snatched up before we arrived in town.

Annika is enjoying this slow pace, where she can paint with me for a while, eat some lunch and then go off and play on her own until Dinosaur Train comes on.  And so I've been seeking out constructive ways to pass my time from our 18th floor apartment.

Last night, we shared dinner with another family on their way to Jakarta.  Like us, they will arrive this summer.  And like us, they have young kids.  Our kids raced around their house while we chatted and got to know each other.  I left the evening excited about these new friends, and much more interested in Indonesia.

Dave thinks I should begin studying Indonesian language, and he is probably right.  But until we find a tool that only takes half of my attention, I'm afraid that full-on studying is unlikely.  However, I have found myself reading a lot over the past few weeks.  And so I've decided that its time to begin studying Indonesia.  I've got a few books on my nightstand already, and I've just ordered a few more.  Project for February: Indonesia 101.

Point Taken

I've been keeping this blog for years now.  To be exact, my first post was in February of 2007.  I began it to chronicle our life overseas, and that first post explained our choice to move to China.  I used it as a journal, to keep a record of our life but also to vent my frustrations and my explorations of this new and sometimes crazy place.

While in Venezuela, my writing was censored twice.  The censoring was both angering (free speech!) and exciting (how dramatic!).  I began to understand that people reading my blog could interpret my words as representative of American diplomats and possibly the US government.  But I had a rather academic and cynical attitude toward my need to post responsibly.

So, here's where we were lucky.

The latest couple to join our little club of expelled diplomats are leaving India amidst much press.  Their Facebook accounts were hacked into, and plenty of people are finding insult in the casual things these diplomats wrote online to their friends.  A rather angry someone put together a tumblr page called Racist American Diplomats where he highlights things this man and woman said on Facebook, and explains how offensive they are.

I don't know these people, but I can easily identify with the urge to write my thoughts and feelings in a friendly forum.  By definition, a foreign country will feel strange and unfamiliar - and it is typical to both love the place you live and also find it frickin' crazy.  But their writing is being used to portray American foreign policy as racist and to vilify these two individuals.

“To be sure, most of the exchanges are frivolous and typical of social media tattle. But given the sensitive positions they occupied in the US embassy, they are, particularly in hindsight, astonishingly offensive,” the Times of India said.

Point taken.  Nothing on the internet is private, and neither a blog nor Facebook are exclusively personal.  And, probably, just don't say things that could hurt someone else's feelings.

What We're Watching - "The Act of Killing"

We invited Dave's Indonesian language class over last night to watch The Act of Killing, a documentary about the death squads in Indonesia following a failed coup in 1965.

The film is visually and surprisingly beautiful, in a surreal way.  The story is gruesome and shocking.  Although the death squads have ceased, their leaders remain in power, brag about modern  extortion and exploitative power and glorify their history of murder.

The director has said that "the film is essentially not about what happened in 1965, but rather about a regime in which genocide has, paradoxically, been effaced [yet] celebrated – in order to keep the survivors terrified, the public brainwashed, and the perpetrators able to live with themselves".

It is less a story about the history of Indonesia or about the modern country, and more about how people live with themselves after killing hundreds people with impugnity.  Its heavy.

I am only slightly interested in Indonesia at this point.  Last evening's party included all people who are studying Indonesian, and me.  They asked if I was studying the language yet.  I couldn't think of a good way to say no.  Amusingly, the conversation soon moved to scuba diving - a great way to spend your weekends in Indonesia.  When asked, I shared my fear of scuba diving (no escape route!) and expressed to these childless new diplomats that I'd rather snorkel on top of the water with my kids.  Empathetically, one gal said she would rather just go down in a submarine - to which I had to reply that I doubt you could pay me to ride in a submarine.  Talk about missing an escape route!  The conversation turned away from me and my many fears at that point.  I may not have made the strongest first impression.

So, I learned that Dave's classmates are very nice but have very little in common with me (they looked confused when we pulled Felicity: An American Girl out of the DVD player).  I learned that Indonesia may have some issues with multiculturalism and revisionist history.  And watching a scene with someone driving a car, I learned that in Indonesia people drive on the left!  So, in Jakarta we will face some of the world's worst traffic and some of the world's heaviest pollution... all with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car!

Our Week in Food

Alright, folks.  I'm no food blogger.  I have no idea how folks manage to both prepare a delicious meal for their family and take beautiful photographs of the process.  But we spent our holiday eating some really good food, and we stopped a few times to take photos of the deliciousness.

On Christmas Eve, Dave made a feast.  He fixed the best turkey ever and some madgood stuffing.  The rest of the food was simply color surrounding the turkey, gravy and stuffing.  Unfortunately, we did not photograph any of it - far too busy cooking it, and then feasting over it with friends.

But Christmas Eve was the last day with an agenda.  So, without anything better to do, we began photographing our food.

Christmas Day:

The roast was decadently good for Christmas dinner.  But it was even better on a warm roll with some gravy poured on top a few days later.  And the thing to eat with a roast?  Yorkshire pudding, of course.

Now, remember that amazingly good turkey we ate on Christmas Eve?  We ate so much of it that we had very little leftover turkey.  But there was enough to throw together a rather amazing turkey and mashed potato pie.

And once we finished the turkey, here's what we did with the leftover stuffing and cranberries.

I mean, I was proud of the turkey and mashed potato pie.  That was delicious.  But let me tell you how amazing this breakfast was.  First, we made the stuffing into patties.  Yep - that's lightly fried stuffing.  Amazing.  And then, we poached eggs.  I know, right?  We poached eggs!  Okay, so we put these beautiful poached eggs on top of the stuffing patties, and then topped the whole thing with a dollop of gravy and a good spoonful of cranberry sauce.  This breakfast is the entire reason I am looking forward to next Thanksgiving.

And here's the other thing we did over the break.  We cooked.  We ate.  We played with toys.  And we puppy-sat this little cutie.