May was a month of celebrations, from the visit of my eldest stepdaughter, to a 10-year anniversary with approximately one-fifth of our original A-100 class, to marking the centennial anniversary of the Foreign Service on the rooftop of the Watergate in Washington, DC.
We started the month with a visit from my stepdaughter A. At 25 years old, she’s done with grad school, recently engaged to be married, and in the world living and working as a “real” adult. It’s heartening to see, and I was happy when she told us she was buying a plane ticket and coming up for a long weekend of family and quiet time. Understanding as all reasonable, Western parents and stepparents do that no visit by adult children is “owed” but very much hoped-for, I felt grateful and lucky that of all the things she could spend money on, she wanted to come and see us enough to prioritize a trip.
So we planned a mix of fun things to do balanced with down time for her own work and a break from regular life. We had a good time barbecuing in our side yard, riding around town, cooking at home, and discussing A’s recent marriage proposal from her partner of over five years. We also took jaunts to the International Spy Museum in its newish L’Enfant location and went back to an old haunt restaurant we’d frequented during the girls’ childhood for our Tex Mex favorites.
I also joined up with two of my 178th A-100 colleagues over the course of several weeks in April and May to plan our 10-year reunion gathering. As a committee, we decided to hold it May 18 at a local northern VA brewery.
Amazingly, we ended up having 19 of our original 100 members attend, and considering how many of us are overseas at any given time (and how many have since retired, resigned, transferred outside the Department, or converted to Civil Service), one-fifth was a terrific number. We had 17 partners and children attend too, so all in all, it was terrific fun to reunite and catch up, and a big success.
I “administered” a copy of the FSOT from 1925 to some of my colleagues once we’d had a few drinks. I was not really surprised to find out they were as smart on esoteric WWI-era politics as they are in today’s context. (Not sure I can say the same for myself.)
Our class’s decade milestone in the Foreign Service coincided, of course, with the Centennial as I mentioned in a prior post. There were a variety of anniversary events to mark the Centennial around Washington.
One event was hosted by our union, the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) on the rooftop of the well-known Watergate Hotel. (Yes, that Watergate, next to the Kennedy Center along the Potomac River in DC.)
At $30 per ticket the cocktail party was much cheaper to attend than the lottery to spend $250 on gala tickets. As my tour in Children’s Issues was drawing to a close, it occurred to me I might not do another domestic tour before retirement. Why give up a chance to attend a fun Washington event when there have been so few in recent years? So I grabbed my husband V and a colleague and friend S, and we enjoyed the evening.
Collecting Postcards 
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