Last week, we finished week four of the Burmese language course. We’re just one-eleventh of the way through (ha!), but I’m already acutely aware of the hamster wheel I’m running on.
Author: pennypostcard
Building a Foundation: Learning Burmese, Weeks 2-3
Week three of my 44-week Burmese class is drawing to a close. In this short time, we’ve progressed from hand-drawing consonants to reading strings of script, sounding out words we don’t know like kindergarteners. We’ve even written some little paragraphs on easy topics.
Into a Bigger Bowl: Learning Burmese, Week 1
Last Tuesday – after the Labor Day holiday – over 650 shiny new students with language-designated onward positions arrived at the Foreign Service Institute to begin language training. I was one of them.
But Who’s Counting?
Last week marked the eighth consecutive week of summer tradecraft training that bridged the end of my tour in Children’s Issues to the start of Burmese language studies. It also marked the final week.
To Its Rightful Place
I believe that when someone passes away, especially at a young age, those who knew them have a responsibility to share their memories with the deceased’s family as much as possible. Once a person is gone, memories of them become incredibly precious. Whether something tangible like photos, letters, or mementos, or intangible like stories and reflections, every memory becomes part of a finite legacy—everything that remains is all there will ever be.
Every mourner experiences the loss of a relationship with the deceased that was theirs alone: irreplaceable, and deeply personal. Each person who loses someone loses a unique version of that person only they knew, and in some way, part of themselves along with it. Sharing memories, even if painful, forms part of the lasting echo of the individual. It helps to preserve their essence in the hearts of those left behind.
Lucky FSO Numbers: 50 and 20
Earlier this month, I celebrated 19 years of federal service, which includes over a decade at the Department and the remainder split between my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer and my federal civilian roles at the Voice of America and Peace Corps Headquarters.
My federal service anniversary milestone brought to mind two significant numbers for Foreign Service Officers (FSOs): 50 and 20. Often referred to as the “50/20” rule (spoken as “fifty and twenty”), these numbers signify an FSO’s retirement eligibility.
(The Rising Cost of) Family Fun in America
Last summer and again this summer, my husband V and I revisited Water Country USA in Williamsburg, VA, for the first time in several years. Water Country USA, a waterslide park owned by SeaWorld, is located about 150 miles south of Washington, DC. The drive takes us almost two and a half hours each way, depending on traffic, making it an easy day trip by our standards.
We first visited the park in 2010, the year I finally bought my VW. At the time, my stepdaughters—now in their 20s and living on their own—were still in elementary school.
While Water Country USA holds fond memories for me, I wasn’t prepared for how much the cost of family fun in America has skyrocketed nearly 15 years later. I’m still baffled by how people manage to afford it.
End of an Era
A few weeks ago, we said goodbye to our trusty 2015 Toyota 4Runner. We’d purchased the red truck as a second vehicle four years earlier – almost to the day – during summer 2020. It had been the height of the COVID pandemic and mere days before we were due to head out to my third tour in Ciudad Juárez. We’d barely had enough time to complete Virginia’s mandatory safety inspection sticker before we’d loaded up both of our vehicles and started our PCS road trip to the border.
Back to School
I’ve just completed my first three weeks of Rangoon pre-departure training at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). The one-week courses were for mid-level consular managers and covered fraud and malfeasance (PC541), immigrant and nonimmigrant visas, (PC557), and American Citizens Services matters like crisis management and citizenship (PC558).
Know the Signs
In addition to ending my fourth tour and traveling to the west coast to see family, I did two other important things in Washington, DC in June. I had an opportunity to march in the Capital Pride Parade as a volunteer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), and I went to a work-related training on atrocity prevention at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).
Both the volunteer work and the training provided opportunities to reflect on important signs we may see that things are going wrong – before it’s too late.
The Storm Before the Calm?
In mid-June, as I finished my fourth tour, my husband V and I took a quick weekend trip to South Carolina. The occasion was an engagement party for my eldest stepdaughter A, who in April had become engaged to her longtime partner B. The following weekend, seizing likely my last opportunity for the foreseeable future to visit the west coast, I flew out and spent two weeks with my parents. I’d worked out the leave before my training schedule began in earnest by offering to stay in Children’s Issues an extra six weeks to cover a staffing gap, provided I could take time off at the end.
The subtext of both trips felt a little “last hurrah.” Obviously not in the sense I wouldn’t see family again, but because I was preparing to buckle down into more than a year of full-time, in-person pre-departure training at the Foreign Service Institute. Taking leave during training usually isn’t feasible, particularly as I was starting the first couple months of my schedule with a series of short classes I needed to attend each day of. Unless I potentially tacked leave on to Christmas when FSI was closed or a rest stop during my PCS to Asia itself, outside of holiday weekends I would be unlikely to get back to the west coast before heading to my next tour in Burma.
I had envisioned my recent travels as vacation and relaxing family time, but predictably, they passed in a blur. While I was still the master of my own schedule and had a lot of fun, the past month didn’t exactly feel like down time. As my flexibility to be outside of Washington dwindled, I wondered if my trips were the calm before the storm, or the storm before the calm.
Zero Miles Later
Yesterday I ended my fourth tour in the Office of Children’s Issues. And as I’ve mentioned recently, in an end-of-tour first, I will be PCSing to exactly nowhere in the coming days. Since my orders are from a domestic assignment to an overseas assignment via long-term training, we’ll spend the next year living in our same house. I’ll just pivot from working in DC to working in Arlington. I won’t be entitled to PCS Lodging or per diem as I train up for my one-year assignment to Burma.
I’m telling myself it’s just a bonus that we won’t have to move three times in three years.
May Flowers
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.
An End of Tour First…
…At least, for me. I am about three weeks away from finishing my fourth tour in the Office of Children’s Issues in Washington. I’m in a busy period of time at work. But it hasn’t escaped me that at this point during every prior tour, I was working and buried in preparations for Permanent Change of Station (PCS) moves.
By comparison, my to-do list now – while never finished – seems manageable. I do have some trepidation about going into 13 months of full-time training, particularly 10 months of Burmese language class. Going from 60% remote to 100% in-person will pose challenges too – logistical, mental, and personal. But for the time being, I’m grateful to wrap up a tour for the first time without the stress of an overseas PCS move looming days away.
Happy Centennial, Foreign Service
May 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the modern United States Foreign Service. It doesn’t mark the beginning of American diplomacy, which traces back to the beginning of our young union, but rather the passage of the Rogers Act of 1924. The Rogers Act, also known as the Foreign Service Act of 1924, joined the diplomatic and consular services of the United States. (Personnel of the former staffed embassies and legations around the world; the latter primarily promoted trade relations overseas and assisted distressed U.S. sailors – a precursor to today’s American Citizens Services consular work.)
The two services had evolved separately under former Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, and in merging them the provisions of the Rogers Act created a more merit-based Foreign Service. The new structure provided more reliable pay, a guaranteed rotation process to keep officers from “going native” in their countries of assignment (complete with mandated stateside home leave between foreign tours), and updated policies around officer selection, promotion, and retirement.
Collecting Postcards 