Category: Foreign Service

Gone From My Sight, Part II

by pennypostcard • November 30, 2023 • 6 Comments

[This is a companion piece to a post I wrote in August 2023.]

The second week of October, I arrived in Washington state to help my dad take care of my stepmom L in what I now know was her final six weeks of hospice. She was battling pancreatic cancer – one of the scariest and most intimidating illnesses imaginable.

I don’t think of her as having lost a battle with cancer, but sadly, she did die in mid-November. In the weeks leading up to her death, I was forced to confront my own previous assumptions about the home as proxy for a ‘good’ death and my shock about how much of hospice care in the United States falls directly to a patient’s family.

Foreign Service, U.S.

File Under the Auspices of Accidental Chip on Shoulder

by pennypostcard • October 31, 2023 • 2 Comments

A few weeks ago, a friend I served with in the Peace Corps came to town on business, and we arranged to meet for a weeknight dinner in Washington, DC. We had a wonderful time talking about what’s going on in our lives presently and reminiscing about the nearly 21 years we’ve known each other. A small financial matter at the conclusion of our dinner prompted an unexpected exchange of insights on our different public handling of being charged for something we did not expect to pay for. Watching my friend’s proactive response and hearing his rationale made me realize my own behavior towards “bill shock” deserves further examination and recalibration.

Burma, Foreign Service, U.S.

The Land of the Golden Pagodas

by pennypostcard • September 6, 2023 • 3 Comments

Last week I was surprised by a housing questionnaire from my next post, Rangoon, welcoming us to “the land of the golden pagodas.” I think my surprise was because our arrival to said land is a year and 10 months away! I’ve never known a post to send a housing questionnaire so far in advance.

In comparison, I received our housing questionnaires for Tashkent, Canberra, and Ciudad Juárez four months, eight months, and nine months respectively prior to our scheduled arrivals. So our next post is clearly organized and thinking ahead (although when the Department releases the TMONE assignment cable necessary to confirm an officer has been paneled into a job and therefore will need a housing assignment is outside of post’s timing or control)! I immediately started to grin thinking of Burma’s beautiful pagodas that I’m so looking forward to seeing. However, it isn’t a pagoda we will be living in, but a house or apartment.

Burma, Foreign Service

Fifth Tour Bidding: Postscript, Paneling and Beyond

by pennypostcard • August 14, 2023 • 2 Comments

In my growing file of Foreign Service-related “All’s well that ends well” scenarios, I had no sooner hit the publish button on my previous post about waiting to be paneled into the job for which I received my SIP handshake in July before the Department notified me my paneling had been completed.

And thus my fifth tour bidding experience came to a close – all before the regular bid season even starts in September.

Foreign Service

Fifth Tour Bidding: What Comes After a Handshake?

by pennypostcard • August 9, 2023 • 1 Comment

As a result of my Special Incentive Post (SIP) bidding efforts, on July 5 I was offered (and accepted) a handshake on our next diplomatic assignment to U.S. Embassy Rangoon in Burma.

However, I reserved a little corner of my mind for disappointment. After a handshake, a number of administrative things would still have to fall into place before the job would feel safely “mine.” Now more than one month later, we are getting very close to that point.

Foreign Service, Travel, U.S.

Go Alone, Go Fast; Go Together, Go Far

by pennypostcard • July 25, 2023 • 1 Comment

A couple of weeks ago, my husband V and I drove from Virginia out to Washington state to see my dad and stepmom. My stepmom has been ill and we wanted to spend some time with her and help out my dad. My brother C and my stepbrother J with his family were also planning to be there. Although this was my fourth cross-country trip to the west coast and back in the last 13 months, it was the first one where I didn’t go alone.

As the African proverb from which I borrowed the title of this post tells us, we can get somewhere fastest on a schedule that doesn’t account for the needs of any other travelers, but going the distance often requires more support. Although I have proven with my last year of solo road trips that I can go both fast and far alone, I can also acknowledge there have been plenty of times when having another driver and companion would’ve made the trip more enjoyable (and less worry-inducing for my parents?). And I certainly experienced that on this trip.

Burma, Foreign Service, U.S.

Flag Day Announcement… V

by pennypostcard • July 7, 2023 • 7 Comments

On July 5, handshake day dawned as I was having a somewhat frantic morning. Between juggling the end of my 24-hour Overseas Citizen Services duty officer shift and the requisite duty report, acting for my boss, dealing with the lack of wifi connectivity in our house, and fretting over my damaged car out in the driveway with a fallen tree limb laying next to it, I was distracted. I was aware a bidder handshake could hit my phone anytime, and that at least one post had short-listed me. However, I was slightly more focused on trying to get out the door to work in DC and be responsive to emails about a duty issue that had caught the attention of our front office.

And then, somewhere between trying to curl my hair and looking too hard at my eyebrows in the mirror, I glanced down at my iPhone balanced on the edge of the pedestal sink and saw the offer pop up.

Foreign Service, U.S.

Fifth Tour Bidding: Before Handshake Day

by pennypostcard • July 6, 2023 • 4 Comments

The day bureaus are permitted to start extending assignment offers to successful bidders on the Special Incentive Post (SIP) bid cycle is called handshake day. In the lead-up to SIP handshake day, my life was a little chaotic. So much so, in fact, I almost lost track of the fact handshake day was coming. It’s not that I actually forgot about it; I was certainly aware. But I wasn’t exactly twiddling my thumbs and waiting for it to arrive, either.

Foreign Service, Mexico

Foreign Service Housing, Part III

by pennypostcard • July 4, 2023 • 3 Comments

In Foreign Service Housing, I wrote about the embassy homes where we lived during our first two diplomatic tours in Uzbekistan and Australia, respectively. I later wrote about the PCS Lodging apartment where we lived in Arlington while I studied Spanish ahead of our third tour in Mexico in Foreign Service Housing, Part II. Even though we left Mexico a year and a half ago, I want to finally write about the good, the bad, and the ugly of our house in Ciudad Juárez. I probably have avoided this topic at least in part because thinking about everything that happened with the house brings back negative memories for me. Astute readers may have picked up on my ambivalence (at best) the day we left. But in the interest of sharing my honest perspective, I’m going to try.

I had found it difficult in the past to relate to people who I perceived to be… overly critical about their diplomatic housing. After all, it doesn’t cost us anything and is a useful benefit of our employment. Two stints on housing boards over my first four years in the service gave me the impression some people will complain about anything and everything, like the person who demanded the embassy pay for and install a bay window in her kitchen or she would request a move, or another who refused to come to post with her husband because they were assigned a house she said was not possible to fung shui. Whether or not I thought these requests were reasonable was one thing; the fact we had such limited latitude to make people happy was another. I decided to be happy in my homes even though things were not perfect. On balance, there was far more good than bad. But it wasn’t until my tour in Juárez and the nuances of being truly unhappy in a house, that I realized firsthand some circumstances warrant complaining.

Australia, Foreign Service, Leadership & Work Culture, Mexico, Uzbekistan

Consular Officers Have the Best Stories, Part I

by pennypostcard • June 28, 2023 • 4 Comments

When I joined the Foreign Service as a consular officer, future colleagues said to me, “Oh, consular officers have the best stories!”

“Oh yeah?” I smiled.

“Sure. Between the visa fraud, emergency passports, natural disasters, and American citizens getting arrested overseas, there’s no shortage of stories. I once visited this U.S. citizen in jail, you wouldn’t believe what happened with this guy…”

Oh boy, I thought. Tell me. I can’t wait.

Foreign Service, Mexico, U.S.

Foreign Service Housing, Part II

by pennypostcard • June 27, 2023 • 4 Comments

One of the most popular and widely-read posts I’ve ever published to this blog is the prequel to this post, Foreign Service Housing. If you haven’t checked it out, please do! There I shared photos and stories about our housing assignments during our first two diplomatic postings to Tashkent, Uzbekistan (2015-2017) and Canberra, Australia (2017-2019). I published the post over four years ago in May 2019, and it’s already been viewed over 6,100 times. What this tells me is people are very interested to see where FSOs live. I can tell you the fascination and curiosity about housing is the same even after you’re in the Foreign Service, too!

I have been meaning for literally a couple of years now to write a follow-up to that article, because since then, we’ve also been assigned to domestic Permanent Change of Station (PCS) Lodging during long-term Spanish language training in Arlington, Virginia (2019-2020) and to a consulate house for my tour in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (2020-2022).

We had more issues with each of those housing assignments than we’d ever had in Tashkent or Canberra, so perhaps I’ve delayed writing this post to avoid some of the bad memories. However, I’ve always strived in this blog to be as honest and balanced as possible about my experiences as an FSO, and I think it’s time to talk about housing when things aren’t as awesome. So let’s do it.

Foreign Service, Leadership & Work Culture

Your Questions Answered, Volume VIII

by pennypostcard • June 25, 2023 • 4 Comments

I have been doing better at keeping up with blog email and generating Your Questions Answered posts, publishing the latest edition just a month ago. In this edition, I will talk about becoming an FSO in your late 40s, the medical clearance process and whether there is a physical fitness requirement, the difference between generalists and specialists, concerns about how the FS lifestyle can affect families and children, and the high cost of living in DC during a domestic assignment.

As always, the answers to these questions are my personal views and don’t necessarily constitute policy or the views of the Department. You get what you pay for – and this is all free! Enjoy, and feel free to send your own questions to askcollectingpostcards@gmail.com. I will answer questions directly first, and maybe later publish them (always anonymously and without attribution) on the blog. If I owe you an answer, it’s still coming – I promise!

Foreign Service, U.S.

Postcard from Spring in DC/VA

by pennypostcard • June 24, 2023 • 1 Comment

The first day of summer arrived earlier this week and brought oppressive humidity and rainstorms to the DC metro area. Fortunately, my mom had planned her recent 10-day visit to see us right before spring officially ended, and we had plenty of near-perfect weather to enjoy the fun activities this area offers in spring. Although both V and I were too busy at work to really take time off, and I was in the middle of SIP bidding, I can’t say the days at home were boring! They were more for recovery, as we packed in plenty of fun non-working hour events and made new memories with my mom. I shared with her my dad’s joke from his 2018 visit with my stepmom to us in Australia: “I’m going to have to leave your place in an ambulance.” She laughed because we still have limited chill when it comes to entertaining visitors.

Her visit was also a good reminder to us both to better embrace the touristy benefits of being posted to DC for a domestic tour.

Foreign Service, Leadership & Work Culture

Fifth Tour Bidding: Bids Are In

by pennypostcard • June 16, 2023 • 3 Comments

The summer 2024 early assignments bid cycle is drawing to a close, with Special Incentive Post (SIP) bids due today and domestic Long-Term Training and Development (LTTD) bids due right after the holiday weekend.

My statements of interest are in. Lobbying, consultations, and interviews all completed. I’ve entered less than half a dozen bids into all the right platforms and rank-ordered them, and I’ve drafted thank you notes for references and interviewers. There’s no action for me other than to see what happens, and that feels pretty good. We’ve now arrived at my favorite part of the bidding season: the part where I don’t need to do any more work, and am free to anticipate the possibility of any of my bids materializing into a handshake.

Foreign Service, Travel, U.S.

Pelicans Galore

by pennypostcard • June 12, 2023 • 1 Comment

Last month, my husband V and I took a few days off and connected them to a weekend, heading to a five-day beach house rental on North Carolina’s Carolina Beach and kicking off the first of many fun summer plans. I (inadvertently) got a scorching sunburn, fell asleep each humid night hearing the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crash into the sandy shore, saw a record two dozen pelicans at once, ate lots of good food, and even saw my favorite band. The weather was a little stormier than I’d expected, but we had about a day and a half of good beach time without a chilly wind. And the best thing: downtime with V where we didn’t have to think about work.

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