The heat is on

And it is hot!!! Oh my goodness. I am not prepared for summer on the east coast. We had been lucky since we moved out here but nature decided to remind us where we live now. We have one window air conditioner, it is currently in our bedroom, and it is possible that during my upcoming days off that is going to be domicile all day long. I have so many things I need to accomplish but it's so hot in all the rooms of our house except that one.

In the evening we are living on the back porch. So far it's been nice but I know the days are coming when it'll be too hot to even want to be outside. Perhaps I will set up the air mattress in the cellar. Surely it will be cool below ground....

Back Home Again...from Indiana

I feel as if I am going non-stop. A quick trip to Indiana (I left yesterday afternoon) for a graduation and a wedding and I am already back in Ohio. I am here this next week, but then I will be off to Chicago! I am getting very intimately acquainted with where the police like to sit on I-71/I-70, which has so far worked to my advantage but I still have seen entirely too much of them. Also, my car has no A/C. This wasn't so bad on 70-80 degree days but when its 94? Not okay.

In Foreign Service News...

I received my salary offer! Very exciting. My packet with all my moving and transportation information is on its way to my door and next up will be my travel orders. This is where it gets really serious because I need these to book a flight - and that is when I will have a date and time for arriving in D.C. That seems so crazy. Today I realized we still have a video on the digital camera that we took when we were in D.C. the last time, when I was there to take the Oral Assessment for the Foreign Service. That was in September of 2010. Also since that time I have been carrying around my note cards I used to study for that assessment in my backpack. They have gone to school, to the library, on trips with me, all the while sitting in a small pocket in my backpack. I have no intention of removing them and in fact I am probably going to put them in my purse so I will always have them. I kept them because I figured I would use them the next time I took the assessment and I didn't want to lose them. Looks like once was enough for me. 

Ah, it is toasty in this house. I miss central air but I suppose this might be the best way to prepare for an unknown foreign locale that may or may not be ridiculously hot. I am guessing most homes in other nations air conditioning is not a standard feature. 

Few pictures

Space needle!

Washington state was really beautiful. It was like a combination of Colorado and the coast. We loved Seattle especially. Perhaps we will take an extended trip there in the future.

Dam in Vancouver. It was actually the Cleveland dam, which I thought was kind of funny.

Back Home Again...in Ohio...

Back from Canada! It was a good trip, but I was ready to return. Not necessarily to Ohio but I was ready to move on to the next phase in the my life and I knew it wasn't going to happen while I was in Canada.

First, the conference. It was really nice. I was finally speaking on a topic I was passionate about (and therefore I know the most about - literally. There is not a person living who knows more on the subject of the history of the Chinese in Colorado than me. Sounds cool, but really, its a niche. Like most history. Anyway...) and I loved it. I probably obsessed over my presentation a little more than was necessary because it went really well. The rest of my panel were all professors of Asian History (who were also Chinese) but my presentation did not stand out as amateur among theirs. It was awesome.

This actually felt like a nice goodbye to my time in academia. I will never stop loving history, the study or the research of it, but I won't be writing it again for some time. I think graduation would have been a nice ceremony to go to, but it would have been short with my name being called, a little walk, and thats it. I am glad I chose this experience over graduation. I look forward to when I might attend conferences in the future - and maybe I will even catch one while I am overseas. Who knows what might happen.

<Once I figure out how to upload pictures I will post some of the conference, Seattle, and Vancouver - they were all awesome>

Now that I am home I feel a little odd. It reminds me of when we were waiting to hear about the FAA position for Scott. We knew a big change was coming, but out lives were kind of suspended as we waited for it. In that case, we didn't even know the date until about a month before. At least I had two and half months to prepare for this. But now that its only two months left I still feel like I have so much to do and yet nothing I can do until I get more information.

I am currently waiting on a packet that will contain my salary offer as well as other important paperwork about moving and so on. I was hoping the packet would come last week and now I am hoping it will come this week. Something tells me I may be hoping the same thing next week. Once this packet with the salary offer comes I feel like this will finally all be real. But perhaps not. Maybe it won't be real until I am sitting in a room, dressed in a suit I just bought with heels that hurt my feet, being welcomed into a new job and lifestyle with an overwhelming about of information thrown at me. Yes, that seems most likely.

And now, I must get to the Cheesebarn. The cheese is not going to slice itself.

Lost in the blogs...

Instead of spending my time working on my speech for next week I spent last night and this morning reading blog after blog of different Foreign Service Officers. I have spent a considerable amount of time with this amazing list of Flag Day experiences (http://www.travelorders.com/flag-day-stories/) so now that is all I can think about.

I was really shocked when I got the e-mail about the Foreign Service this past April. I took the Oral Assessment in September 2010 (I honestly cannot recall when I took the written test, but it might have been February of that same year), and I was excited about passing for probably two months, then the examiner did my background check and I was excited again. In January 2011 I got a letter saying I had been added to the register, but my score was relatively low that I figured I would never be called so I never even checked my ranking on the Consular Register. I kept checking the Yahoo group for a few months but I was pretty sure I was at least 100 people away from being called, so when my husband was offered a government job I stopped checking it completely around the fall of 2011.

Fast forward to April 2012. We have moved across the country for Scott's new job, I just started a new job and am a single class period away from completing my master's degree in history. The morning before my last class I wake up to an e-mail from the Registrar's Office....and I am in utter shock.

I was staying in my parent's house in Colorado so after running upstairs to announce it to my mom I had to call Scott, who was thankfully already awake back in Ohio. I finished my class and we said we would discuss it seriously when I returned home. A long and serious conversation, which this was sure to be, is not a good idea over the phone. I was back in Ohio by Sunday and we had until Thursday to accept or decline the offer. After a lot of talking, thought, and prayer we knew we had the right decision. Foreign Service here I come!

I am still a little in shock. We talk about it everyday now and every hour I have some new piece of information to offer Scott about A-100 class, living overseas, etc. I figure he will tire of it at some point but right now I simply cannot get enough information.

But seriously, that speech is not going to write itself....