Two down, one to go

Two weeks down of my three-week orientation. Yay. After next week, I will not only know where I am going but also know about when I should arrive.

It looks like I will be deploying around mid-November, but that’s speculative. We have nine posts on our bid list (one for everyone) and one requires language. It is possible that the person who is posted there might get Spanish lessons for as long as it takes the person’s visa to come through.

The same posting, which is in South America, was open before but the person assigned there, after seven months, was turned down for the visa. So that person is going elsewhere and the position is up for grabs again.

The way it sounds, the only way anyone is staying is if they get that post. The other eight posts are listed as “NOW” for availability. I think we can put in for training but not hold our breaths that it will be available.

So far, I am trying to pick up tricks of the job, and training is one of them. Apparently you need to lobby for it every chance you get. And this means tacking it on the end of R&R trips or home leave.

The former is a plane ticket you get to a particular city if you’re posted in a “hardship” post. You get a ticket to that city halfway through your two-year tour, or you can opt for your home of record or someplace that’s the same cost (or less) of one of those.

The latter is extra accrued time, 15 days a year, that you take either once a year (two-year posts) or after 18 months or so (three-year posts).

The trick is, you’re supposed to lobby for training in DC to tack on the end of those. Now, I do not understand how you’re supposed to do it during R&R if your R&R point is, say, London.

But I will figure that kind of stuff out later.

All but one of the available posts have R&R, which is given for hardship posts. You get the plane ticket but you have to use your own leave time, which makes sense.

I’m not at liberty to divulge the bid list, but the R&R points are fabulous: London, Paris, Rome, Sydney and Miami. If I got the one with Miami, I’d definitely go to Tallahassee instead. Plus, that particular post has two R&R breaks, so it’d be two tickets home in two years. Not bad.

On the bid list, I can be vague: There is one European city, one in South America, one in Africa and one in China (I’m told there’s always one in Africa and one in China), two in the same SE Asian city and two more in what I consider Central Asia, plus a “Stan.”

The European city is the other that doesn’t have the R&R. A second post has two R&Rs but I forget which one it is. It’s a Sydney one, though.

“Flag Day” is Tuesday. The do a whole little dog-and-pony show where they call out the country and hand someone a flag, or something like that. I’m not into dog-and-pony shows, so I’ll just grin and bear it.

People keep asking what I am hoping for, but I just don’t care. I’m amused by some of the people because they keep telling people where they want to “go.” It’s not “going” like on vacation. This is a job.

There are also a lot of younger people here and they’re all stoked to be “going” to X or Y but they *really* want to “go to” Z. It’s kind of like, wow, you’re 27. You will retire in 38 years. If you do not get assigned to Z right now, it’s not the end of the world. There will be LOTS of time to bid on X, Y and Z – as well as A through W.

As for me, I really can’t get excited about it. I mean, I do want to get on with the job (and the paycheck), but I’m not going to sit and sob if I wind up in Central Asian city instead of European City or whatever it is.

Right now, if I had to guess, I’d say I’m destined for SE Asian City. The career lady swears she’s never given anyone one of their “low” bids, and for me, that was one of the Central Asian Cities and European City, based on the fact that those embassies are monolithic and I really prefer smaller workplaces.

In talking to some of the other candidates, I’ve found that people have bid high on most of the cities but so far I talked to anyone who has SE Asian City “high,” and there are two posts available.

Since I have stressed that I don’t care – and this is true – I figure I have a good shot at winding up there. It would be fine and perhaps even an easier transition, because I would have an immediate support group. Yeah, it would be the blind leading the blind and we’d be in different sections at the embassy, but still, I would know someone right off.

Of course, now that I put that prediction out there it won’t happen, but that’s OK.

My only wish is that they really don’t give us a flag. I am trying to hard to continue with the downsizing I just don’t want to add anything.

The “Fall” in “Falls Church”

This week, the first I’ve ever worn suits on a consistent basis, was incredibly humid. And I say this as a Florida native, so I know what I’m talking about.

Right now, I am in training, so we’re hearing from a lot of higher-up people for whom you have to look sharp, which mandates suits. I’m trying to get used to them but boy, with the humidity, it’s just toasty. Sitting in a seminar, I have several times realized suddenly that my neck is sweating. I do not look forward at my first foray into dry cleaner bills, but that is right around the corner. (Actually, it’s straight out the door, on the other side of the tennis courts. This apartment complex has everything.)

But it seems the hot and humid weather might be done now. I woke up this morning, the day of FSU’s first home game, and it’s suddenly fall. The air is crisp and it’s wonderfully gorgeous.

That’s really great news and made a pleasant walk through my area of Falls Church down to Target early this afternoon, especially since I tried a new route and got lost. I mean, I sort of knew the right direction, but I was wandering through a nice little neighborhood and wasn’t really clear on which roads went all the way through.

The news isn’t so good for my footwear, because I brought exactly five pairs of shoes: three of dress shoes and two pairs of Chacos, one of those flip flops.

Next week, my class group will get split and we will each take have a “teamwork” day that requires close-toed shoes that are OK to get messy, as in not dress shoes.

This is irritating, because it’s not like I do not own tennis shoes; I just don’t have them with me. They are packed in my air shipment, which could have arrived last week (thought they didn’t), could arrive tomorrow and maybe arrive Sunday – but may not arrive until after my six-week training session is over.

Therefore tomorrow I will have to go out and buy a new pair of tennis shoes.

This brings up a kind of an us-vs.-them mentality as far as what are considered “local hires” and the rest of us. These are people who live with 50 miles of the Washington Monument. Those of us who are from farther away are given a housing/meals per diem, the local hires are not. They get some kind of transportation allowance instead, but no cold, hard cash. (For the record, I haven’t gotten the cash yet, but it will come in a paycheck that will not arrive until 10/3 or 10/17).

The per diem is supposed to offset the fact that the non-local hires (maybe there’s a technical term, but I don’t know it) do not get to sleep in their own beds. It annoys the local hires, because they sometimes have multiple-hour commutes to training.

However, my heart doesn’t exactly bleed for them, because as a non-local hire, I have to shell out a lot of money for things that I already own but do not have with me.

It’s getting to be a little ridiculous. I have an air shipment on its way to me, and in addition to shoes it also has petty things like salt and pepper. And while I understand salt and pepper are cheap, there’s also a waste issue. What am I going to do with multiple salt and pepper containers when I leave in six weeks? Do I pack it or just toss it?

I have things like laundry baskets, key chains, scissors, pitchers, umbrellas, rain jackets and coats but they have not arrived yet. So do I just replace them and add to the landfill problem in two months, or what? Because, let’s get realistic, there’s not a big demand for used plastic ice trays, something I could really, really use right now.

This morning, I needed an envelope. Not 500 or even 50 of them, but just one. You can’t buy just one envelope, just like you can’t easily find a small thing of laundry soap, dish soap, shampoo or anything else these days. I have about a gallon of shampoo on its way up here, but it’s not here yet, so I was forced to go out and buy yet another container.

It’s a first-world problem, for sure, but I just hate to waste things so it really kills me to have to do this.

Beyond annoyance and landfill issues, it’s also a cost thing. I just hate to shell out money for something I don’t really need, and right now, since my first check won’t be until October, it’s still a little dicey. I’ve already been to Target three times. It doesn’t matter that the prices of the stuff I need aren’t really expensive (at least the way I shop), but when you have to re-establish yourself with so many things, those little numbers are going to add up.

A Whole New World

I’ve made it to DC and started today.

I’m a little late in this post because I forgot my computer cord and don’t want to run the battery down on my own laptop. Daddy mailed the cord today but until it arrives I’m using the monitors in the business center as much as possible.

Travel to DC was fine – my first USAir flight in eons – but then I screwed up on the subway. I took the blue line out of DCA all right, but when I transferred to the orange I neglected to see it was also a blue line and ended up right back where I’d started.

Had this been the middle of the day, it wouldn’t have mattered, but it was around 8:30 p.m. and the trains started running more infrequently, so it was a 15 minute wait until the next blue came around. Then it was another 20 minutes before the next orange one came through.

 As luck would have it (bad luck, I mean), the orange line was also under weekend construction, so I then had to ride it to the end, which was two stops away from where I needed to be, and then transfer to a shuttle bus for the last two stops – another 15-minute wait.

So, instead of ending up at the apartment at 8 p.m., it was more like 10 p.m., and then I had a long, involved check-in. It’s hotel-like, but it is an apartment so there was a lease and everything involved. Finally, I got to my room and unpacked everything, which is when I discovered the computer cord was missing. Ah well.

Sunday, instead of going to church like I’d planned, I walked to the Safeway – about a mile, maybe – and then spent $60 on groceries. Honestly, I can’t remember when I spent that much on groceries last. Definitely not in Minot or in Jakarta.

After walking back from that – and bashing the hell out of my toe on the grocery cart – I decided to go to Target. I knew where one was, but after looking at a map, I found out there was one just past the Safeway, right on the other side of the CHICK-FIL-A. Yes, I have a Chick. So awesome.

Anyway, after the Target run I was pretty much set up in the apartment (though I still have no salt and pepper) but was exhausted so I skipped the social and soaked in the tub. Got the first good night’s sleep in awhile and headed out.

 The apartment, which has lots of State people in it, had a shuttle right to work, so I went on that Today was just a bunch of paperwork and HR-ish seminars, like planning retirement and picking a health plan.

The real classes start tomorrow, and it’s my understanding that I will also get the “bid list,” which will be a list of nine posts that are open for the people in my position. I am to “bid” on them to decide where I will be working for the next two years.

 I am not allowed to post this list publicly, nor will I be allowed to post here where I will wind up. Or at least that’s my understanding right now. I know the former is true, but I’m not positive about the latter, but either way, if you want to know where I will be going, be sure to email me and ask me around Sept. 26.

Zero to 60

This was unexpected. But I could get used to it, and hope I do.

Even though I am specifically on the “do not call” list for the foreign service – the job in the pipeline – I got an job offer in April for July.

It came six days after I’d re-taken the oral assessment and somehow, with the “new” candidacy, it didn’t transfer over that I was supposed to be marked as unavailable.

My plan was to stay in Minot and finish the rebuild with Hope Village, and I was to be on DNC until November, which would have made me available for the January 2014 class, assuming there would be one.

So I declined that offer – you get one shot to say no, and then if you do it again, your candidacy is deep-sixed – and went on my merry way.

My plan was to finish up in Minot, get my offer, take a cool vacation (literally, as I was eying Antarctica) and then start real and gainful employment on January 27.

God mocked me.

The last foreign service orientation class – the six-week training for the position – is to be in September, and those invitations went out in July. Based on the numbers given earlier, there should have been about 14 or 15 in the class, but there were six. Even with my high score, I wasn’t high enough on the list to get one. But that was OK, because I was on DNC anyway.

Started hearing rumors of next year’s positions being cut back even more than this year’s, which would have been brutal since the 2013 numbers were half what the 2012 numbers were. I’ve even heard rumors of the January class being canceled and no hirings for the specific position I’ve been gunning for. (It’s an OMS, or office management specialist.)

I’m on a Yahoo! group for this job, and there are other people out there who are also close to being hired. One of them had a higher overall score than I did on the OA (she got bonus points; I didn’t) and she sits higher than me on the register but is also unavailable until January.

One Tuesday, she posted on the board that she’d received a call on a job offer because they added two spots to the September class. The person who called told her they knew she was on DNC but was just checking to verify that she was not interested. She assured them she was not.

And then I got an emailed offer. No “hey, you’re on do-not-call, just checking” but the offer. Same as July – the one if I said no to a second time, they’d drop me.

My supervisor was in his office when I opened the email and I said something to the effect of “You’ve GOT to be kidding me” or “Again?” or something similar that made him ask me what was up.

I read it to him and he, the ever calm peacemaker, said to step back and think about it a minute. This is the second time it’s come, so maybe this really was God telling me to go ahead and leave Minot.

I truly hate to do it, but the way it’s worked is since the end of June, the one partner has thwarted the recovery efforts.

No, that’s not true. Since I’ve been in Minot, they’ve done it. Left and right, everything I suggest to try to get volunteers, they shoot down. It goes on and on, really, and it makes me so sick I want to vomit.

But in June, which was the second anniversary of the flood, it became evident to me that we are not going to finish by Oct. 31, which was the goal and the reason to extend.

Then, we had 100+ volunteers for the only time this summer, and they had them doing yard work. That’s a nice concept, but it’s directly in opposition to our mission, which is to rebuild the homes.

We’ve (meaning this partner has) turned away volunteers – over 150 – and misused the ones we’ve had. It’s made me sick to my stomach on more times than I care to count, because all I want to do is get the homeowners back.

I’ve done everything in my power to bring attention to Hope Village, and have done well. I’ve built the brand but this partner had just undermined so many things.

Example: they sent out a letter to the homeowners saying Hope Village was closing in October, but they would finish the rebuild. That’s NOT true. At the board meeting, which is where they were asked to send a letter, we explicitly said we would not use the word “close.”

But they sent out the letter anyway, denied they were doing it and didn’t bother to check with the board on the wording, or even cc: in the alleged PR person (me).

So too much of that was getting to me, and I decided I had to accept the offer.

It set off a whirlwind that won’t end until I board a plane for DC. And then another whirlwind will begin.

Mostly, it’s been gut-wrenching. I didn’t want to leave and now I feel like I am abandoning Minot.

The one extremely palatable thing has been discovering I am going to become a gainfully employed federal employee with all the benefits that come with that.

My salary offer almost caused me to faint. I’m coming in at the lower grade, I think an FP-4, because everyone comes in at that one. But it has 14 steps in the grade with about a $20k range in between. And they’re bringing me in at step 14.

So I’m going to shift gears fast and go from practically zero as an AmeriCorps volunteer to close to $60k as a federal employee. Yay!

For foreign service, you also get housing paid (assuming you’re overseas), plus different allowances if applicable, like cost of living, danger or hardship pay.

In Jakarta, for example, there are COLA and hardship allowances that account for another 30 percent. Not all posts have allowances, though.

After two years, I get a month of “home leave” which must be spent in the US.

The job is an OMS, so it’s in my wheelhouse even if it isn’t what I totally love. I’ve read reports of people in the field and it sounds pretty cool, though, so I am looking forward to it.

And no, I don’t know where I will go.

The drill is I will be in DC for six weeks of orientation. During the first week, we will get a list of the available posts and “bid” on them. There are eight in my position so there should be eight posts and I think I rank them high, medium or low.

Three weeks later, we all find out where we’re going. The posts are two years for the first two and then after tenure they’re between one and three, but I think it’s usually two.

It is possible that I will be in DC for longer than six weeks, because some posts require language or other training.

So now the frantic work begins. I have to unpack everything that’s been in storage since 2007 and organize it. It consists of multiple piles, such as “store until retirement,” “might use at post later,” “need for posts now,” “may or may not use in DC” and the like.

I’m up to my ears in paperwork, which isn’t surprising because it’s a federal gig.

I really have mixed feelings about it, though. I really wanted to stay in Minot.