Playing catch up

For everyone who works in foreign service, being back in D.C., whether it’s our hometown or not (more often than not, it’s “not”) is a series of reunions and blasts from the past. People we’ve worked or trained with, for however long and however long ago, appear before us, prompting a series of catch-up conversations, happy hours and other events.

Even if the person crossed your path briefly, it’s a time to find out where the person has been, where they’re going and why they happen to be in D.C. And you don’t know when the reunions will occur. Usually, it’s at our little college-like training center, the main office building or any random hotel where we congregate (in my case, Marriott Residence in Rosslyn), but they happen all over the D.C. area. For example, Trader Joe’s (the one in Clarendon) seems to be a place where all us posted overseas come back for a fix and we run across each other there.

Last go-around, I left Guangzhou on a Friday and had a class on Monday morning. When I arrived, I discovered the person teaching the class had been one of the TDYers who had come to work in my department. I didn’t recognize her at first, but we both thought each other was familiar and discussed it enough to figure it out. When realization hits – THAT’s where I know you! – suddenly, you’re old friends catching up. (In that case, we had yet another commonality: she’d just come from India the Friday before and we were both jet-lagged like nobody’s business.)

Since I’ve been here, on a daily basis, I’ve met up with at least one new person from my past each day. Two of my colleagues from Istanbul randomly showed up for their own trainings, and both brought their wives and little girls. One of the wives is one who worked closely with me before she went on maternity leave. I’d thought I’d seen these people for the last time in my life, and then suddenly, we’re having breakfast together every day. It’s just random and wonderful.

Some of the people you catch up with, you’re seeing for the first time. A reunion of someone you’ve never met sounds odd, but we have so many e-ways of communicating that you can know someone without seeing them in the flesh. On Monday, when I walked into my classroom, I found I knew via e-measures three people plus had met one before my first tour started. Of the others, one was headed to where I was going and another to the same country.

It’s all very incestuous. When you ask someone where they’re going or where they’ve been, your brain jumps around, trying to find the people you know who might know that person. Invariably, there’s someone.

In an effort to track down everyone, we do things like plan post reunions and throw out a net to invite anyone who might have walked through the post when you were there. I’ve got two such get-togethers on the calendar, one for Guangzhou and one for Istanbul. I’m looking forward to both equally.

It’s a small world for us in foreign service. Today, I took a bus to a different site. There was a woman struggling with her bags – she’s headed out to her new assignment after this training and didn’t have a place to leave it – so, after loading them up, it seemed natural that we sit together and chat. 

Turns out, we’d both been through Guangzhou. She whipped out her photos and showed me some. In the very first one, one of my friends, whom I’ve made a point to meet with since I’ve been there, beamed back at me. That person had been in Guangzhou a year after me, and the lady started to show me more from that trip.

The sights were familiar; she’d lived in my same apartment building and had similar photos to what I took. She also went to one of the hot springs while she was there, a trip I made twice. In viewing the photos on her iPhone, I took a look at the dates and realized that she’d been in Guangzhou in February of the same year I was there, and I left in April. We overlapped and didn’t realize it.

In one of her hot springs photos, I thought I saw another familiar face, albeit behind a pair of sunshades. I took the camera and did the englarge-y thing with the fingers and confirmed that yes, in the small world of foreign service, that was indeed me in the photo.

I’d been catching up with a colleague without even realizing it.

Getting back at it

 Home leave is an amazing thing. It’s a time mandated by Congress that I spend in the U.S., getting back in touch with the country I represent overseas. For me, it’s something to take seriously, which is why during both of my home leaves so far I’ve spent a chunk of time on the road. The first one, I drove to Nashville and then Disney; tell me that’s not an All-American thing to do. This time, I went to Birmingham, Orlando and then Prescott, Arizona, taking in a lot of the country.

 

Of those, I think Universal Studios in Orlando was the most fun. I met a Foreign Service friend and we stayed with another friend on Disney property, so it was kind of the best of both of those worlds. I’d never been to Universal and loved it; it’s a bit edgier than The Mouse.

My favorite was “the Mummy” roller coaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZhW1wBCA7I. We did that one twice. Honestly, the Rock N’ Roll one was probably better, but it kept breaking down and there was no single rider line. It took us well over an hour to get through it. Had it taken half the time, it would have been No. 1. The start is straight up so, literally, after that first drop, it’s all downhill after that. The fun thing is you select the song you listen to as you ride. I went with ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man,” and it would have been fun to try it with a few more genres. I mean, c’mon. It was a chance to hear KC and the Sunshine Band again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NQHNDCAF6k.

I did all the roller coasters I could, but wasn’t a fan of The Hulk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsjdYQJc748. Maybe it was the time of day or something, but it didn’t do it for me. The Rockin’ one and The Mummy, though, I’d go back again and again.

What is with the virtual rides? There were so many of them, like King Kong, the Simpsons and the New York thing with Jimmy Fallon. I think it was Jimmy Fallon. Those, more than the roller coasters, make me a little sick. The Harry Potter ones were pretty bad, but I thought the Simpsons was worse. However, I loved wandering down through Springfield.

Universal has thoughtfully now included stationary seating for some of the 3-D shows and man, I just wish they’d have put a little more thought into it. We opted for the seating for the Minions because it was a 5-minute wait vs. a 90-minute wait for the “lively” seating. Now, note: the seating is just seats. They move, but they stay in one place. So the bounce, lean up, down or sideways but you don’t go along a path in any way. The show is on a movie screen, and the stationary seating is on the very first row.

This was a mistake. While it’s true you’re not moving, you are craning your neck straight up. Honest to God, it made me more nauseous than the roller coasters combined. Oh, man. Done in by Minions.

The purpose to the trip, as much as there was one, was to check out Harry Potter Land. I can’t remember what it’s called, so I just referred to it as Potterville. It was pretty amazing, I must say. My friend got chosen to do the wand selection and played along well.

Wandering around Diagon Alley and taking the Hogwarts express was just too fun. There were so many people; it was by far the most crowded part of Universal. Everyone wanted a piece of Potterville. Gosh, it was so much fun.

We stayed on Disney property, though, which was also a lot of fun. I hadn’t been to Pop Culture before and thought it was a trip going back through time. We were in the 80s building; the one with Rubik’s Cubes framing the staircases.

We stayed in the 80s. Good times.

We did two days at the park, dining at City Walk around 6:30 p.m. and then going back into the park to finish it off. The Hard Rock didn’t have fish and chips and I wasn’t into burger so I took a chance on this spicy chicken macaroni and cheese and holy cow, it was fabulous. I couldn’t believe how amazing mac and cheese could be. And I got my fill of fish and chips the next night at Margaritaville, so all was good.

On the third day, my Foreign Service friend had planned on doing Disney but I was just going to hang out by the pools at the hotel. However, my Foreign Service friend was a stranger to Florida humidity and by day three was not up to yet another theme park, so after a late start she headed to Disney Springs. I hung out by all three pools and finished my Janet Evanovich book before meeting her at a movie (Jurassic World; it seemed appropriate) and finishing the day at Disney Springs.

That was about halfway through home leave and I decided that every Foreign Service person should meet up with a colleague halfway through home leave. We live such an odd life that is hard to explain to our pre-service friends; it’s nice to decompress halfway through with someone who gets that part of your life.

It’s almost comforting to get back to the work routine, and that’s where I am now. It’s still this in-between part of my world, but I’m in the “training” phase prior to my next deployment. This means I head to DC and go to class in one of a handful of different locations before I am shipped far, far away again.

I only arrived on Monday but got right to it; it really is nice to be back into a routine. It’s sort of a twilight zone. I’m working but kind of not, because the hours are 9-4 with an hour lunch and a 15-minute break both in the morning and in the evenings. There’s a shuttle to the worksite, so it’s kind of this grade-schoolish thing. I’m taking a school bus and, next week, plan on bringing my lunch. There’s a cafeteria but I ate there this week and not only was it expensive, it was bad.

Especially compared to food in the area. DC is a smorgasbord of good food. Today I had a three-hour brunch at a place called Farmers Fishers Bakers, which is owned by North Dakota farmers. We left around 4 p.m.; four hours later and I am still utterly stuffed and cannot think of ingesting another morsel lest I explode. The night before, I ate at this wonderful place called Nando’s; it’s a South African-based restaurant that I discovered while in Malaysia. Before that, it was a Vietnamese joint. And I’ve eaten at “Tonic” twice already; it seems to be the place many of my colleagues head to for lunch, so I met two on back-to-back days there. The salmon chowder with a side of tater tots was a smart choice!

I’ve got several more weeks in the DC area before I head off to my next post, so I’m open to dining suggestions.