I’m finally in the part of my job where I am busy, and I am
so thankful about that. I’m going from assignment to assignment, which will
lead to my first vacation, which we call R&R.
People live for R&Rs here and, since we basically have
to take three three-week ones, plan big trips. I talked to people who returned
last week from Italy/Spain and Australia New Zealand.
You ask some about their recent or upcoming R&Rs and
their eyes glaze over and their voices fill with wistfulness. People seem to
live for them.
Not me, of course. I’m weird. I love it here. Not ready to
go on R&R, but I am ready for my next assignment, which is at our consulate
in Erbil.
For those who don’t know (and it’s OK; I didn’t, either),
Erbil is in northern Iraq, and it’s where a lot (but by no means all) of the
Kurds in Iraq live. To the degree that some refer to the area as Kurdistan, a
T-shirt I am hoping to acquire in the upcoming weeks.
Staffers speak of Erbil as some kind of la la land. Well, la
la land before La La Land became a thing. I tell people I’m headed up there,
their eyes mist over as well. “You can go outside, you know.”
I didn’t know, and I’m fearful of believing such Utopian
propaganda lest I set my heart on wandering outside of the Hundred Acre Sandbox
and into … well, Iraq. Real Iraq. The thought of their being a real world
outside our T-walls is downright delightful. I would totally love to wander
into some kind of sore and buy some Iraqi delicacy, whether it be tasty, crafty
or whatever else might lie in store.
There’s rumor of a mall that has a Carrefour in it. For
those who’ve been around for a long time, that’s the Walmarty store from
Jakarta. We also had one in Morocco (though not my town) and Istanbul. I want for nothing but the idea of being able
to purchase some little trinket, or maybe those knockoff WintOgreen LifeSavers
called Polo is the kind of unexpected Christmas gift I’d welcome.
The bag I’m taking up, though, won’t have room for much. I’m
allegedly heading up there for three weeks. It’s for work, so I have to do work
clothes, after work clothes and workout clothes. Somehow, I feel like the
R&R packing will be less, although I will have to also bring swim stuff
since I plan on snorkeling.
Oh yeah, did I mention that the R&R is to Australia? I’m
going to piecemeal my way through the country. I did Melbourne to Sydney the
first time, Perth the second and now I’m planning Cairns to Sydney although I
have one flight in there, from Brisbane to Sydney. I ran out of time. Three
weeks doesn’t seem like much when you’re trying to bask on the beach and play
in the water.
The No. 1 goal on that is to dive and/or snorkel the Great
Barrier Reef, and I’m taking the train from Cairns to Brisbane, with three
stops in there. I think it’s three, anyway. I made my last reservation right
before I started the last three-week assignment and anything that happened
before that is kind of a mushy blur now.
When I get back, I’m headed immediately to another
assignment. This is what I signed on this tour, to wander from one department
to another. There’s just the one department in Erbil, but there are three or
four I could possibly work in this tour. I’ve done two of the three big ones
already.
I feel a little like a tumbleweed in this assignment,
because I bounce around from one place to another. You finish one and head to
another. The good thing about it is that when I fly out of here for R&R, I
am between assignments. I don’t come back to an overloaded inbox with projects
coming due; it’s a clean slate in a new gig.
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