Ups and Downs

The last two weeks have been mostly drama-free and French-filled fun. I had an out-of-town friend (the mother of a childhood friend of mine) stay with me for awhile, which was a nice change of pace. When our paths crossed we talked food and family and ways of life and the future. Hosting her also meant that I got to see my childhood friend and his two amazing kids last weekend, which is always a treat.

The past two weeks have been full of the mundane: studying, thinking about doing taxes, getting a haircut, finally having cleaners come clean the apartment (it's shiny, squeaky clean still, three days later!).

They have also been filled with Bamako-related events. For instance, I met half a dozen Bamako-bound foreign service officers at an organized dinner (at a French restaurant, of course). I was one of two first-tour people, which was a bit daunting, but all in all it was a fun outing and I'm glad to have gotten to see some faces that will become familiar come December! I also dined with a foreign service couple who were NGO workers in Bamako relatively recently, and they told me about their experiences, suggestions, warnings and love for the area. Just this weekend I treated another newly-found Bamako expat, who studied malaria there for the National Institute of Health for parts of the year, four years running. He told me of the enduring friendliness and kindness, poverty and need of Malians. He also highlighted ideas for meeting locals in a bid to keep me from getting stuck in the so-called "expat bubble."

The exciting also occurred: an insider tour of the White House, thanks to a carpool acquaintance and connections from his former employment. I got to see the Oval Office and several high-level meeting rooms, the Rose Garden and the White House press room. Afterwards, our little group went out for dinner and drinks in Georgetown: what a Washingtonian I'm becoming! I reconnected with a local friend over dinner and drinks another night, in keeping with last blog post's thoughts of maintaining friendships.

And of course, there were downs: last weekend I felt exhausted, so I slept a lot. Monday I felt better, but it turned out to be a feint by the germ gods: Tuesday I awoke with what I'm sure was some strain of the Plague, which kept me completely down and out for two days. By Thursday I'd conquered the sinus-invasion, expelled many of the snot-mutants, and returned to French classes. Happily, I was able to catch up on missed material quickly. This weekend, while it was productive and not at all bad, was also one of negative thoughts. It's not altogether clear why I'm having them, but they're there, and I'm trying to beat them back with reality checks, positivity breaks, and some nice-to-myself affirmations. While it's silly to think that happiness can and should reign all the time, it's still a bummer when I'm my own worst enemy. Loneliness, Self-Doubt, Fear, and Low Self-Esteem are mean, snarky, and sneaky foes. The good fight continues on, though, and I'm hopeful that with the rise of a new sun I will find them gone back under their rocks.

To end on a positive note, even with the Mean Minions of Negativity skulking about, I will proudly relay that today I studied, shopped, cooked, cleaned, called my parents, took a walk, met someone new and made them laugh ... and all of these things made me smile at some point.

So: bring it on, Monday!

--Z

A Not-So-Quick Update

Hello to any readers who have hung on! Apologies for the several-weeks-long hiatus from blog writing. It is my intention to try to write each week as I find more things to ponder, interesting history to relate, new people to pump for information, and French to speak!

On Friday, February 20th, I was formally sworn in as a foreign service officer. It was my class's official swearing in and my parents and my brother and sister-in-law were in attendance. It was a short but sweet ceremony complete with peppy advice and a large audience of our family and friends, come to cheer us all on. Two mentors of mine were present and I was able to introduce them to my family, which was a nice bonus. I feel like it particularly gave my parents some faces and names to reach out to if they had questions (both mentors offered this up as an option). After the ceremony, we headed to a restaurant in Georgetown along with many people in my class. My family got to meet many of my classmates and instructors. For me, this was where I really felt like my new life was forming. I hope to be able to bring my personal family into my foreign service life as much as possible.

After a weekend of hanging out with my family, I promptly began with French language training. I have approximately seven and a half months to become professionally fluent in French, which is a daunting task. However, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has done this many times before and I feel that I'm in very good hands. My class has four students: myself, a fellow 180th A-100 member who is bound for the Central African Republic, and two foreign service specialist men headed to France and Gabon. We all get along quite well and challenge each other, laughing quite a bit. I could not be happier with my instructor, too, who is from Senegal and is a wonderful teacher for us beginners.

Language training goes like this: Class starts at 7:40am sharp each weekday. We do three hours of instruction, two with our primary instructor and one with a different pronunciation instructor. Then we have a two hour break for lunch and study. Then we're back in the classroom with our primary instructor for two hours. We're done at 2:30pm, but are expected to study for at least two additional hours in the language lab. This is a lab of computers set up with headphones and dozens of electronic programs and resources, some designed specifically for beginning French students! There are videos, music, lesson plans, and more.

We are expected to achieve basic fluency in six weeks, described as understanding sentence structure and with a vocabulary large enough to get around with basic tasks in French. I am two weeks in and already getting nervous about our first evaluation. However, that's mostly just testing nervousness, I hope: I feel that I'm keeping up well in class and study quite a bit, both at FSI and at home.

After six weeks and our first evaluation, we will get a new instructor. There are three phases of our training and they try to change up instructors with each phase so that we learn pronunciation, vocabulary, context, and conversation from many different French speakers from around the world.

I'm exhausted by the end of each day, but can feel improvement as my vocabulary slowly expands and I'm able to say a bit more. Each morning, our instructor has a short conversation with each of us in French. While it's a bit repetitive now, it feels good to be able to decide what questions I want to ask, or how to answer his questions. I can decide, because it's not just memorization!

I think it's terrifically cool that in September, all fingers crossed, I'll be able to discuss policy and ideas in a whole new language. Whoa!

Aside from language studies, I've been researching Mali: history, culture, current events. That in itself is a daunting task! But it's absolutely fascinating. Plus, after language classes, I will eventually get to take a two week course called "Area Studies" which will cover the African continent as a whole and my post in particular (among others). This is to give some context to where we're all going.

Meanwhile, it seems that once you're bound for a place like Bamako, you meet a surprising number of people who have been there, or are going. I've met a recently returned Foreign Service Officer (FSO) from Bamako, a single woman who adopted a six-year-old Malian girl. She had interesting thoughts to share on being a Western woman working with locally employed staff, and some of the joys and challenges of that. Then there's the random USAID guy I met at a party of friends unrelated to the Foreign Service, who lived in Bamako for four years researching malaria and malaria medications! At a dinner out with friends the other night, I saw a woman I knew had been to Bamako, and she was at a table of returned-from-Bamako FSOs! The foreign services comprise a small world, it seems...

Next Monday I will be meeting other foreign service members - generalists, like me, as well as specialists and USAID officers - heading to Bamako in the next year. We're going to dinner at a French restaurant in DC! In April, I've got tickets to a concert of Fatoumata Diawara, a Malian musician. My side table at home is stacked with five library books about Mali.

During the evenings, between speaking French aloud to myself, I ponder many of the (to me) mysteries of moving to a foreign country. What to bring? What to buy? What to dump?

One big realization I made this weekend, which was of course a completely obvious truth, was that it's really important to maintain the friendships I have outside of the Foreign Service. For the last two months I have put most of my energies into meeting my new colleagues, hosting and attending social events, and learning about my new department, job, and lifestyle. This is all incredibly important. However, it cannot and should not come at the cost of my existing relationships. To that end, I am making an effort to communicate and connect with friends near and far. It's been two months of me shutting myself in with readings and social activities with work folks. Time to open back up for business.

Well, that's my news for the time being. I look forward to hearing from all of you out there!

Á bientôt!

--Z