A-100 is done….almost

It’s been a busy, draining, fantastic seven weeks, but, alas, the A-100 Foreign Service Officer Orientation has come to an end. Well, almost.

Today was our last day of classes and we were treated to two high power speakers, the Director General of the Foreign Service George Staples and Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes. Both were interesting, but to be honest the highlight of today was wrapping up the course and giving a goodbye of sorts to our orientation staff and classmates.

It’s not that we won’t be seeing each other anymore, but we will no longer be in the tight knit classroom setting every day. For the past seven weeks we’ve gotten used to being a group of 73 that is shuffled from building to building, listening to speaker after speaker. Now that orientation is over we’ll all be headed to more specialized training for our individual assignments. Although I don’t leave for Kiev until April of 2007 about 15 of my classmates will be heading overseas in less than two months. It will be a shock to the system to have everything change so quickly on Monday.

As I mentioned before, A-100 isn’t quite over yet. Tomorrow is our swearing in ceremony. It’s being held at the main State Department building downtown in the fancy schmancy Benjamin Franklin diplomatic reception room on the top floor. We’re very fortunate in that Secretary of State Rice is schedule to lead us in our oath of service.

I’ll post more about swearing in soon, hopefully with pictures.

World Cup News: Ukraine fell hard in its first match to Spain so apparently I haven’t brought them much luck. Then again, the U.S. fell hard as well so read into this what you will.