Thanks to the Foreign Service Institute, I’ve got two more Afghanistan books to read on top of the history book that I’d already purchased. I think I’m glad I waited to start that one until I got the overview from this week’s quick 2-hour history session. At least I’ll be starting with a little context. (Seriously. I had nothing to go on before. It’s rather embarrassing.)

I also learned how to say “hello” and respond “hello” (because it’s two different phrases – aren’t new languages awesome?) in Dari. I’m also fairly confident saying “thank you.” Fingers crossed that I don’t need more than that.

After all this Afghanistan immersion, I’m feeling like I need a little break. I’m also feeling like I want to go into hiding. (In my defense, I think any sane person could only hear the phrase “The terrorists want to kill you!” so many times before deciding they never want to leave their warm bed again.) I’m trying really hard to focus on the fact that it’s only a year and on the other side of that is our tour in Vienna.

Speaking of Vienna, today happened to be EU Day in Washington. Most of the EU Embassies held open houses with entertainment and food. So you can guess where we headed this morning:

That’s right – the Austrian Embassy. We had some coffee, watched apple strudel being made (and tasted some) and picked up about a dozen maps and guide books. Never too early to start planning, you know. We also stopped by the Slovakian Embassy and started planning our trips there as well. It’s a quick drive from Vienna — check your maps. They were serving up a dumpling, sauerkraut, and bacon concoction that convinced us that we may very well be packing on the pounds during our time in that part of the world. “Light” is not a word I would use to describe their food.

The Hungarian and Czech Embassies are in the same general neighborhood, so we checked (czeched? – ha, ha!) them out as well. We got to hang out with some viszlas and pulis at the Hungarian Embassy because we have that weird ability to find dogs anywhere. And we watched a swordfight and toured the Ambassador’s residence at the Czech Embassy. He’s got a pretty sweet setup — swimming pool and everything. You don’t see many of those in DC.

Mmm...beignets at Cafe Du Monde

I don’t know how anyone works in a city where there’s so much live music available all the time, and most of it is free. There’s no way I would be able to sit in an office when I know that’s going on right outside. In three days, we managed to see four bands. After lunch on Saturday, we wandered into a little music store and found Ellis Marsalis doing a show to promote his new Christmas album. Crazy!

St. Louis Cemetery

And Bourbon Street….I compared it to Khaosan Road in Bangkok. We ventured over at 2 in the afternoon on a Friday and it was already packed, happy hour was on, and the music was thumping. One of the guys outside a gentleman’s club assured me I would have a great time inside, but we passed that one by. I was on the search for some live Zydeco music and found a band playing another block down. We ended up with 4 beers (2-for-1 happy hour! We were glad we hadn’t gone to a bar with a 3-for-1 happy hour, particularly since we hadn’t eaten since breakfast…) and enjoyed the show.

Steamboat Natchez

We did a jazz dinner cruise on the Mississippi one night. Shawn was pretty excited to ride aboard the Steamboat Natchez, particularly since he had convinced me to read Fevre Dream before our trip. (Vampires on a steamboat is really all you need to know…)

Lunch in the French Quarter - We quickly figured out that sharing a sandwich is the way to go.

I definitely want to take a trip back at some point. Preferably when the weather is warmer, but I think I’ll avoid Mardi Gras. From the number of beads we saw still hanging on the trees along the parade route, I think it might be too much for me to handle!

Two weeks ago, I headed to Florida to meet up with members of my Nassau quilting guild to attend the World Quilt Show. There were some amazing quilts there. I tried to soak up as much inspiration as possible, and, of course, bought some “inspiration” in the form of new fabric. I also had the opportunity to take a class on hand quilting, taught by the author of this book. She was a great teacher and I hope that her technique will help me avoid some of the wrist and hand problems that I sometime experience while quilting. Now I just need to practice… Besides the show, it was a great weekend of catching up with friends.

Last weekend, we had tickets to the Redskins/Cowboys game at FedEx Field. I had never been to an NFL game before, so it was pretty amazing. And even though the Redskins lost, it was an exciting game. Shawn managed to get us great seats on the club level:

I’m hoping to catch my breath this weekend before the events of December begin. Somehow my schedule already looks full!

I don’t really remember how I found the cabin that we stayed at, but it was amazing! The Shadow Mountain Escape property is right on the edge of the park, so you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere (in a good way). It’s so quiet, with deer randomly wandering through. Shawn was hoping that a bear would wander through, but I was okay with not seeing one up close. The cabin itself was a great place to hang out between our area excursions. We enjoyed some bonfires, complete with marshmallows to toast, and Shawn took his telescope along to do some stargazing. Because it was darker than dark at night.

Our cabin, the Butterfly Loft (above the garage):

Take a close look to the left of the sign:

And what was there to do? More than we realized. We checked out the caverns in Luray. I found them kind of gross and kind of creepy (I should have never let Shawn convince me to watch The Descent). But most of all, I think it’s really funny that they were discovered because of two local gentlemen that were trying to find a tourist attraction to boost the area’s economy. Well, I guess it worked.

We toured the Copper Fox Distillery in nearby Sperryville. We got there early for the tour, so Rick, the owner, let us assist him with spreading out the soaked barley for drying. It reminded me why small businesses are the best — this unexpected experience made the whole tour more enjoyable.

And, of course, we did some hiking in the park. It was a long way up, but worth it:

On the Appalachian Trail:

I knew that the Reflecting Pool is currently under construction, but it was still strange to see it completely gone!

We finally got to see the MLK, Jr. Memorial. Both of these pictures are from the other side of the Tidal Basin — as you can see from the first one, it was very crowded and we didn’t feel like spending much time with the crowd.

Shawn’s goal for the day. Can you believe that today was the first time he visited the Jefferson Memorial?

Some guys playing frisbee on the Mall. You can see that some of the trees are changing. Exciting!

I feel like I’m slowly readjusting to American culture. It’s an overwhelmingly good change, although there are a few annoyances that I had forgotten. For example, how is it possible that we’ve had a phone line for only three days and have already had 6 telemarketer calls? We haven’t even given the phone number out to anyone besides our families yet!

Until I feel like writing more (or have anything exciting to write about, for that matter), I thought I’d do a little photo summary of the past few weeks:

One last boat ride in Nassau, courtesy of friends. (Foreign Service tip: It’s good to make friends with boat-owners when you live on an island.)

The theme of our home leave seemed to be waterfalls. Here I am at Bushkill Falls in the Poconos.

We also got close to nature. Of course, we saw another deer just a few days ago on the walking trail in our neighborhood. Maybe deer are going to be a new theme as well.

Guess who picked out the rental car?

I think this was the point in Vermont that I decided I wanted to just chuck it all and move to a cabin in the woods. What a quiet, beautiful place.

And for the grand finale: Niagara Falls.

Work has been crazy. It’s summer transfer season – that that means out with the old boss and in with the new one. As the program assistant, that meant lots of work for me. But I think the transition went fairly well. Now it’s time to get ready for my own transition. We’ve hired a really great person to take over my position, so I’m confident that it will go well. And she happens to be a friend of mine, which means I can give her all of my tips and tricks for working with the different groups of people that I have to work with. (If it was a stranger, I might feel the need to be a little more “diplomatic”…)

Shawn and I have taken on a foster dog. Yes, we might be crazy. But she’s a Doberman, and we’re suckers for a Doberman…especially one with a sad history like hers. She’s only three years old, but was used for breeding. And neglected/mistreated while she was being used. So she was only half the size Laika was and when she came to us, and severely underweight. We’ve managed to put some muscle on her bones in the past three weeks and teach her that people can be trusted, so she’s ready for a new home. Now we just have to find it. Here’s a before and after of Robin:

We’ve done some traveling in the past month – Green Turtle Cay in Abaco for Memorial Day weekend and Ft. Lauderdale last weekend. Abaco was great for relaxing, as there is absolutely nothing to do there. But we did all kinds of shopping in Ft. Lauderdale and saw Joel McHale(!), so it’s hard to say which trip was better. Now that I think about it, Ft. Lauderdale would have definitely won if Joel McHale had been wearing the speedo from our Abaco trip:

And finally, Shawn has his next assignment (after our year in Washington):

(You all know the flag of Afghanistan, right? That should have been an easy one.)

I say it’s his assignment (as opposed to ours) because I can’t go along unless I get a job as well. So I’m back to applying for jobs again. I feel like I’ve spent most of my life looking for jobs. I thought grown ups didn’t have to do that….

My first roller coaster experience was when Shawn insisted that I go on the one at the New York-New York Hotel in Vegas. I was not amused. When we got off the ride, I was so angry that I swore I would never go on another roller coaster. That was probably about 9 years ago.

Last month, when we got to Disney World, we hit the ground running. Our goal was to get to all 4 parks in about 2 1/2 days, so there was no time for thinking. This is the excuse I give myself for getting into the following situation. We headed for Hollywood Studios first, since it was closest to our resort. As we were entering the gates, a couple of guys came up to us and said that they were leaving for the day, so did we want their Fast Passes for for the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster? (If you go to that link, take special note of the position of that car….) Shawn thanked them and took the passes, and told me that we should head straight there to do that first. Looking back, I kind of think he was taking advantage of the fact that I was overwhelmed by the situation.

I won’t go into detail about how halfway through the line I decided this was a bad idea. And how when we got close enough and saw the car take off, I decided this was a terrible idea. I rode the stupid ride and survived. (Although my arms were actually sore the next day from clinging desperately to the handles on the shoulder harness.) When we were getting off the ride, Shawn was talking about how awesome it was and I was telling him that I had kept my eyes closed for most of it. Then we entered the area where they post the pictures they took of you during the ride and Shawn started laughing hysterically and pointing.

So Shawn’s one souvenir from our trip to Disney World is a photo of me looking absolutely terrified:

We (well, I should say Shawn) scored an invite to a New Year’s Eve Eve party thrown by one of the local business associations, so we attended that. It was at a private residence on the beach that was just amazing. Several drinks in, there was a Junkanoo rush, which alleviated all of my guilt about not attending either official Junkanoo this year.

On our way out of the party we took a moment to hang out in the hammock.

As this is a moving year for us, I know that the big theme of the next 6 months will be cleaning out and throwing away. We’re going to be lucky if we can find an “affordable” apartment in one of the areas we want to live in that has more than 800 square feet, so that means a lot of things need to go. I’ve already started cleaning out my sewing and craft supplies — the ladies in my quilting guild are going to have fun going through the two LARGE boxes of things I’ve cleaned out already! And now that we have our Kindles, we’re weeding out our book collection. We had declared our DVD collection to be just stupidly large when we moved here, so the purge has begun there as well. And don’t even get me started on clothes. That’s going to take some serious time.

So the countdown has begun. The list of things we still need to do and restaurants we still need to visit before we leave has been started. I know from experience that the next couple of months will feel slow, but then after that time will take off and we’ll be out of here before we know it.

The Bean! I had never seen it in person before and it was much bigger than I realized. Here we are under it (note how bundled we are – it was COLD!):

Last evening we attended a college basketball double-header at Atlantis. Georgia Tech v. Richmond and Mississippi State v. Virginia Tech. It was fun and good people watching. I was amazed how many people seemed to be at Atlantis just to go to the games. I can’t imagine spending that much money traveling to see a game. Of course that’s easy for me to say since we were given free tickets. We determined that Virginia Tech must have the wealthiest alumni, as they seemed to have the biggest – and loudest – fan base there by far.

Atlantis had converted their large ballroom into a basketball court and brought in bleachers. We were seated in the third row behind the “home” bench, meaning we got to see inside the huddles of both Georgia Tech and Mississippi State. We were also seated two rows behind the leader of the Bahamian political opposition party, so it was fun to see him get special delivery of his concessions orders. (I wonder if Obama gets the same service when he goes to Georgetown games?) It got even more fun during the second game when we realized that the section next to ours seemed to be family members of the Mississippi State coaches. I grew up in a family of basketball coaches and I recognized the shrill screaming of the woman on the aisle as being filled with the desperation of a spouse that knows her Bahamian vacation will be absolutely ruined if the team loses the game. I’m sorry to say for her that it did not look good when we left at halftime.

As fun as the games were, the halftime entertainment was even better. Both halftimes were the same, but it was worth staying through it the second time. They started with some “dancers,” which were the equivalent of Pop Warner cheerleaders. Meh. But then they brought out some “tumblers” who ranged from tiny girls doing cartwheels to teenagers who looked like they must be preparing for the Olympics. Better. But then…out came the “All-Star” marching band from Government High School. They put on a great show. Good music, well-choreographed, and all around fun.

Note: There’s a video below that doesn’t seem to be showing up on Google Reader. Click on over to my site if you want to see it!