It's Official!

John got the first round of announcements today for next year's new positions and so the wait to see where we will go is finally over.  We got our first choice - Zimbabwe!  The girls of course had a different first choice (Tajikistan), so they aren't quite as excited as we are.

It is nice to know where we're going next, but in the meantime we'll try to enjoy the rest of our time in Paraguay. We hope that our next post turns out to be as pleasant a place to live as Paraguay has been, with as many great people.

Marine Ball

All over the world, wherever there are Marines, there is a celebration of the Birthday of the Marines.  At most embassies, that involves a ball.  And so, on November 12 John and I got decked out for the event and headed downtown to the Crown Plaza Hotel.  We had a great table of friends to sit with and since I haven't been to quite as many social events lately I really enjoyed seeing everyone.

Here are some photos from the event:

Bidding

I thought I ought to post about the "bidding" process that we have gone through during the past few months.  Foreign Service Officers are assigned to their posts for between 1-4 years depending on their agency (State Department or USAID) and the post (how difficult it is, whether or not the family can go, etc.).  The first post is always a "directed assignment", which means that the officer is assigned to that post without much input or choice on his/her part.  Paraguay was our first, "directed assignment" - so we did not "bid" on it and it was only two years long.  Normally USAID officers stay here for four years.

Since we were only going to be here for two years, we have known since we arrived here that we would go through the bidding process about a year into our term here.  At USAID this process consists of several stages.  First, there is a list that is posted of all available positions for the following year. Officers that will be leaving the most difficult, unaccompanied posts get first priority in bidding on their next posts.  When this list came out in July we knew that the final list from which we would eventually choose would be a subset of the initial list.  The list included positions for people in all different specialties ("backstops") and all different experience levels.  At that point we began to research the countries on the list for John's specialty (private sector economic growth) to see what housing, schools, climate, crime, etc. would be like in the various countries.  There are various sources for our research - the State Department has country reports, there is an organization for expats that also has reports, Wikipedia and other web sites have lots of country information, we can contact people at the posts and in the Office of Overseas Schools, and we have friends and acquaintances in various countries.

Between July and October several positions that were interesting to us (Sri Lanka in particular) were taken by officers coming out of very difficult posts with priority bidding privileges.  Early in October we received the official list for us to bid on and John began contacting the remaining USAID offices on the list where the work and living conditions seemed to line up with our priorities.  He had a couple of weeks to make that contact, send them his resume, have phone interviews, and put his list together.

In the end, there were two countries that were at the top of our list that also were very much interested in John (Zimbabwe and Tajikistan).  We put those countries at the top of the bid list (#1 and 2), then filled in a couple of additional positions/countries in which both John and I had some interest, and then put two additional required bids at the bottom (# 7 and 8).  These two required positions include one position in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iraq/Sudan, and one position from a list of 7-8 countries which have hard-to-fill positions (we selected Liberia for that one).  We very much hope and expect that John will be assigned to his #1 or #2 bid, but the Office of Human Resources is not required to follow those bidding preferences if the needs of the Foreign Service suggest he should go elsewhere.  We hope to find out John's next assignment on December 6.  In the meantime, we wait patiently.  I will try to post here ASAP after we find out where we will go for our next assignment.

More Spring Flowers

I walked around the block this morning and here were a few photos that I took all within a very short walking distance from our house.

 This jasmine isn't super colorful, but it smells awesome.  I love getting a whiff of it when I am walking around at this time of year.

 I need to find out the name of this flowering tree, but whatever it is, it can be seen EVERYWHERE.

 Many houses have flowering plants that pour over their walls and gates.

 This to me looks like some kind of bottle brush flower.  

 Above and below another one of these flowering trees.

 A close up view of the flowers.  The leaves are fern like.

 This one's flowers aren't quite as prolific, but I liked the contrast against the wood and bright blue sky!

Another sweet smelling jasmine right around the corner from our house.

Halloween

 

The whole crowd, with the Ambassador in the back row.

 Arianna and her friends

Abigail and some friends

 More kids Abigail's age

All the "big" kids

I thought that maybe I had written about Halloween last year, but as I look through the blog I don't see any entry about it.  I believe that what our embassy does here in Paraguay is pretty typical of what is done at Embassies around the world for the American kids who are growing up overseas.

The Community Liaison Officer (CLO) plans the party (as well as the Christmas and Easter party that also happen).  All of the different offices at the embassy decorate or at least buy candy to hand out to the kids, and the kids go trick or treating from office to office.  This year there were even more of the offices that participated than last, so this process was most of the event for our kids.  The kids go through the offices in 3 groups according to age, and of course our kids were in the last group of older kids.

After trick or treating the kids go to the "quincho" (the barbecue area that every house has) of the Ambassador's house (which is on the embassy grounds in the middle of the area where the kids went trick or treating).  There they get pizza and decorate cookies.  This year we have a new ambassador and he and his wife were very much a part of the festivities.  The Ambassador was a part of his office decoration (a crime victim lying on the floor....) and his wife was also in costume, and handed out good (i.e. American) candy at the front door of their house.

Halloween has never been my favorite holiday since it celebrates the dark side of life, but at this point, as you can see, our kids like getting dressed up and free candy!!!  It is also one of those times for them to hang out with their friends, which is hard when everyone is busy with school.  Arianna spent a lot of time in preparation for her Indian costume (she was a bride), including making the little top that goes under the Sari.  I have some photos of last year's costume, which Arianna also made.  She also decorated cookies for a couple of events in October:

2010 Costumes:

I also have a photo album on Facebook with some more pictures from this year if you are friends and want to see them!

Spring again!

Last year I posted some photos of the yellow lapacho tree and said that I hoped to get some photos of pink ones this year.  Well, I did, so here they are:

These are actually in bloom in the winter (June - August), and for a while I was driving the girls crazy because I would stop and take a picture when I was driving.  But I'm glad I did, because when the yellow ones came out this year (September) we had a few hot days and the blooms all died very quickly.  They were stunningly beautiful for a few days, but I didn't manage to get one photo.  It reminds me of the spring magnolias that we have in the northeast that often get killed by frost.  I didn't realize last year that the long blooming season was something that I should not have taken for granted....

Now we have these spectacular red-orange trees.  I don't know their names, and I have a couple of photos, but I will try to get more before they are gone (hopefully the thunderstorms we are having today won't knock off all their blooms!).

Musical Happenings

Since I am a musician, it is not surprising that some of my favorite Paraguayan experiences have revolved around music.  In the month of September I was fortunate to have two of them.  The first was that I was able to take a teacher training class for Suzuki Violin with a teacher trainer from Argentina.  It is a class that I took many years ago, but was not able to ever "register" it with the Suzuki Association due to some changes in the courses.

Even though I had taken the course before, I still learned a lot and enjoyed working with Fernando Pinero.  It was a bit of a challenge to take the class in Spanish, but fortunately he has worked a lot in the US so he could help me when I got stuck.  I really enjoyed seeing the Paraguayans (many of them young teachers) getting their Suzuki training.  Another benefit was that Abigail got to participate a little bit and we both played in the final concert:

Abigail's group in their final rehearsal before the concert.

The whole festival - the teacher trainees are at the top.

Abigail and me with the trainer, Fernando Pinero.

Later in the month of September, I had the pleasure of seeing my cello student graduate from Twinkles (for those of you not familiar with the Suzuki method, this is the first of many "graduations" that the students make in a Suzuki program).  Maia and her family are an absolute delight and it has been a real pleasure to work with them.  They planned the graduation at her grandmother's house (which is only a few blocks from ours), and invited friends and family.  They made programs, and served refreshments afterward.  Her dad played piano on the Twinkle Variations and I played the cello duet with her for French Folk Song which she had also already learned.

It was a delightful afternoon and her sister (who is still 3) decided to restart her violin lessons once she saw all the attention that her sister received.  Later this month (Novermber) we will be doing a whole recital and both sisters plan on participating!

First Day of School #2

Well, the first day of school (High School!!!) for Arianna was over two weeks ago, but I did get pictures of both girls:

This school year is off to a much better start than last year for Arianna.  She is attending an online high school through George Washington University.  It uses the same curriculum that she used last year (k12), so that made the transition to high school easy for her.  She had already taken one high school class last year (Spanish 2), so she was very familiar with the high school environment, in addition to having a lot of general experience with the online environment.

From my point of view, the GWU experience has been great.  She has a teacher for every subject area (she is taking 7 courses) and the classes meet live weekly.  There is additional interaction with the teachers during the week through the email system of k12 and also through Skype.  The kids also interact during the classes and then when they want to through Skype.  Arianna went to her first club meeting (newspaper) today and seemed to enjoy it.  

One of the neat things about the program is that it is brand new.  There was a pilot group of kids who started last semester, but this is the first group of kids who are going through a whole school year together.  There is a lot of energy among both the teachers and students.  It feels like we have finally gotten a program that might provide the right thing for Arianna - at least for now!

Pierced Ears

A while ago we gave Arianna earrings for Christmas and told her she could get her ears pierced.  Well, she decided that she wanted to have it done while we were in the US this summer.  The day before our flight back to Paraguay, we went to the mall - with two cousins and two aunts and she got it done!  Although it hurt a bit, she didn't flinch. For the first few days, she had a little soreness, but things went well.

By the end of the first week, there were signs of infection.  She was taking good care of the ears, so we weren't quite sure what was going on.  She used some antibacterial ointment, and things got a bit better.  But, then they really took a turn for the worse.  I won't go into details, but we finally went to see the doctor, who thought that she had an allergic reaction to the earring (we suspect the backs, because the posts were gold, but the backs weren't).  He said the earrings should come out and stay out for 10 days.  At first the doctor couldn't get the earring out and he thought that maybe they were special earrings that she would need to go to a jeweler to get them removed (we weren't agreeing with that idea, but they were hard to get off and no one wanted to hurt her).  It took quite a bit of tugging and a nurse to get the first earring out. After he was sure that it did come out, he got the second one off without too much effort.

So, when I got home I called the woman at Claire's who pierced her ears and explained what had happened.  I asked her how long it would be before the holes started to close up.  She said it would take 24 hours to 5 days.  Well, after all we had already gone through, both Arianna and I wanted to try to keep the holes, so I asked her what we could do.  She said use the old fashioned trick of string or straw.  We opted for string (strung through with a needle).  A couple of times the string came out (at first I told Arianna to just leave them loose without tying them - bad idea), and sometimes I thought the holes might be getting small, so she used the earrings a little.  After several weeks of string and occasional earring posts (no backs), plus good cleaning and cortisone cream, the ears are finally all better, and Arianna has actually gotten to change the earrings!

I don't think Abigail will be asking for pierced ears anytime soon....

First Day of School #1

Abigail started 6th grade last Monday.  She declined the opportunity for a back to school photo, so there is none to post:).  But, she is off to a great start to the year.  For the last few years we have made some adjustments in the ideal material to use for her so that I could cover some subjects with both girls together.  Last year we had to cover some material that was a little too easy, because we had skipped it earlier.  Now it feels like we have hit the sweet spot.

In case you're curious, Abigail will study the second half of World History (we already covered the first half in an earlier year) and the geography that goes with it.  She will have many books to read (20!) on her own that coordinate with that theme.  She is also taking a writing course (that starts today!), studying grammar andvocabulary, and will do typing as soon as she finishes up her handwriting book from last year.  She is doing a Math 7 course, High School Spanish 2 (we'll see how it goes) and she is studying inventions, electricity and magnetism in science.  We have a Bible component to our curriculum which includes a number of interesting books this year.  In addition to her school work, she takes tennis twice a week, has a cooking class, Spanish lesson and a group violin class once a week and practices violin and piano every day (we're just getting back to piano after almost no work on it last year).

I hope the whole year goes as well as the beginning!  Abigail is a hard working, cheerful student so I am glad to have another year of working with her.

Home Again!

We had a great R and R trip back to the US this summer (5 weeks for the Macy girls, 2 weeks for John).  R and R is an annual event for people in the Foreign Service, and we spent our time back in the good ol' USA.  The first part of our time there was spent back at Blue Ridge Suzuki Camp (our third year).  We were tired after the long trip, but it was, as usual, great music making with great friends.

The WV crowd!

The other week long event of our time in the US was our trip to the beach in Massachusetts.  We had missed the annual event the previous summer since we had just moved in early July, so we were all glad to get back to Westport.  We had a full house and GREAT weather.  

 

We were typical tourists on a couple of occasions:  A NYC trip to Madame Tussauds (which was a birthday celebration for Abigail) and dinner at the cafe at the American Girl store cafe (which the kids wanted to do once before they were way too old).   Then, while visiting John's parents in their new home in Chambersburg, PA we got to visit the Hershey Factory and a Pretzal Factory. 

Madam Tussauds

Madam Tussauds

At American Girl Cafe with Baba

Hershey Tour with Grandma and Grandpa

Littitz Pretzel Factory

Around those events we were able to visit family, take care of some Dr. appointments, try (unsuccessfully) to get a declawed cat (LONG story), do some shopping and even swing down to WV for a concert!  It was a good trip, but by the end, even the girls were ready to go home!!