We're still here!!

I haven't written in a long time, so I just thought I'd pop in to say we're still here (in Paraguay, that is).  We had a good trip back to the US in December, and were fortunate enough to spend a few days in Costa Rica on our way back down south.  We got to unwind at the beach and celebrate a "big" birthday of John's.  Things were dampened a bit by a sick child (Abigail) and a loud fair next to our hotel, but we had a great time.

Since we've been back it has been HOT.  Really summer.  Many, many days that flirted with 100 and quite a few that hit (or surpassed) it.  I tried to take advantage of the fact that the kids were out of school here (even though our kids were not) by letting our kids participate in as many activities as possible - tennis, pool day and movies for Abigail, gymnastics and horse back riding for Arianna.

Also keeping me busy is the fact that I am taking two Spanish courses through the University of Wisconsin distance learning program.  I was happy to receive a grant (through a program for spouses in the foreign service) to take these classes, which will fulfill a requirement that I have to keep my PA teaching certificate active.  Also, I plan on taking a test that, if all goes well, will enable me to be certified to teach in Spanish.  It is quite the challenge!

Arianna finished her first semester of high school with flying colors and Abigail continues to do well in her school work.  We are working hard to stay on track so that the girls are done in plenty of time before the next big move!

Here are a few photos from our time in Costa Rica:

 John's Birthday

 New Year's Eve at the beach

 Bonfires on the beach - New Year's Eve

 View from horse back riding (Arianna and Amy)

We got to spend one day with our friends the Vaughns!

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!).