Stepping up my game

T-Minus five.

I have five weeks until my EOT (End Of Training) examination in Spanish. If I don't achieve the necessary score, I'll be extended for six additional weeks. The thing to keep in mind is that over half of the students in the Spanish section at FSI do not achieve the appropriate level in the allotted time, so I'll be in good company if I have to stay a bit longer.

Full disclosure: My last Spanish exam did not go as well as I had hoped. Honestly though, it's amazing to me that I can speak Spanish as well as I can after 19 weeks. Considering I entered language training with no more than enough Spanish to count to 10, that I can now actually hold a conversation after such a (relatively) short amount of time is nothing short of miraculous.

Still. I really, really want to pass my EOT on time, so I'm ratcheting up my efforts. I'm watching news in Spanish, reading opinion articles from Spanish newspapers, connecting with online conversation partners, drilling grammar on conjuguemos.com and listening to Spanish podcasts. Yesterday I watched Saturday morning cartoons in Spanish (love you, Handy Manny!) while walking on the treadmill. All of this is in addition to my five plus hours in class five days a week.

Our cats, Calvin and Seamus, generally lie under my chair when I'm at the computer studying, so I'm never lonely. I am, however, beginning to hallucinate just a little - this morning I could swear that their purring was mocking my inability to roll my R. At least their Spanish accents seem to be impressive.

Portrait of Seamus, the Wonder Cat

Winter in Washington

We've been in a bit of a deep freeze here in Washington for the last couple of weeks, but today R and I ventured out into the cold and ice to take in a little history and a little beauty.

We traveled downtown via the metro and walked a couple of blocks to the Washington Monument. I had ordered tickets online last week so that we could take the tour and go up inside the monument and learn its history. Fascinating!

The Lincoln Memorial through the icy window at the top of the Washington Monument.

The White House, from the Washington Monument.

I do believe George had the right idea.

The monument was originally supposed to be a statue of Washington on a horse. How it morphed into an obelisk I'll never know. At 555 feet and 5 inches, the monument is the world's tallest stone structure, and the highest structure in all of Washington.

It was pretty cool to go up to the top and see the view, even if the weather was less than cooperative.

We had a little time to kill before lunch, so we walked to the National Gallery of Art and took a quick look around. I love art museums and feel fortunate that I can just pop into this one at any time - even if I only have 30 minutes. There's no charge, so coming and going at will is not a problem.

I love marble sculptures.

I was struck by the shadows.

My mom would have loved this.

After the museum we walked about two miles and had lunch at Founding Farmers, where R enjoyed the "best fish and chips on the planet."

And then we took the metro home again.

And love and thought and joy

Post by J

Last night, R and I watched St. Vincent, a movie with Melissa McCarthy and Bill Murray. In it, Melissa's son attends a Catholic school and is given the assignment of finding and writing about a "living saint."

I was fascinated by this idea, and started to think of all the people I know who might qualify, bringing them to mind one by one. And one by one discarding them as possibilities. Wait - that sounds harsh. I know I have many, many really good people in my life. But to measure up to sainthood?

And now it's the next day and I'm still thinking about potential candidates. I just can't seem to come up with a single person who measures up to my narrow, internal, very personal definition of a living saint. The only person I can think of is no longer living.

My mom had a difficult life. She was born into a dysfunctional family; her father was an alcoholic who died at age 54 and her mother was a classic enabler. She married my dad when she was just 18 and had three children by the time she was 23. She struggled to find her way in the world.

She wasn't perfect and she made a lot of mistakes. She had a rough time when she and my dad were divorced and she made some bad decisions. She drank too much when I was in high school.

She didn't read to me. She didn't take me to museums. She didn't teach me to sew.

But.

She loved people and people loved her. She genuinely cared about others. She was compassionate and she was kind. She was funny and she was silly and told the same stupid jokes over and over. She baked amazing cookies and even more amazing loaves of bread.

Maybe it's just because she was my mother and I have the advantage of hindsight but, in retrospect, she did so many things right. For better or worse she shaped who I am today.

She taught me to work hard, but to enjoy life. She taught me that it's okay to fail.

She believed in me and encouraged nearly every hare-brained idea that I ever had ... after I explained why it was important to me. I knew that if everything in my life went south I would still have a place to fall and that she would take me in.

She suffered, but she rose above it. She had the kind of faith that, if heaven had contributed just 1% of the solution, she would have brought the other 99% to solve the world's problems. She was that sincere and that devout.

And with all of her contradictions and all of her faults, she was the most holy person I think I will ever know. She was truly a living saint for me.

My mother passed away exactly 12 years ago today at the age of 63. I will always miss her.

She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble care, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love, and thought, and joy.

The Sparrow's Nest

William Wordsworth

Snow Day

Post by J

Today in Washington, D.C., our nation's capital, the federal government closed down and locked its doors tight against a snowstorm. The announcement came around 10:00 last night, due in large part, I think, to the prediction that we were to get - gasp - six to ten inches of that fluffy, marshmallowy, beautifully-serene-if-you-don't-have-to-drive-in-it, snow that kids with impending history tests only dream of.

Oh, yeah.

I grew up in Wyoming. As a kid I loved Snow Days - unexpected free time to laze around in my pajamas, read books, watch soap operas for which I didn't understand the melodramatic plot, eat cereal for lunch and consume a mid-afternoon snack of hot chocolate and toast, and just revel in getting a windfall of time to just do nothing. So important were these rare occurrences that they warranted capitalization.  Snow Day. It was almost like I felt guilty for taking pleasure in doing nothing, but it was a delicious guilty feeling, let me tell you.

As an adult, prior to joining the Foreign Service, I worked in Wyoming for 12+ years. For nine of those twelve years, I drove to a community college in Riverton for work - a distance of 25 miles (just as an aside, it took precisely 25 minutes to drive those 25 miles because, other than antelope, there wasn't much traffic on the road). While the annual average snowfall in any given city in the U.S. is 25 inches, the average in my hometown of Lander is 101. During the last twelve years, I had a Snow Day exactly - drum roll, please - once. And I think that was because it was a heavy spring snow that broke power lines.

The reason for the lack of Snow Days, of course, is that Wyoming and its people know a thing or two about snow. They are the stalwart type who know that if they stop because of snow nothing will get done. Wyoming is full of ranchers who have animals that depend on them; if they don't feed the animals because of a snow storm, the animals starve. Not only is this inhumane, it seriously impacts their investment and their bottom-line. This is a mentality that started with the pioneers over 175 years ago, and anyone in Wyoming will tell you it's hard to buck tradition.

Don't get me wrong. I love Wyoming. I love tradition. I love self-reliance and the idea of a "by-your-bootstraps" kind of society. But, oh, I love a Snow Day, too.

What makes today's Snow Day in Washington, D.C. particularly lovely is the simmering knowledge that once I get to the Dominican Republic, I am guaranteed to get exactly zero Snow Days. Cry me a river, I know. But there's something nostalgic about an unexpected free day, something that reminds me of home, and my childhood, and warmth against the storm. I can't help but love that.

Overnight in D.C. we received a disappointing total of about three inches. Wyomingites would scoff, and justifiably so. But I enjoyed about an hour of cozy laziness looking out the window at the bright blue sky. And then, as an adult, I realized I had obligations to fulfill. What did I do with my free day? Studied Spanish, of course.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel

Post by J

Sometimes, you just have to get out of town.

R and I met in the waning years of the Cold War at the Defense Language Institute while studying Eastern European languages. I was fresh out of basic training, while R was a seasoned soldier by then.

The day after our first "date" we were having brunch at Fifi's Cafe in Monterey, California. We didn't know each other very well, but we were really hitting it off. The conversation went something like this:

Me: So you grew up in New Jersey - that must have been interesting.

Him: Not really.

Me: I grew up in Wyoming, out in the country. It got boring there, too, but unlike Monterey at least we had four seasons.

Him: Do you ever miss the snow?

Me: Sometimes, I guess.

Him: Monterey's great and all, but this constant 68 degree weather is kind of getting to me. We should drive to the mountains to see the snow!

Me: ...

Him: Well, I have a truck, so we wouldn't worry about getting stuck. I can do all the driving because it's a stick shift.

Me: Um, did you hear me say I grew up in Wyoming? I've been driving a stick shift since I was 13.

Personally, I think this tidbit of information is what prompted R to fall in love with me.

And did we drive to Nevada, hundreds of miles away, just to see the snow after dating for less than 24 hours? Yes. Yes we did.

Lately our lives have been consumed with studying, and yesterday we finally decided we needed a day off.  No computer, no Spanish textbooks, no laundry or grocery shopping.

Back when R was growing up, his family would travel to Florida in the summer to visit his grandparents. They'd stop and visit interesting places along the way, and yesterday he remembered he'd been impressed as an 8-year-old with the newly constructed Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. According to Wikipedia, "The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel is a 23-mile fixed link crossing at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in the U.S. state of Virginia. It connects the Delmarva Peninsula with Virginia Beach and the Hampton Roads metropolitan area." That's pretty much all the encouragement I needed.

Keep in mind it's over 200 miles to get to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel from here, and that's if you head down I-95 and connect to I-64 outside of Richmond. Once we had crossed the Bridge Tunnel and arrived on the Delmarva Peninsula, we typed our address into the GPS for the return trip, and the GPS promptly told us to make a U-turn and go back the way we came, because it was going to be a long haul back home if we continued on State Highway 13. We laughed, of course, and kept driving. For what seemed like a bazillion miles. We finally made it back home around 10:00 p.m. - about 11 hours after we began.

Read about the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel here.

Entering a portion of the bridge.

Tankers. The Bridge/Tunnel was created in order to allow vessels to travel unimpeded in and out of Chesapeake Bay.

Entering the first tunnel.

I see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel!

These are parts of the bridge. The space in between allows vessels to continue their journeys; the tunnel through which cars travel is underneath the water. 

I actually like seagulls. Look at how cold they seem to be, tucking their heads back for shelter. Of course, Bob Seger's Against the Wind was stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

On the Delmarva (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia) Peninsula. I'd love to go back in the summer.

Virginia Beach (on the Delmarva side).

Sunset.

Yes, it was a long day. But it was so great to get out of town.

A Love Letter To My Book Club

Post by J

Dear Literary Spirits,

Back in high school my choir sang No Man Is an Island:

No man is an island

No man stands alone

Each man's joy is joy to me

Each man's grief is my own

We need one another

So I will defend

Each man as my brother

Each man as my friend

I liked singing the song, but didn't really think its message pertained to me. If anything I probably thought the lyrics were a bit idealistic, being the cynical 17-year-old that I was. Shortly after high school, my then-boyfriend broke up with me and I remember defiantly telling my mother that I didn't need him anyway and that I didn't need anyone to help me. I even quoted Simon and Garfunkel: "I am a rock. I am an island." To which my very wise mother replied, "You are full of crap."

Of course, she was right. We need people - friends - to help us find the meaning in our lives, to help us find our way.  Sometimes a friend comes ready-made in the shape of a sister who is there for you all of your life. Sometimes you're lucky enough to find a friend whom you marry. And sometimes you're fortunate enough to stumble into a group of remarkable individuals that accept you, embrace your quirkiness, encourage your dreams, bolster your ego, and act as a sounding board for the thoughts in your head.

I am enormously blessed to have all of these types of friends in my life.

I've had friends over the years. I'm old enough to have had many friends. But can I just say here for the record that the relationship that I have with the women of my book club (I'm looking at you, Anne, Carol, Cory, Cora Lee, Sally and Stacey) is a precious and rare gift.

It began back in 2010 when I went in search of a little camaraderie, a little connection, and a chance to talk about a book I wanted to read.  What I found was so much more than that. And the book quickly became optional.

At first we were five and then six and then seven. We'd meet every four or six weeks - ostensibly to talk about a book we'd read. In reality, we'd talk about everything in our lives - sometimes we'd talk about everything but the book.

We talked about life. And death. And life after death.

We talked about our children and our parents.

We were supportive, and were supported.

Now I'm on the other side of the country and will soon be in a different country altogether. I've been busy building this new life and haven't been able to connect with my friends like I used to. But last weekend, they Skyped me in so I could again be a part of the conversation (okay, the book was mainly pictures and took about 20 minutes to "read," but still). Isolated in a new world as I am, I can't describe how much it means to me to know that my friends are still there and that I can still be a part of this amazing group of women that I admire, respect, trust, and love.

So a toast to you, my dear book club, my dear friends, on this, the eve of our 5th anniversary. May we have many more good times and excellent conversations.

And I'm not kidding when I say that we'd better be meeting on the beach in the Dominican Republic in about a year from now (for while no man is an island, each man's joy can include spending time on one). The mimosas are on me.

My besties (as the kids say), last summer.

New Year's Goals

Post by J

I'm not really a "resolutions" person, in that traditional "I resolve to change myself in the coming months so that I resemble someone else's idea of the perfect person" kind of way. Rather, I like to make a list of manageable goals for the year and then check off each one as it's accomplished.

This does several things for me: it provides both a little rush of anticipation for completing the task, and a smug sense of satisfaction when the task is actually done (and I love me some smug sense of satisfaction). More than that, however, a list of goals is a constant reminder that the goal is not really what's important. A finished project is great and all, but if my eyes are constantly focused on the horizon, I'm missing all of the beautiful and challenging details along the way. In a weird twist, a list of goals reminds me to take time to enjoy the moment, too.

So this year, my dear seester posted the following on FaceBook:

And because I love a pre-made list, I've decided to adopt this one and set these as my goals for 2015. There are nine items, and I could accomplish three simply by being in the Foreign Service (Learn a new skill - Spanish; Visit a new place - Dominican Republic; Try a new food - something in Santo Domingo, I'm sure), but this feels a bit like cheating. So I plan to accomplish all nine without counting learning Spanish and moving to the D.R.

The new year is a fresh slate, a clean piece of paper in the typewriter (how old am I?), an empty basket to fill with memories, and a bunch of other cliches. And I'm excited to get started.