Hawsmo Abroad, 2.0

Hello all. In light of the fact that Mike decided to join the Foreign Service and I was (somehow) willing to go along with that, I've decided to resurrect this blog to record our adventures. We're not very abroad yet, although after living in Alabama, DC does kind of feel like a foreign country. (Maybe like paradise. I mean, I can walk to Costco and the library AND there's an enormous geology exhibit just a Metro ride away. Definitely paradise.) For instance, this is the view from our apartment window:

The pokey bits in the foreground are the mall parking garage. The Washington Monument is on the right, and the Pentagon is the hugely massive building taking up the rest of the space.

It's been a crazy week since we got here. Mike has been at Orientation (brainwashing) for the Foreign Service most of the time. I've been bouncing around the apartment and surrounding environs, exploring the neighborhood and going into raptures about Costco and the Sur La Table just up the street. I also had an orientation day myself, where they told us spouses all about things I'd never thought to worry about until now, like malaria and how much peanut butter you need to pack for a two year tour in Africa (these concerns are apparently of equal importance).

Last Tuesday the powers that be handed out the bid list for available postings--and no, I can't tell you what the options are, if I did I'd have to kill you--and it suddenly hit me that this is REAL and we're in it for good. And then I freaked out. Mike, being Mike, did nothing of the sort, and we've spent the days since then researching possible posts and weighing pros and cons like we actually had enough information to make a real decision, and also as if our decision would impact anything at all. Basically, we get to rank the available postings from "yes please send us here" to "over my dead body", and then the people in charge send us wherever they need us. We have to submit our list tomorrow morning, and then we'll find out where exactly we're going next Wednesday (so get your guesses in before then!). It's both exciting and pants-wettingly terrifying, so mostly I try to think about other things.

So! Now that the blog is up and running again, what would you like me to write about? What would you like to hear about our increasingly bizarre life? I will do my best to provide basic information and tell funny and interesting stories, but if there are specifics you want, please ask for them. I'll try to deliver (unless it's classified, which is something I never ever thought I would  say and makes me feel like I'm in some bad spy movie).

Cheers!

Mrs. Hawsmo