Chicago

I have an awesome husband.  No, really.  He’s awesome.  For Christmas last year, he surprised me with both a fabulous and desperately needed wallet AND tickets for us to fly to Chicago over President’s Day weekend.  For those of you who know Chicago, you might be thinking “why in the hell would anyone want to go to Chicago in the winter?”  Well I happen to love both winter and Chicago and, masochistically, I love Chicago winters.  They are brutal and insanely cold but the few days that are cold and clear make it totally worth it.  And while the timing of this trip totally stressed me out before I knew I was testing early, I decided to make the best of it either way and use the weekend to either bemoan my failure or to celebrate my victory.  And celebrate we did.

We flew in Friday evening and were met at the airport by one of my favorite people in the whole world who had both graciously offered to pick us up but who also let us crash on her couch bed for 2 nights.  AMAZING.  We decided pretty early on that we didn’t want to build too much rigidity into our schedules for the weekend and we mostly just wanted to chill.

Saturday after a delicious breakfast of homemade blueberry pancakes we bundled up and headed into Bucktown/Wicker Park to window shop and to wander for a few hours.  I had been searching for a vintage-looking large chain for an antique pendant I bought back at Christmastime and after going into pretty much every boutique on Damen between Webster and Willow (which is A LOT of boutiques), I found the perfect chain!  The owner of the boutique was working and I got to practice my Spanish a little as she is from Venezuela.  Hooray!

Later that afternoon we met up with another of my favorite people at a tea shop in the neighborhood for high tea.  Yep.  High tea.  It was kind of expensive, but so ridiculously fun that it was totally worth it.  The food was tasty, the tea was phenomenal, and the company was perfection.  Want to see some pictures?  OF COURSE YOU DO!

Scones!

These babies were absolutely dreamy

Tiny sandwiches and pastries

Who doesn't love tiny food?

Rotating tiny-food stand

I've already bought one to take to Juarez...

The proper tea-drinking position

Also: look how cute my friend's dress is...she's so fabulous

After utterly gorging ourselves on pastries, tiny sandwiches, and tea (SO. MUCH. TEA.) we headed out to the lake to walk around a bit.  It was freezing and super windy but the lake was so pretty and I totally could have stayed out there for hours just watching the water.  Have I mentioned that Chicago is my favorite city in all of the U.S.?  Obviously I haven’t been to every city, but I’ve been to many of them, including most of the large cities on both the East and West coasts and Chicago is hands down the one I love the most.  I love the architecture, I love the history, I love the river and the lake, I love the giant buildings interspersed with tiny parks, I love the L, I love the museums, I love the food, and I really love the people.  People in Chicago are generally just nice.  They’re fast walkers and they walk with purpose, like New Yorkers, but they’re more polite and friendly, like Los Angelites (I totally made that name up).

Anyway, after visiting the lake we went to a coffee shop in Lincoln Park to warm up for a bit.  Then we wandered around the neighborhood a bit, got a fairly graphic view of a woman’s lady business*, and got a drink.  Later, a bunch of our grad school friends met us at Cafe Ba Ba Re Ba for tapas and sangria.  I didn’t take a single picture but I wish I had…so much good food and so much good fun.  We have such smart, interesting friends.  Seriously.  In the group we had:

• A successful journalist turned International Relations specialist turned blogger (check out her blog, Wanderplex, in my sidebar!)
• A corporate big wig for a major accessories store in the U.S.
• A Safety Engineer who travels the world giving conferences on the importance of workplace safety
• A Japanese enthusiast/scholar working on her PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations (she speaks Mandarin AND Japanese!)
• A former JET program member, who has worked for a bunch of super cool consulting firms and who wrote one of the best theses from my graduating class.

I seriously love my friends.  They are awesome.

Sunday we got up and went to brunch at another of my favorite spots in Chicago, Mindy’s Hot Chocolate.  After gorging ourselves on Mexican hot cocoa and homemade donuts with raspberry coulis, we headed to Millennium Park to visit the Bean and to check out the new pedestrian bridge between the park and the Art Institute.  After a lovely, if cold, walk around the park, we hopped back into the car and headed down to Pilsen to check out the National Museum of Mexican Art.  Before this trip, I didn’t even know this place existed but it was truly fantastic.  It’s not a huge museum, just 4 exhibits right now, but all of them were really well curated and incredibly interesting.  Plus, they were entirely bilingual so I got to use my Spanish as I read all the placards!  That definitely made me feel good about my skills because I read the Spanish text almost as fast as my husband read the English text.  Maybe I really do know Spanish?

Post museum, my friend dropped us off at the Hotel Palomar in the Streeterville/River North neighborhood.  I have always wanted to stay there and this was the perfect excuse.  Plus, the restaurant there is INCREDIBLE.  Seriously.  Everything about it is awesome.  The ambiance, the bar, the bartenders, the wine list…and as awesome as all of those things are, they don’t even come close to the awesomeness of the food.  The menu is designed so that you can either order full portions of things and eat them like a traditional meal or you can order half orders and share them, tapas style.  Obviously, we chose to share so that we could try as many things as possible.  We had pumpkin gnocchi that was to die for.  Chicken and waffles straight from my dreams.  Fried cheese curds that were both interesting and delicious.  Shrimp and grits with hot sauce and crispy sage.  Pork belly flat bread.  Gingerbread cake with a mini gingerbeer float.  Salted caramel ice cream with chocolate souffle cake.  I could have spent the entire night there and I am already counting down until our next visit so I can go there again.

Monday we checked out of the hotel and then headed down to Hyde Park, our old stomping grounds.  After a quick stop to pick up coffee and ham and swiss croissants, we met up with my old boss at one of the museums on campus and caught up with her for a few hours.  It was super fun to be back in the museum and it really made me miss working there.  After a few hours of catching up, we jointly gave a sort of impromptu talk to a group of graduate students about our post-grad school career trajectories and our current work.  It was pretty weird to be on the speaking end of that conversation and to have students asking us for advice.  I can’t believe how far we’ve come in the year and a half since we finished grad school.

After our Q & A session, we headed to the airport to head home.  Whew.  It was a whirlwind trip but we had SUCH a good time and it was exactly what I needed to decompress from what has been a super stressful few months.

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*Note to Lincoln Park citizens: If you live in one of those modern houses with the full glass windows running 2 stories, it’s probably not a good idea to leave the curtains open and to sit, wrapped only in a bath towel at the top of the staircase with your knees bent and your ladybits facing the street…just a friendly recommendation. 

Spanish test results:

I passed with a 3/3!  Hooray!  I am still planning a post about the language exam itself, at least the parts of it I can tell you about since every tester has to sign an NDA, but I’m away from Washington this weekend celebrating with my adorable husband so look for that post sometime next week.

HOLYFREAKINGCRAPIPASSEDSPANISH!*

*I should quickly note here that I feel like now that I’ve finished Spanish I can finally start learning Spanish.  Anyone who has taken an FSI language class can probably attest to this post-language-course feeling of being vaguely prepared to work in a foreign language but not at all prepared to live in another country and carry out daily tasks.

License to…

….approve visas?

Today I picked up our shiny, new, black diplomatic passports.  As I was looking over the information and checking for errors it hit me in a big way that I am really going to do this thing.  This move-to-a-new-country-every-two-years-thing.  Immediately, my first thought was OHMYGODWHATHAVEIDONE?!? But after I took some deep breaths, I remembered why I’m doing this and why it’s important: because I believe in this country.  Because I believe in public service.  Because I believe that the long term goals of our country are more important than my desire for comfort.  Because no matter what douchy politicians (and even some of my own “friends”) say about State Department employees, I know that what we do is vital to our country’s prosperity and to its security.

I’ve been writing this blog for about 6 months now and I still haven’t written about why I chose to call it “Cupcake Diplomacy.”  First of all, anyone who knows me knows that baking is my (not so) secret joy.  But more than that, I have personally experienced the power of food as a tool for cultural exchange and, yes, diplomacy.  And while I regularly joke about using cupcakes to create world peace, I’m only kind of kidding.  I really do think that cultural exchanges, including foods, are some of the best ways to forge alliances between nations–between peoples–and I cannot-freaking-wait to learn about Mexican pastries and candies from a tiny, adorable Mexican abuela and to share with her my family’s pancake recipe, my favorite chocolate cake recipe, and my secret frosting technique.

This is going to be awesome.

Busy week

This is going to be a really busy week.

Monday my husband takes his French exam at the FSI, bringing his week of language exams to a close.  He did well on both the Arabic and Turkish exams last week and I am really proud of him for being able to switch languages so quickly.  Once he gets the French one done he’s got just about a month till his Spanish test which is good for both of us since it means we’ll be doing a lot of practicing together.  Monday evening I have my weekly Bachelor viewing party with one of my best friends in the world.  The show is terrible in every way, but I love it and I love watching it with her because she’s so snarky and funny.  Plus it gives me an excuse once a week to bake something yummy (like brie, covered in Raspberry Jalepeño Jam and puff pastry).

Tuesday is Valentine’s Day which for us just means take out of some kind and a movie in our PJs.  However, Tuesday is also probably the last day I’ll see one of my fabulous A-100 friends (Hi T!) before she takes her adorable husband and precious new baby to Sierra Leone.  I’m praying that her pack out goes quickly and that she has time to see me one more time before she leaves…I’m really going to miss her!!

Wednesday looks so far like it’s the only day this week when there isn’t something going on, which usually means that at the last minute something will happen and we’ll end up going somewhere.  I’m hoping we can keep it an empty day though since I could really use a free night to study, and to chill the $%^# out because I am positive that by then I will seriously be freaking out about my exam.

Thursday is my birthday.  I wanted to do something fun and ridiculous with my friends but I think that doing something like that the day before my exam would probably mean that I’d a) not really enjoy the night because I’d be worried about the test and b) not do well on the test because of staying up too late/an abundance of delicious, delicious whiskey.  So instead of celebrating with everyone, the husband and I are going to go to a tasty restaurant a few blocks from our house for a nice dinner and a glass of wine and then we’re going to call it a night.  I’m hoping that doing something low key will help minimize my pre-test jitters.

Friday is THE DAY.  Test day.  I have class in the morning and then an hour-long one-on-one session with a teacher before my test* begins in the early afternoon.  The test is scheduled for 2 hours and most people seem to take the full 2 hours.  The good news is that, unlike the language tests taken during A-100, they tell you what you scored right then and there so there will be no nail-biting over the weekend.  I’ll know when I leave the FSI if I’ve passed and can continue with my current schedule, or if I’ve failed to make the grade and will have to stay in Spanish for a few weeks more.  I am really, REALLY hoping that I pass so send me your good vibes and all your Spanish grammar power.

*I just realized that I definitely have readers who don’t know anything about how the language tests work at the FSI.  I’ll try to put together a post sometime soon that gives an explanation so you all have a better idea of how this works.  No promises on getting it done this week but I’ll try.

2nd tour bidding results!

In a previous post, I wrote about bidding for my 2nd tour because of my Arabic language requirement.  Well, today the results of this bidding cycle were announced…

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…and I am actually somewhat pleased to announce that I was not placed this bidding cycle.  This means I will bid again in the next bidding cycle which will take place sometime this summer.  This is a good thing because traditionally the summer bidding cycle has a lot more positions.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let me explain a little more how this process works for those of you not up on your Foreign Service trivia. 

I entered the Department under what was then called the Critical Needs Language Program.  I’ve already explained about the benefits of the program-formerly-known-as-CNL (see this post) so I’ll spare you a recap of that and skip to the part about how this plays out once you enter the service.  It works like this: if your first tour is not in a post where your CNL is spoken, you must bid during every subsequent bidding cycle until you do get placed.  So since my original bid was done in the summer and obviously they don’t speak Arabic in Juarez, I had to bid in the most recent cycle. And because for whatever reason I didn’t get placed this cycle, I have to bid in the next cycle which should be this summer.

It’s pretty common knowledge here in the Department that if you want greater job options, you try your hardest to bid summer cycle, but for people outside of the Foreign Service world the reasoning behind this might not be intuitive.  The issue is mostly one of timing.  Usually, the cycle you bid in is the same cycle in which you transfer.  For example, if your position ends in June you’ll need to be placed in a job that starts pretty soon after that so that the Department doesn’t have to come up with a ton of filler training between your end date in one post and your start date in another.  There are tons of exceptions to this and no one’s training schedules and transfer schedules are the same, but more or less that’s how it works.  For people with kids, of which there are many in the FS, it’s far better to have this gap between posts during the summer because that means their kids can finish out the school year in whatever country they’re in before moving to a new place.  Bidding in winter usually means transferring in winter, and not many people want to pull their kids out of school in the middle of the year in China and then re-enroll them, again in the middle of the year, in Djibouti!

This bidding structure also means that people without kids and single people sometimes get the shaft in terms of bidding because they don’t always have compelling reasons to switch cycles so often they get “stuck” on whatever cycle they started out on.  For us, I’m happy to get to bid summer cycle because I’m hoping there are more Public Diplomacy jobs available for me to bid on.  Doing an in cone assignment is pretty important for me career-wise at this point so I’m crossing my fingers that the summer list has more than one or two PD jobs to bid on.

Unrelated:  My exam is in 9 days.  HOLYCRAPINEEDTOBESTUDYING!

Federal employees should not be whipping boys

Yes.  This.  Drawing from the same well

Mi examen de español esta comiendo mi vida.

Sorry for the lack of posts.  My Spanish exam was scheduled a week earlier than I was expecting it to be so I’ve been studying like crazy lately.

Only 12 more days till and I’ll know if I’ve passed and get to start ConGen or if I’ve failed and have to stay in Spanish-hell another 6 weeks.  Cross your fingers and send me all your good Spanish-speaking-ability-vibes!