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It's been a very full five weeks of visiting before arriving back in Washington; here's a recap: About 40 hours and four flights after leaving Dhaka, we arrived in Maui to begin the first leg of our five-week home leave. Home leave is an odd concept - a congressionally mandated vacation for Foreign Service personnel, created with the intent to "re-Americanize" those who have completed tours of duty overseas. We're fortunate to have friends and family in places we really enjoy being, and Maui is certainly one of those. We stayed in Kapalua, and met up with Adham's parents, who were spending several weeks there. Tasman and Atlas had a wonderful time with Gramma and Grampa, and we had many happy visits to the beach with the boys. It was a great place to do a transition from Dhaka: still warm and tropical, with lots of good fresh produce. But on top of that, we could drink the water out of the tap, we weren't being stared at every time we left the house, and the sewers were (thankfully) well under cover. We'll miss our big house in Dhaka, the convenience of our lifestyle, and the proximity to vacation places like Thailand and Nepal - but we're ready to move on, and Paris is a better place than most to move on to. From Maui we went to Los Angeles for five days of fun with Crystal's family and friends. We spent time with Dean and his family in Orange County, and with Peggy's family in Pasadena. We took the kids on their first trip to Disneyland, which was an unusual experience; we didn't have a cable TV hookup in Dhaka, so our kids have grown up pretty much unaware of major American cultural icons like Mickey Mouse and Cinderella. When these same show up as the themes around which amusement park rides are built, our kids remained blissfully unaware of the context. We'll see how long that lasts! We spent the final three weeks of home leave based in Oakland, where we reconnected with old friends and more family. One highlight of our time in Northern California was heading up to Sea Ranch, several hours up the coast, for a long weekend with friends in a house we rented there together. The seals were birthing and nursing their pups on the rocks and beaches right near our house, and the kids loved watching the deer feeding in the nearby meadows too; it was a quiet and idyllic place to spend a few days. The beginning of May saw reality seep back into our lives, as we left California for Washington once again. This time we opted to stay in a corporate apartment complex in Falls Church, Virginia, which makes it very easy for State Department people to stay in. We've only been here a week and have already met lots of other people with kids of similar ages and also importantly, a similar lifestyle that doesn't have to be explained every time. As an illustration, Crystal was at the pool one day with the kids in Maui one day, chatting with a woman who had asked one of the boys where he was from. When he said, "Dhaka, but we're moving to Paris", she didn't quite know what to say. Crystal stepped in and explained the Foreign Service in a nutshell. Even after the explanation though, it was unclear if the woman really got it - she followed up with, "Oh, the Foreign Service! Well, we have a friend with the Forest Service, and he really loves his job!" | ||||
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