Vos

The last month has had several milestones of importance for my life here in Caracas. I had my first visitor, received my consumables shipment, took one my first real trips within Venezuela, and got my next assignment.

Going from first to last, I had my first guest visit since arriving here almost a year ago. After some mild pressure, my brother S agreed to fly down to partake in the Caracas foreign service lifestyle for a few days. After a few hiccups, namely discovering his passport was a year expired the day before he was to fly down and a quick trip to Denver to renew it, he arrived a day late but bearing gifts of great personal value. Standing outside of customs and immigration, I watched as he was the first person to emerge at the baggage claim area. I then watched for the next hour and everyone else on the flight claimed their baggage and departed, while he stood and waited for his baggage to arrive. Finally, the last bag to arrive was his, and as he was walking out though customs and had his bags scanned, he was flagged for further inspection for some questionable contents in his carry on. The culprit? His entire bag was filled to the brim with fresh baked bread that he was bringing for me (which I have enjoyed immensely for the past week). After a few puzzled and quizzical looks by the customs agent that searched his bag, he finally made it into the country.

The following few days were a barnstorm of travel and eating crammed into a very short timespan. The next day, we ate local empanadas, visited some sites in Caracas, then went back to the airport where we caught a short flight to the Andes Western Venezuela. We flew to a city called El Vigia, a short distance from the Colombia border, where we met our tour guide who drove us to the Andean city Merida.

Merida is a somewhat colonial city high up in the mountains, surroundes by towering peaks of the Andean mountain range. We arrived somewhat late and didn't have much time to explore the city. Our posada was nice by Venezuelan standards, however, our first night there was the start of Carnival, a mutiday holiday of excessive bingedrinking and iniquity before the start of lent, when the country just goes back to its normal excesses of drinking and carnality. Nonetheless, we barely slept the first night due to the revelry out on the streets that only seemed to cease around the time our alarm clocks were set at 6AM the following morning. Groggy and a bit perturbed, we met our guide at 7:30, a half hour after we had agreed to meet back up, and were taken to the travel agency to make final payment of the trip. The owner was a very nice Swiss woman who came to Venezuela 17 years ago and fell in love with a Venezuelan paragliding instructor. Naturally, our first activity of the day was...paragliding.

We piled into another truck filled with equipment and started out on a nearly 45 minute drive of the side of an Andean peak. Several thousand feet up we came to a bluff where we disembarked. The instructors unloaded the equipment, gave us a modicum of instruction, "Put this helmet on and when I say so, run off this cliff." However, moments before we were about the jump, a large cloud rolled in covered the launch site. We patiently waited for about 10 minutes, then suddenly with almost no warning as a hole broke thought the clouds, the instructor yelled "Run!" S and his instructor instantly disappeared into the clouds. For me however, my legs were moving but my body was going nowhere. I think my brain subconsciously refused to let me move. I must have looked like a Looney Toons character with my legs in a blur but my body going nowhere. The instructor tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Run!" After a quick nod, we were soaring. For about 15 minutes, we zoomed over peaks and valleys thousands of feet in the air. It was truly thrilling. As we approached the landing site, the instructor gave me my second set of instructions. "Run!" And we landed.

After packing up the equipment, we crammed back into the truck and drove back up the mountain, passing through cloud forests until we came to a small shrine at the top of a peak, engulfed in the clouds. Here, we donned helmets (the first time in my life I've worn a bicycle helmet) and proceeded to mountain hike down the other side of the mountain. We passed by potato and sharp smelling onion fields the went up sheer faces of the mountain, waterfalls, and tiny villages that until recently had no power or plumbing. after about 10 miles, we came to a little village where we would spend the night in a small Andean cottage.

The cottage was situated right next to a small creek that the owner has diverted onto his property to make three trout ponds. The owner fished out a few and friend them up for us head and all for lunch. Then, an elderly farmer arrived with two horses, and then led us on horseback up into mountains overlooking the pueblo. The jaunt was enbjoyable, but admittedly, my backside was already sore from the biking, and when we finally got back to the cottage, I was beyond saddle sore. As we cleaned up, a cold drizzle moved in. He ate a rustic dinner of freshly killed chicken and potatoes, and went to bed right when it got dark. After having spent a year in tropical Caracas, I wrapped myself in three wool blankets to stay warm in the brisk Andean nights.

The next morning, after sleeping nearly 12 hours, we got up refreshed from our lack of sleep the night before and the full day of activity, we crammed back in the jeep, drove back down from the mountains to a more tropical area, where we saw several waterfalls, and then went biking again. My rear had never been so sore before, and I begrudgingly climbed back aboard my bike. The ride was all down hill however, and after reaching breakneck speeds at a few points and nearly flying off a few cliffs, we reached the main highway, where we had a lunch of roasted chicken and yuca. Finally, we were off to the the airport and back in Caracas.

The following day, my brother came to visit me at the embassy, then spent the rest of the day jaunting around Caracas with a friend, visiting places I haven't even been to yet. That night, we went to my favorite Venezuelan food restaurant and stuffed ourselves on local delicacies. Then, early the next morning, he was off to the airport and back to the States.

We had a great time.

In other news, my shipment of consumables finally arrived. During my home-leave at Christmas, I went on a massive shopping trip and bought thousands of dollars worth of foodstuffs and drinks to get me though the next year. Because of the consistent concern of food shortages here, the Department allows us to ship up to 2000 lbs of food on the taxpayer's dime. After filling up my parents living room with pile after pile of stuff for a few weeks, a moving company came and boxed it up. It was sent to Miami, loaded into a shipping container, then sent by boat thousands of miles to South America. After nearly two months a team of guys loaded everything into my apartment and filled up one of the spare bedrooms. Unfortunately, I have so little space in my apartment, most of the stuff will just be on the floor as I slowly eat though it. The key is to make sure none of it goes to waste (which I'm sure some of will). In retrospect, I may have gone overboard. By the time I'm ready to leave, I may have to throw a party for the entire embassy to use it all up.

Finally, the last bit of news is that I have received my next assignment. Generally in the Department, after being at post of a year, every officer bids their next tour. Even though I've been here slightly less than a year, I am part of the Winter bidding cycle which included officers who arrived at post between the months of November and April. I arrived in Venezuela April 28th, which out me in the current bidding cycle. Has I arrived a few days later, I would have been bidding in 5 months. Nevertheless, though somewhat early, I went though the whole process and just received my next assignment. First, however, the process needs to explained. For those who are bidding, the Department releases a list of available assignments that will be open sometime within the next year and a half. The list for my group had approximately 150 jobs in every corner of the globe. The bidding instructions are complex and rigid, which limited the number of positions that can be bid on. Basically, the officer must chose positions that allow them to leave the same month they originally arrived at post, complete any required functional or language training, and arrive exactly the month the bid job opens. This cuts down of the overall number of jobs available to the officer. Further, the officer must chose 30 positions, ranking them from 1-30 in preference. For several days, I worked though the math, figured out which jobs and countries I was interested in, then came up with a rough draft. This draft was then sent to my Career Development officer in DC for review. Unfortunately, she informed me that I had done my math wrong and lopped 10 of the jobs I was considering off the list. After several more days of crunching numbers and research, I came up with 30 bids that were acceptable. Then, with much soul searching and last minute switches, exactly two weeks after the list was released, I submitted my final draft. The top ten were,

1. Moscow

2. Warsaw

3. Paris

4. Sarajevo

5. London

6. Buenos Aires

7. Kyiv

8. Hague

9. Tel Aviv

10. Mexico City

A week and a half later, I got an Email at work.

"Congratulations! After careful consideration, you have been assigned to....

Buenos Aires.

Arrival - May 2012.

This sure is an interesting job.

Voz

M