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A Blast from My Travel Past

Just days ago I received a LinkedIn invite from someone I met a long time ago.  It was a very pleasant surprise to have communication again with A, who I met while backpacking in Romania in 2000.  It brought me back to that time, when I was in the midst of an 11 month solo backpacking trip through Europe and Asia, long before I was a mom, when the Foreign Service, even my graduate degree, was just a twinkle in my eye.

I do not have any email stories from that time in my life.  I know I sent some, but the Internet was a much newer thing, and anything I sent during that time is lost to cyberspace.  Romania was sort of a turning point in my trip, most certainly when I look back at the people I met there and in the weeks just after.  I had already been on the road for 3 months.  Beginning in Helsinki, Finland, I had made my way through the Baltics, to Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Bavaria, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Hungary to arrive in Romania.  I was getting tired.  I nearly missed a train change at the Hungarian-Romanian border when the train stopped somewhere around midnight and I noticed I was alone.  I was wide-awake as I had been primed to fear strangers coming onto the train to rob me or gas me and do me harm.  I stepped off the train and noticed there was another train on an adjacent platform idling its engine, while my own train engine was already growing cold.  There were a few men, wearing dark clothes, moving like shadows around the train yard, lit only by a few poor lights.  I asked them if they spoke English.  They did not, and only laughed.  Somehow, I do not remember how, I figured out the other train was the one I need to be one and I changed, grateful then for the other passengers.

Once on the right train and with the morning coming and more passengers, I allowed myself to sleep.  And so I missed my stop at Sighisoara and ended up disembarking at Brasov.  In Brasov, I was harassed by two bus ticketing thugs, who muscled me off a bus and then demanded money and my passport when I did not comply.   Because it was midday I defied them, arguing with them, telling them with bravado I did not feel that if they wanted money from me I would be happy to accompany them to the nearest police station.  I only escaped when I jabbed my finger unexpectedly into the chest of one of the men, yelled “leave me alone!” and turned and ran as fast as I could for several blocks.  I lost them.

Then on my final day in Bucharest I was attacked by dogs.  No kidding.  I was walking along, minding my own business, headed for the Palace of the Parliament, the world’s second largest public building (after the Pentagon), when out of nowhere four dogs appear and surround me.   They are barking and jumping and nipping at me.  A woman leans out of a nearby window on the third or fourth floor to yell.  I think she is telling me to be quiet and not the dogs.  Maybe I am screaming?  The dogs start tearing at my clothes.   I know one dog had my left hand in its mouth.  Another was pulling at my pants behind my left knee.  A third was pulling at my right pant leg at my ankle.  I have never been able to remember what the fourth dog was doing.  A man approaches and holds off the dogs and tells me to run.  I assume he told me in Romanian, but in my head I heard English and I took off like a shot.  I ran across a large street, I’m not sure how many lanes, and the dogs did not pursue.  I catch a glimpse of myself in a tinted bank window and I look like a crazy person.  My hair is a mess, my fast red and tear splotched, my pants torn.  I collect myself and limp a few more blocks to the Palace of the Parliament.  There I first request a ticket for the next tour and then a first aid kit if they have one.

It is after the tour I head back to the hostel.  I start every time I see a dog.  And there were a lot of dogs.  According to the “Welcome to Bucharest” brochure I find at the front desk of the hostel upon my return, the approximate population of Bucharest is 3 million people and 2 million dogs.  The brochure explains that the dogs have become wild and rabies shots are required if bitten.  I think about whether I would have wanted to know this information before my incident, and cannot make up my mind.  What I do know is that my plan to depart Romania that evening on the night train to Bulgaria seems too much for me to take on.

It is at this point I meet A.  He is backpacking for a few months through Europe while on leave from a teaching job in the UK.  He tells me he is traveling to Bulgaria the next day and I can tag along with him instead of leaving that night.  I feel so relieved.   (especially as on the way to dinner that night with another hostel-mate, we watch a dog attack another person in the street)

And wouldn’t you know it.  As we try to leave the next day we are confronted by a fake policeman at the Bucharest train station.  As soon as we enter the station he approaches and requests to see our passports.  We hand them over.  He gives an exaggerated sigh and tells us that unfortunately our permission to remain in the country has expired and we will have to pay a fine.  We have had enough of these poor attempts at bilking tourists and we grab our passports back, tell him to shove off, and continue on our way.   Yet our trials with Romania are not complete.  At the Romanian-Bulgarian border a fake border officer boards the train and tries one last shakedown.  We almost fall for it until A notices the officer’s badge is flimsy, like a Cracker Jack sheriff badge toy, and hanging off his nondescript khaki uniform at an odd angle.  Minutes later the real guys come through and it is obvious our first guy is an imposter.

I travel with A for 5 days.  We visit Veliko Tarnova and Sofia and the Rila Monastery.  In Veliko Tarnova I search the Internet for information on rabies and grow a little concerned that my days are numbered.  A agrees to monitor my progress and let me know if I start frothing at the mouth.  He goes with me to the US Embassy in Sofia as I make inquiries with the Embassy doctor about my possible rabies vaccination plan.

After Sofia we parted ways.  I headed on to Macedonia and A went back to the UK.  He and his girlfriend were preparing for a visit to Iran, a country Australians could visit, though Americans could not.  His girlfriend was having an abaya made to wear while they traveled.  A and I kept in contact for a long while.  After his trip to Iran and the end of his contract in the UK, he made a plan to return to Australia entirely without flying.  He traveled by train across Russia to Beijing, south to Vietnam, then by bus through Southeast Asia to Singapore, then by boat through Indonesia to Bali.  It was only on Bali when he learned he had missed the boat to Australia and the next would be awhile when he finally hopped on a plane.  He joined Australia’s version of the Foreign Service and served in Vanuatu, then Afghanistan, when we lost tough.  Until now, when returning to Australia after 3 ½ years in Pakistan, on the recommendation of a friend he joined LinkedIn.

It’s hard to believe it has been nearly 14 years since we met in a hostel in Bucharest.  Those days in Romania do not seem that long ago.

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Adventure to Tangier May 2002

As part of my blog I am adding edited excerpts of emails I sent on past travels. 

In May and June 2002 I backpacked solo for 4 weeks in Spain and 2 in Portugal.  In Granada, I met up with my Monterey, CA roommate, P, who was in Spain for language study, and we decided to make an impromptu trip to Gibraltar and then across to Tangier, Morocco.  What I remember most about Gibraltar was I had the best gorgonzola pasta I have ever had anywhere in a lovely outdoor cafe.  Strange that I remember that more than the Rock and the monkeys.  At the time of posting, this one day trip to Morocco is my only trip to the country and given all the things to see in the country I do not really consider myself having visited Morocco.  Tangier is like many border towns;   the city is more about getting elsewhere than staying put.  It is a gateway to Europe for many from all over Africa.  I did not like Tangier, something I very rarely say about a place.  But it was certainly an adventure.  

In Gibraltar, my friend P and I discover there is just one boat to Tangier a week, and that it departs on Fridays at 6 pm.  Well lo and behold it was a Friday around 3 pm.  So the information people give us a map and directions to the ticket office.  I was thinking we could just take a bus to the center of town, find the office, buy ours tickets, quickly take the funicular to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar, then back down, then hop on the boat and viola, we are in Tangier!  Unfortunately, few things work out like that.

It took us maybe 30 minutes to find the ticket office as we kept walking past it because the sign wasn’t very noticeable.  We go in and ask about the boat and they are all very friendly, but they inform us the boat is broken, but we can instead leave on Tuesday!  What would we do in Gibraltar all that time?  So, we ask if they have boats leaving from Algeciras in Spain and they say they do and give us a schedule.  We thank them and leave.

Just out the door P thinks we should ask how early before departure we should check in, so we return to ask.  When we explain we want to leave the next day, the guy scowls at us and tells us in an exasperated way that the boats are broken.  Seems the whole fleet is indisposed!  We ask about other boats and the guy gets indignant telling us they ONLY know about the schedules for THEIR boats.  <sigh>

We decide to leave the next morning and get a hotel in Gibraltar for the night because we have wasted so much time finding out about these broken boats.  We find a nice place, put our things down and head to the funicular but are waylaid by a very friendly local offering a tour of the Rock.  It appears his tour only cost three euros more than trying to go up ourselves and since things are spread out up on the rock, it would save us time.  We agree and are soon whisked into our very own van with our loquacious guide.  He keeps saying things like “girls” and “love” and the like to address us.  He talked a mile a minute, but I found overall it was a good tour, we learned a lot about Gibraltar (such as it was most likely an island before, because good ‘ole Chris Columbus said when he sailed by it, it was on the LEFT, meaning he sailed between the rock and Spain) and saw the Pillars of Hercules, part of the caves dug by chisel and dynamite when Spain tried to take Gibraltar during some historical juncture, and of course the monkeys.

The guide said we could have our photos taken with the monkeys on our shoulders.  I start to protest when suddenly a 30 pound monkey jumps on me and the guide orders P to get my camera and take my photo!  And before P knew it she too had a monkey friend and I was trying to take her picture.  However, as I was taking her picture I dropped something, leaned down to get it and another monkey was on me.  Ah, the amazing fun on top of the Rock!

The next morning we were up early and out of the hotel at 7 am to catch a bus to the border. Unfortunately, we discovered the buses did not start running until 8:30 am, so it being Gibraltar, and not a particularly large place, we started walking.  Once across the border and back in Spain, we caught a cab to Algeciras.  We made it to the terminal at 8:15, we think just in time to catch the 8:30 fast ferry, except no one wants to give us a straight answer.  We kept being told to go to this one counter to get the fast ferry, only to be told at that counter the ferry is broken.  So, we are sent to another window where we are told that it is now too late to make the 8:30 ferry.  So we pay for the 9:30 slow boat.  We change money, get some refreshments, and head up to the departure lounge.

The ferry is nothing special.  It plods along slowly, taking 2.5 hours to Tangier.  But when we arrive in Tangier and go down the gangplank, we discover we need an immigration stamp which was given on the boat, 15 minutes before we docked.  It was the garbled message reminiscent of drive thru windows made about 20-30 minutes before we docked.  We were not alone back in the ship awaiting the return of the police; there were maybe 40 of us.  We had to wait maybe another 45 minutes for the immigration police officer to return and get us all stamped, and then we were finally allowed to enter Tangier.

We made it through the gauntlet of “official tour guides” and taxi drivers, probably only because most of the boat had gotten off earlier and the majority of the mob had grown tired of waiting.  We had a humorous conversation with two port policemen about how to walk up to the medina.  It was only maybe a 10 minute walk, but they thought we should take a cab.  We found some accommodation for only 50 dirhams a night ($5).  A “helpful” Moroccan (I think “enterprising” is a better word) showed us to a Moroccan restaurant.  He insisted it was not touristy.  But the waiter very confidently, in good English explained the three course meal.  It turned out that the meal cost $12 per person.  We seriously doubted many locals frequented that place at that price.  So we found bread for 1 dirham and a coconut for 3 dirhams and we were fine.  We discovered our hotel room did not have a bathroom, and the only toilet was on the first floor, a rather smelly squatting affair.  But, we figured, ok, it was for only one night.

We explored the Medina for about an hour.  Then, we explored the new town and were rewarded with a McDonalds: cheap, recognizable food, a lovely view over the town, and nice toilets!  Yippee! (especially for the toilets)  We found an English cemetery.  We went back to the hotel.  After all the trouble to get to Tangier we were rather at a loss of what to do now that we were there.  An hour before the last call to prayer, the women and children came out into the streets, and so did we.  We got ice cream and explored the streets more and watched more people.  Then back to the hotel and more people watching from our balcony, then an early bed, because we wanted to catch the very first ferry out the next morning.  (Both of us we had already had our fill of Tangier).

Of course when we arrived at the ferry terminal the next morning, the first ferry, at 8:30, had been cancelled, and we had to take the 9:30!  We needed that one, because Moroccan time is 2 hours before Spanish time, so it was 11:30 in Spain when we left Morocco, and after a 2.5 hour trip, it was 2 pm in Spain.  My bus to Cordoba left at 3, P’s back to Granada at 4.  Somehow, by some miracle we both made our buses and I was off to Cordoba.

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Three Weeks to Go

So what is it like to have just three weeks left at post?  It is stressful.  Apparently so stressful that it can cause you to fall off the treadmill.  Well, that is what happened in my case at any rate.  Yes, last night at the gym while on track for one of my faster 5Ks I made a misstep resulting in an Oscar-worthy fall, scramble on my knees, and finally a had-to-be-funny-to-watch slide off the end of the treadmill.  I cannot be sure it is correlated to my impending departure, but since I have never fall off a treadmill before I cannot but find the two are related.

Three weeks left at post mean that shopping trips have become boring espisodes in my life.  I am duty-bound to do them but they hold little interest.  I buy items because we need things like eggs or milk.  I do not buy extra things although the temptation to do so grows ever stronger knowing it makes NO SENSE to do so because anything extra I buy today I will not see after pack out for 2 months (if in my unaccompanied baggage – UAB- which will be sent to DC during my training) or 8 months or more (if in my household effects – HHE- that I will see again only after we have arrived in China).  When previously in Indonesia, yeah, I may have bought a few extra handicrafts that were on my “must-buy” list for awhile and I wanted to remind me of my time in country.  Yet in Juarez the handicrafts sold here are generally from elsewhere, like Oaxaca, and if I am going to buy Oaxacan handicrafts I would rather buy them in Oaxaca.  And to be honest, the things I want to buy now are in Target in El Paso.  These are not things I need now by any stretch of the imagination.  Wants must be surpressed.

Three weeks left at post mean every single time I look at any item in my house I am thinking whether it will 1. go in the car with us, 2. go into UAB, 3. go into HHE, 4. go to Goodwill, or 5. be thrown out?  Every single time I look at ANYTHING!  All of my “stuff” is under scrutiny.  It is mentally exhausting to do this.  As a daughter of pack-rats I find the purging that comes with regular moves to be carthartic.  That doesn’t mean I like it, but it can be helpful.  Cartharis is defined as “the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art.”  And there is an art to the pack out.  I’m not saying I am particularly good at it, but I have my own mad, crazy technique.  And in the end when the pack out day comes, regardless whether my technique is good or not the movers drive away with my stuff in boxes headed for the next post.

Three weeks left at post lends itself to going without some things.  Like when your vitamins or your favorite tea run out you do not buy more because what would be the point?  You’ll just end up with one more thing to pack and you cannot stand the idea of one more thing to pack.  Or you ration items, like, say, cheese.  While maybe in the past you were more generous in your cheese portions you are not now because you don’t want to buy more and end up having to give it away.  I mean, a half a bag of shredded cheese is not the kind of gift most people ask for.  Or you hide items, like salt.  If you have perhaps a nanny who has a tendency to use up your staples without asking and you are down to the last bit of salt, you might find yourself hiding the salt container high up on a shelf behind a gift box of Starbucks expresso cups.  I’m not saying I know anyone personally who has done this, but it could happen. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Three weeks to go mean I become that person at work who when someone asks me a question like “how do I do blah-blah-blah?” I respond with an answer that invariably ends in the annoying phrase “and I have only X number of days left.”  I don’t want to be that person but I have become that person.  I cannot help myself.  It is as if it is my moral imperative to become that person.

Three weeks mean it is too early to change your address although you do not receive mail at post anymore.  It means you are on your way out but you still have enough time left at post for it to not quite feel real yet.  It is a weird and stressful and exhilarating time.  And sometimes even when you think you got a handle on things you stumble.  On the treadmill.

 

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Working out in Juarez

So yeah, just a two days ago I finished a four hour spin-a-thon here in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.  FOUR HOURS on a bike in 90+ degree heat.  And I did it!  I rode every single second of that four hours and lived to tell the tale.  I could even walk just fine the next day. How about that?

Yet when I arrived in Ciudad Juarez nearly 2 years ago, I had no idea how exercising was going to go here.  I was a single mom with a 6 month old baby moving to a post with 15% danger pay.  Trying to find an exerise routine while overseas in the Foreign Service or otherwise can always be a challenge.  For example, when you are in a country where exercise may not be the norm because it is a leisure activity that the vast number of people do not have time for.  Gym facilities, if existent, are quite different from home.  Running outside may not be advisable due to security or other reasons.

My previous assignment, when I was with the Department of Defense, was in Jakarta, Indonesia.  In my apartment complex we had a treadmill, a bicycle, and an elliptical in a glassed-in gazebo in our parking lot.  You can imagine in a tropical country that a glassed-in gazebo surrounded by black top might get a bit warm.  It did.  Also, perplexingly, there was also a grill in the gazebo, though I never saw anyone use it.  I also belonged to the gym at the hotel located three buildings down from my complex.  I even had a trainer there.  The gym had some pretty good equipment, though the air conditioning never seemed to be working, so it was like exercising in a sauna.  And though there was a television in front of each of the machines they were not connected to the machines, so if others were excercising and watching television you had dueling volume issues.  Running outside was difficult.  Jakarta is hot and humid, the sidewalks, if there, are uneven and full of open holes, and are often used as an additional lane by motorcyclists.  On Sundays though it was “car free Sunday” when the main drag was closed to traffic for a few hours.  So if you wanted to battle the crowds it was possible to run.  I did once, but imagine my surprise when without warning the lanes re-opened to traffic and I found myself in the middle lane of a 4 lane highway with cars suddenly driving around me!

But that was in Indonesia and now I was in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico with an infant.

Ciudad Juarez is located in the Chihuahua desert.  It is a high desert climate.  It is dry and very hot in the summer.  In the winter it is generally in the 30s (farenheit) in the morning but there might be as much as a 30 degree increase by afternoon. The altitude is close to 4,000 feet above sea level.  In the Spring, starting around February, strong winds blow through the city kicking up sand and dust and all manner of things I am apparently allergic to.

So I had exercised abroad before.  I had even exercised thus far as a mom – but in the nice apartment gym in Falls Church, VA while my mother watched my daughter or running with the jogging stroller on lovely Northern Virginia running trails.  But here I was in a new city as a new mom.  I wanted to get back into running, wanted to lose the rest of the baby weight, and wanted to be a role model to my daughter.  How was I going to do that?

I started off going to the Consulate gym where I had access as a member of the Employee Recreation Association.  With a six month old, I would go when it was her nap time and she would snooze happily while I ran on the treadmill.  I also set up my bike on a trainer and rode for an hour or two on Sundays while my daughter napped. I ran my first 5K in September 2013 in Marfa, Texas as part of the Marfa Lights Festival over the Labor Day weekend.  It was hot, I was slow, and I finished the run with a flat tire, deflated completely by a giant desert thorn.  But I did it.  And I kept going.

I have had to make adjustments, of course.  When my daughter stopped taking a second nap or even a very long nap, I had the nanny or a friend watch her after work or on weekends.  And when an off-duty police officer was shot in his truck along my running route (he survived and drove himself to the hospital) or when there was a quadruple homicide at a garage I sometimes ran by, I changed where I ran.  When the dust storms of Spring made it very difficult for me to run, I joined a gym with childcare, though still had someone watch C on Sundays (gyms in Juarez are only open until noon or 1 on Saturdays and closed on Sundays).

And here I am at the end of my tour and I am so psyched to say that I finished:

Three 5Ks (1 in Marfa and 2 in El Paso)

Two 10Ks (two years running of the “World’s Fastest 10K” in El Paso)

One dualthon (Mission Valley Duathlon in El Paso – my first duathlon ever!)

Two spin-a-thons (in Ciudad Juarez, one was 3 hours, the other 4)

Eight half marathons!  (El Paso, TX; Indianapolis, IN; Santa Fe, NM; Boston, MA; Ciudad Juarez, MX; Las Vegas, NV; Salt Lake City, UT; and Cincinnati, OH)

Changes are ahead for us with home leave, training in DC and then on to Shanghai.  I’m not sure how I will work out, but I know I will find a way.

 

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Mosquito Terror

In the last week my 2+ year old daughter has developed a sudden irrational terror of mosquitoes.  Until now the only other thing I have discovered she is terrified of are adults dressed in mascot costumes…  Anyway, it started the day when the water pressure in Juarez was so ridiculously low that it took me 20 minutes to fill the bathtub, and this included me alternating between filling two of my larger cooking pots with water in the downstairs sink and carrying them up while the tub filled itself.  While finally lying in our bath at 10:30 pm at night, my daughter lets out a terrified shriek.  Just jumps up and begins thrashing about the tub as if she were in a shark attack.  She points to the ceiling and screams “Mosquito!”  First, I am rather impressed she even knows the word “mosquito” but my proud humor soon turns to concern as the screaming does not abate.  I look up and do see a mosquito flying about.  I tell her it is okay.  However, my calm words have no effect whatsoever and so I have to get out of the tub and chase it around and kill it.

Here in Juarez we are not actually abound with insects.  I’m not saying there are no insects, of course there are, but we don’t see many in our house.  I was rather surprised to learn after my arrival that this desert landscape would be of interest to mosquitoes, but it is at some times of the year, though not really right now.  With a water shortage and the Rio Grande river near our house a dry, dry, desiccated bed of sand, there isn’t exactly a lot of water around to attract mosquitoes.  I have found little brown scorpions in the house, which is disconcerting in and of itself, but they are small and infrequent.  Sometimes a small beetle and occasionally those scary looking black flying sprickets (part cricket, part spider).  However, overall, not much in the way of insects.

Sure, mosquitoes are worthy of fear.  They carry some pretty bad diseases.  I was once terrorized a long sleepless night in a cheap guest house on the island of Bintan in Indonesia by probably hundreds of the buzzing beasties.  The next morning I left bright and early and took the first ferry back to Singapore covered in at least 80 bites.  It is a wonder I did not come down with something.  When I last worked in Jakarta, Indonesia, a country where they regularly fog for mosquitoes, one co-worker and another’s daughter both came down with Dengue.  But this isn’t exactly what I would expect the average two year old to grasp.  Not that I don’t want to proudly boast that my daughter is smart, she is, but understanding the disease carrying properties of insects might be a bit beyond her.

And still she screams.  The second time she screamed I was downstairs and I heard a terrified “Mama!  Mama!” followed by loud terrified bellows as she quickly came down the stairs.  She told me it was a mosquito.  I went up to check and found nothing.  Yet, not five minutes later the same thing occurs.  I go up and discover there is a fly in the house.  She has said the word “fly” before, but she will not accept that this particular insect is a fly.  She screams and clings to my leg yelling “mosquito!”  And so I kill the fly.  I try to show her that it will not hurt her now but that only results in her running to her room, standing in the corner, screwing up her face and screaming in her best horror picture impersonation.

This has happened two additional times since.

At first I was perplexed.  What would cause this sudden change?  Where would she get the idea that mosquitoes were something to fear?  Then it dawned on me.  She has a Go Diego, Go! DVD in which Diego goes to Africa to help a friend with a perplexing problem: all the elephants have disappeared.  Through some kind of magic a mosquito has been transformed into a magician and she flies around taking revenge on all the animals.  This magician has a particular dislike of elephants so she has turned them all into rocks.  She also makes the giraffes have short necks and shrinks hippos to tiny versions of themselves.  All the while flying around and cackling.  Okay, it is kinda scary.  However, my daughter has actually watched this particular DVD approximately one bazillion times before developing this terror of mosquitoes, so I am not sure this is really the source of the fear.  But it is all I got.

But here is the thing: after Juarez and home leave and five months of training in DC my daughter and I move to Shanghai, China.  To Asia.  I am pretty sure there are going to be LOTS of insects in Shanghai.  I know I have been terrorized by giant flying cockroaches in more than one Asian country.  Want to see me get really really wigged out and reduced to a whimpering mess?  Put me in a room with a giant flying cockroach.  That will do it.  I have also seen the largest spiders ever – as large as my head – in Asia.  I have a particularly vivid memory of watching a large tan colored spider the size of a crab run across a street in Bangkok.  It’s legs clicking on the pavement.  I know, you are thinking to yourself, hmmmm…maybe because of the color it actually was a crab?  NO!  It most certainly was a spider.  And I have the traumatized memory to prove it.

And so, I worry how my daughter and her new found fear of insects is going to handle this?  Perhaps this fear will already have faded by then?  I am hoping our housing will be so amazingly wonderful as to be almost as bug-free as here in Juarez.  I am hoping the only insects we might see are in the Shanghai Natural Wild Insect Kingdom, safely behind glass.

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Spintencity en la Ciudad

So last night I participated in a four hour spin-a-thon in Ciudad Juarez. I’ll leave why I subjected myself to that particular kind of fun for another post, but the amazing thing is that the event was held in downtown Ciudad Juarez, in an open plaza, with approximately 200 participants.

When in August 2011 I was assigned to Ciudad Juarez for my first post, the city had a per capita murder rate that gave it the unfortunate distinction of the murder capital of the world. The rate had however dropped enough from the previous year to warrant a drop in the danger pay from 20% to 15% by November 2011. I had heard that officers in Ciudad Juarez during that time period generally stayed indoors and outings were reserved for border crossings to El Paso, Texas.

By the time I arrived at post in late July 2012, the city was already experiencing further improvements in security and a sort of rebirth was occurring. This has only continued throughout the time I have lived here, with families venturing out to visit family and friends regularly and filling restaurants and parks. The Plaza de la MeXicanidad and La Rodadora, a world-class children’s museum, both opened in Juarez last year.

This is not to say that all is well in Juarez. During the time I have lived here, there have been at least four armed incidents at the shopping mall just across from the Consulate and an easy 10 minutes walk from my home. This included a robbery of a jewelry store, a robbery of one of the parking attendants, and a shooting of a local employee at a gym. I twice adjusted my regular running route when shootings occurred along it. One morning as I prepared to head to work, I heard what distinctly sounded like gunshots as I prepared to head to work one morning. Even one from our Consulate community–a locally employed staff member–was gunned down in front of his family by armed men who burst into a children’s party.

But, when I see people taking control of their lives and participating in healthy activities, I think that it is a sure sign of a healthier community too. When out running I have always run into other locals running. Not a lot mind you, but if the prospect of insecurity wouldn’t keep people from running, then the harsh desert climate (hot, dry, dusty) with few running-friendly places ought to – and yet people are STILL out there running! Gyms have been sprouting up all over the city and these gyms are sponsoring events such as the spin-a-thon. Last October I took part in the 4th Maraton Internacional Gas Natural de Juarez. Despite a less than scenic course, I was impressed with the organization and participation from both runners and spectators. A local gym also organized a year-long series of 10Ks for this year and our Consulate organized the first Green Race held in May.

So there I am last night, some time into the third hour of the spin-a-thon and I start to feel a bit misty-eyed. I think about how far Ciudad Juarez has come in the two years I have lived here and what an honor and privilege it has been for my daughter and I to experience the city at this pivotal time. It could have been because the spinning instructor, waxing on at length over the physical and spiritual benefits of spinning, suddenly yelled “Viva Juarez!” or because my bum and palms were losing all feeling, but I felt extremely grateful not only to be participating in the event but to be in Juarez.

Viva Juarez indeed.

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Here we go…

Yes, here it is.  My first blog post.  I am finally taking the leap and starting a blog.  Back in the days when I backpacked and sent back email stories of my trips to friends and family members, many encouraged me to start a blog.  I thought about it.  A little.  But I didn’t start.  And then life got in the way.  I started working more.  Then the same month I accepted an appointment to the Foreign Service I found out I was pregnant.  And here I am 3 years later, about to depart my first post as a Foreign Service Officer, FINALLY starting a blog.  Well, better late than never I suppose.

And so, yeah, here we go.  Here I go a-writing.  And in less than 30 days (23 to be exact, but who’s counting?) my daughter and I depart Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, my first Foreign Service post, to start the next phase of my Foreign Service career and our Foreign Service life.

It will be bittersweet.  I arrived here nearly two years ago with a 6 month old baby.  I will leave here soon with a 2 1/2 year old toddler who speaks about as much Spanish as she does English.  She has spent more of her life in Mexico than in the United States.  Just this past week two neighbor kids stopped by three times to ask if my daughter C could come out and play.  If we were a normal family and stayed in the same place, my daughter would grow up with these kids – who at 4 years older would soon grow pretty tired of playing with her – but they would grow up together nonetheless.  However, we aren’t exactly your normal kind of family.

In a few weeks we will begin approximately nine weeks of travel.  Five days are allocated by the government for our drive back from Ciudad Juarez (just across the border from El Paso, Texas) to Washington, DC and then 8 weeks of the Congress-mandated Home Leave, during which I will reacquaint myself and my daughter with our country.  I have a pretty crazy plan in mind.  But I’ll leave it for future posts.

Here we go….