A Very, Very Important Visitor:

When I was younger, I was very fortunate to do a lot of world traveling. I had the benefit of a high school which promoted travel and organized annual trips to Europe and the Far East. Then, in college, I took advantage of every opportunity to travel with friends, one of whom had a family home in a little town in Provence where we went almost every summer to wander around Southern France drinking Rose and flirting shamelessly in horrendously broken French. I also did a semester abroad at Oxford and used that as a springboard for even more travel around the UK, Ireland, France and Spain. Just after graduation from college, my father, stepmother, brother and I went to China along with my stepmother's parents and our very dear family friends, Bob and Fernando.

When I "grew-up," I continued to travel as much as I could possibly afford to and I eventually got a job writing and producing corporate videos, which sent me on more overseas trips than I can count, one of which was actually a true "around the world" adventure-- 9 cities in 17 days; we went from China to India to multiple stops in Europe to Baltimore and back to California.

With all this travel and all the exposure I was so very, very lucky to have, there was a quiet and deeply emotional sentiment that I carried with me; my mother and my stepfather had never been outside of the United States of America. And as much as they may have thought (and still might) that all I was thinking about was my own selfish enrichment, I never stopped thinking about how much I wanted to change that fact. It was not something I could have easily done at any point in my life before now (in spite of the rather glamorous story I am currently telling, I was always squeaking by with absolutely nothing left to spare). So, every time I have been in a brand new foreign city, looking at some incredible landmark or piece of artwork that can only be seen in that place, I think to myself how much I wish they both could be seeing it with me. I vowed many years ago, that someday, I would make it happen and they would see at least some of the incredibly beautiful and interesting things I have seen outside of the continental USA.

Well, just over two weeks ago, half of my dream came true. As some of you might know from previous posts and from knowing me, my mother is much too ill to make the journey from New Jersey to Belgium. But my wonderful, amazing stepfather and dear friend, Elliott Lewis is not! And he came, thanks to the many miles Stefan accumulated from business travel in his last job. He came for 5 days (a short trip for some, but the absolute maximum amount of time he could bear to be away and that my mother could survive without him).

We had a wonderful time. It was a brilliant combination of much-needed family time and adventures around Belgium. In addition to some local sightseeing within Brussels, we went to Bruges and to Ghent, both of which were beyond beautiful and exceeded all expectations. People have said many times that Bruges is so beautiful, picturesque and clean that it feels like a movie set. It really does. When you close your eyes and imagine what an ancient European city should look like- Bruges is it. If you find yourself in Belgium and you've not been to Bruges, you absolutely must go. It's gorgeous. Ghent is also outstanding and it has one thing over Bruges-- it doesn't seem to have the emphasis on tourism that Bruges has, so it's a little more authentic in that way. Go there too. It's totally awesome and I can't wait to go back. To shop, to eat, to meander around giant, monolithic temples to medieval torture (those ancient "Belgians" were sadistic bastards, btw).

Anyway, having my stepfather here was a much needed dose of family love and I am so glad we were able to make it happen. The only thing better than realizing that longtime dream of showing him the world, was actually having him here.

On that note, here are some pictures from our adventures (taken with a real camera, not my blackberry, Eve ;) ):


My super-awesome Stepdad, skipping around Bruges:

The gals just kickin' it in one of the oldest operational Town Halls in all of Europe:

The View from the Belfry in Bruges (ever see the movie, "In Bruges"?:

My super-duper little family, of which I couldn't be any prouder!:


A funny picture of Adela that has nothing at all to do with my Stepfather's visit, Bruges, OR Ghent, but I that I thought was worth sharing:

Why Blog?

Recently, someone said that they think I share too much on-line.

I paused when I heard this because I realized that I probably do share a bit more than is comfortable for some.

When you're part of the Foreign Service "blogosphere", you get real cozy, real quick. There are so many of us and we are, without exaggeration, a family of sorts. It's easy to think of that particular audience and feel safe sharing your feelings without hesitation. You know that there is this special group of people out there, literally speckling the globe, who understand your deep, deep need to feel a part of something. When you're so isolated, as we all are, it's huge relief to be able to vent to people who can relate to the lonesomeness and to our very unique struggle to find connection.

For instance, the minute you/your spouse joins the Foreign Service, you are catapulted into a life defined by uncertainty. First, you are uncertain about what your temporary life in Virginia will be. Then, you are caught in the purgatory of waiting to find out where you will be posted and then of course, you have no idea what to expect once you get to post. No amount of travel literature, personal post reports or even correspondence with people at that post, can create a clear picture of what your individual life will look like. We all try very hard to imagine, but there is no possible way to uncover the specifics until you arrive at post and begin to peel away the many layers of a new place for yourself. And that's just the first time around. For many of us, we will go through this process as many as 10 or 15 times in a lifetime! So, what do we do with all this uncertainty? Well, we think a lot... we speculate a lot... we talk a lot... and of course, some of us blog a lot.

The sheer number of bloggers out there are proof enough that it is part of human nature to want to share our feelings and experiences. And the range of what people will share online is literally staggering-- bloggers share everything from our sexual proclivities to our strategies for saving money at the grocery store to our political views to our failings as parents to our favorite restaurants and on and on and on. There are as many different blogs out there as there are personalities to write them.

So, add to this obviously very natural desire to share our feelings, the unique characteristics of Foreign Service life and it's no wonder that so many of us do it--- if for no other reason than it feels completely natural and fills an ever-widening void in our hearts. We are a lonely group (particularly the trailing spouses among us) and we spend most of our time, online and off, looking for people who can understand how we feel.

This is why I blog. I blog to feel a part of something and I blog to feel that people actually care about what I have to say (because in my physical life, there aren't very many people around to listen). And for those people out there who think I sometimes go too far in exposing my intimate feelings on everything from my mother's illness to my insecurities about my marriage to the sense of loss I feel at the sale of my family home, I want to say this: if anyone actually spends the time to read what I have written, then I firmly believe that they are worth sharing it with.

From what I can tell, there are two basic groups of people who read our blogs-- the friends and family who love us (and want to understand what our lives look and feel like) and our Foreign Service families-- hopeful members of the community and actively serving members. Those are two groups that I feel very good about and I don't much care about the people who think I am doing something wrong or inappropriate. This is what I need to do now, to get through, to get by and to feel like I am part of something beyond the walls of this house that isn't mine, in a country that isn't mine.

(and of course, as with every blog I write, this is just another unabashed plea for validation... )

Big, Big, Big News:

On Saturday, Stefan and I went to Cite du Dragon in Uccle. A friend of ours is in town for training on a new job and offered to stay with the girls (in exchange for staying in our guest room). I am pretty tired of the standard Belgian menu-- moules, frites, steak tartare, waterzooi, etc.-- and we'd passed this wild looking place before and had read it was good. So, date night took us to a giant, traditional, Belgian mansion turned Chinese banquet hall.

It was incredible-- like nothing I have ever actually seen in real life before. There must have been 300 people eating in the mansion's many dining rooms. There were traditional Chinese sculptures everywhere and loads of pink and blue florescent lights. The floor in the main dining room was clear and underneath it, swam giant, over-fed Coi of all shapes and colors. There were fountains spouting recirculated water into ponds covered in footbridges. It was ostentatious, gaudy and decadent, all the while having a certain self-effacing charm.

It is not a stretch to suggest that Cite du Dragon is a perfect metaphor for our Foreign Service life-- it was once a perfectly proportioned, Belgian mansion, snuggled into the charming Flemish commune of Uccle and now, it's a huge, outrageous Chinese banquet hall where families come to mange on endless buffets of dim sum, sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, lychees and tapioca.

You're probably scratching your head and wondering what the hell I am talking about. Well, on Friday night, I returned home from an evening walk through the park with the dogs and Stefan handed me his blackberry and told me to read the message entitled, "Assignment Notification: Whitney, Stefan." My jaw dropped. We had only sent in our bid list on January 27th. How could we possibly have been assigned already? But sure enough, I opened the message and it read, "Congratulations, we have carefully reviewed all bidders... and we have selected you for the following position: SHANGHAI, CHINA 10/2013."

So, we are going to Shanghai next! For those who don't know, Stefan had CNL (Critical Needs Language) points for Mandarin, Chinese when he joined the Foreign Service and we are therefore obligated to serve in a Mandarin designated post on one of our first two tours. Knowing this, we strategically bid on Western European and South American posts the first time around. Shanghai, while not a total shock, is still incredibly exciting because we easily could have been going to a more remote, industrial Chinese city instead. We have dodged yet another bullet and we are going to another beautiful, exciting and relatively easy to acclimate to city. Yippppppeeeee! The super-lucky Whitneys strike again.