Short List of Life Events

Quick updates (to be expanded upon below)
- I’m back from France
- I passed my French test
- I am now officially assigned to Afghanistan for my next post
- My Uncle Peter passed on

So I got back last week from spending a month in Villefranche sur Mer which is about 10 km north of Nice on the French Riviera and, I must say, it was a very nice month! I was there to learn French as a tenure requirement for my job. They could have sent my back to one of the US Government language training facilities in the states but it would have taken longer and cost more. So instead I got paid to hang out on the Cote d’Azur instead. That’s me. Safeguarding those taxpayer dollars! I set myself up in a tiny but well appointed little apartment above a restaurant and 10 meters from the Mediterranean. My big picture window looked out over the bay. I definitely put on a couple kgs while I was there as well. Gastronomically, the place is more Provence than anything else, which means that the local fare is really pretty basic (sausages, beans, fish) but also REALLY DAMN GOOD!

I got home last Tuesday and took the all-important test last Thurs. I had stayed at home studying and prepping right up until an hour before test time. I was feeling good. Feeling confident. I’ll crow a bit about my sweet-ass gig of getting paid to go to France but I really did buckle down pretty hard over there. Except on Sunday nights when watching the NFL games (I found a pub in Nice that showed all the games. I had to walk the 10k home one night because I stayed and watched the games until the buses had stopped running but it was worth it.*) I pretty much spoke, read, and listened to French the whole time. So I was Frenching pretty well by the time I got back here. But as soon as I walked into the testing room all that French pretty much just drained out my ear and gathered in a puddle on my chair. I froze up, babbled like an idiot, and couldn't conjugate a thing. I told a friend in the hallway while on a break that I was positive that I had failed it once again but I guess the testers either took pity on me or my French has improved enough that I can screw up royally and still hit the mark. Either way, I’m done and I can now be an entrenched civil servant for life. If I want to. It is soooo good to get that behind me. That monkey has been on my back for over 2 years now. It's like having a building lifted off my back! I’m light. I’m airy.

Kabul. I’m headed to Kabul this summer. I got the official notice the day before my test. We’re still sorting out reporting dates and stuff but it will probably be in June.
I’ve had to explain my reasoning for bidding on the Afghanystany to a couple folks already so I’ll break it down for you:
a) I’ve got a couple good friends who will be there at the same time and I know who my boss will be. Basically it’s the best time to do this if I’m going to do it.
b) Taking a tour in one of the 4 critical post countries (A-stan, P-stan, Iraq, Sudan) is not yet mandatory for us but you do have to bid on a job at one of the four. So I could have gotten screwed into one of the other spots.
c) I get my pick of posts after doing this. I’m thinking someplace small, quiet and with lots of good travel and food opportunities, i.e. East Asia, Eastern Europe, or West Africa.
d) This was a really hard to fill spot for the powers that be. I’m really helping them out by taking it. Stacking away those chits for future use as well as looking at the fact that I’ll be eligible for promotion this coming year. I’m not much of a ladder climber and have no intentions of ruling the world but I’m not an idiot either.

I got an email from my eldest brother 3 weeks ago that our Uncle Peter had passed away. He was my mom’s youngest brother and is the first of the 7 brothers and sisters to pass on. He had been in steadily declining health for the last 5 years as a result of diabetes that he stubbornly refused to follow the doctors’ advice on, even after he lost his leg. And I suppose that that pretty much sums up Uncle Pete. He was a big fan of conspiracy theories and everybody was always out to get him. Whether it was his neighbors, the government, or his doctors; everybody’s main goal in life was to get over on Uncle Pete and he was damned sure not gonna let ‘em. One of my brothers commented that “he never found peace in this life-now he’s at peace”. I guess that’s one of the comforts of religion that I don’t have. For me, his death pissed me off. There’s no other way to put it. You don’t have to believe in some magical sky-god to know that this life is a shockingly extraordinary gift; that every day, every second of our existence is a thing of wonder. We have a magnificently beautiful world in which we live, the ability to appreciate that beauty, and an incredible amount of power to affect that world either for the better of for the worse. To piss away that gift in such a careless manner is a sin in any sense of the word that you care to view it.

* Mildly Interesting Tidbit: The highway between Nice and Villefranche is where Princess Grace drove off the cliff.