Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Here’s hoping that your Halloween was a thriller and that your pumpkins are overflowing with good candy!

Our last Halloween in the US for a while was splendid, though a bit chilly. This was the first time I’ve seen snow on Halloween and let me tell you: I am not a fan. I liked our Florida Halloweens better. In Florida, you can go Trick or Treating in your flip-flops and you can do it all night long, if you want to (not so easy with wee ones) without dying of exposure. There, you can be a princess or a fairy without having to put on a turtleneck underneath your fancy spaghetti strap costume (which looks oh, so stylish) or donning your fairy wings on top of your pink parka (which is harder than it sounds). Oh, Florida, I didn’t think I’d say this but I guess I do miss you, after all.

Aaaaah, those days are gone but I am hoping that Trick or Treating in India will be kinda like in Florida. A girl can dream, right?

So, yeah, our Halloween was fine, despite the cold. We went to a couple of parties, we carved a pumpkin and Her Cuteness got to go Trick or Treating old-style (door-to-door) in our neighborhood. Nia was supposed to be the Little Mermaid. She’s had the costume for a while but had a change of heart because she decided in the last moment that “Princesses are so baby-ish!” and I had to whip up another costume in a couple of hours. Fun times! She was a flamingo*, a little improvised but hey, I’ve seen worse.

Max had a little 6-9 month-sized alligator* costume. He is not quite 9 months old yet but the hunky babe that he is, he was busting out of it a few weeks ago, so I had to look for something larger. I found just the thing  at a yard sale - a cute little Dalmatian outfit for $1. It’s perfect - made of fleece, so it’s nice and warm on his cute little bum-bum. Plus, it’s for up to 24 months, so he just might be able to wear it next year.

Anywhoooo, without further ado, here are some pictures of the festivities for your enjoyment:

*We accidentally ended up with a Florida theme of sorts – I guess that’s our tribute to our former home state.

A Sight For Sore Eyes…

So we’ve been in Hindi for almost 7 weeks now. We can read and are starting to get into the weeds of Hindi grammar. We still can’t say much because we know only one tense (Present Habitual) and our vocabulary is pretty limited but we are getting there – slowly but surely.

In an effort to expand our Hindi vocabulary I decided to watch as many Bollywood movies as I possibly could. Paul sort of agreed to watch with me but we soon realized that most of the highly rated Bollywood movies on Netflix were 3+ hours long. Paul was not going to watch a 3+hour long movie, so the first time we looked until we found something shorter. I don’t remember the name of the first movie we saw but it was not worth it. It was way not what we expected. It was mostly in English, had no dance numbers and was about wife swapping – very weird.

The second time we sat down to watch a Bollywood movie I thought we’d try one of the longer ones, so I picked Jodha Akbar a historical drama (made in 2007), which I thought would help us not only improve our Hindi but also better understand Indian culture. The only problem was it was 3 hours and 40 minutes. Paul fell asleep after the first 30 minutes, so I watched the rest alone.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect much but boy, was I pleasantly surprised. I did learn a few new Hindi words and a thing or two about Indian culture and history but better than that (and I mean way better) was this:

Hubba, hubba!

You’re welcome, ladies! His name is Hrithik Roshan and he plays the Mughal Emperor Akbar (the male lead). When I saw that scene I was all Ooooh la la…

Is he hot or is he hot? I don’t know about you but I can watch that scene until I am blue in the face… (I may be turning Avatar-ish hue already, ha!)

So, yeah, I have a crush on the guy. Oooopsies! I know, I know, it’s been a couple of years since I was in high school. I shouldn’t be having crushes anymore, right? I thought that when you pass the age of 25 and/or have a kid or two, the part of your brain responsible for crushes dies. Apparently not. Now I am the butt of all kinds of jokes around our house... Whatevs…

If there are guys reading this – do not despair for the female lead (Jodha Akbar) is none other than Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the most beautiful woman in the world, according to many. Here’s a little something for you, guys:

So, though it is long, the movie is a feast for the eyes and ears. The costumes and scenery are amazing, the music and dance numbers – lovely, and the plot - very interesting. According to some reviews Akbar’s character is depicted accurately, while Jodha’s not so much but even if that’s the case I’ve forgiven the movie creators and totally, wholeheartedly recommend the movie.

Enjoy!

Georgetown Cupcake!!!

Yesterday was a rather gloomy day. It started out being cold, drizzly and just unpleasant. But it got better. A hell of a lot better…

Paul and I had to run an errand in Georgetown that was kind of a drag but on the way home I noticed a miracle of miracles: no line outside Georgetown Cupcake!!!

Boy did that make my day. I had heard people rave about Georgetown Cupcake ever since we moved back to the DC area a year and a half ago. I really wanted to try them but every time we went to Georgetown there werre unbelievable lines outside the store, sometimes going on for blocks. There was no way in hell I was going to wait for hours for cupcakes and I didn’t really understand the people who did. It’s cupcakes after all, how great could they be. And at $2.50 a piece they weren’t exactly dirt cheap. So I had sort of given up on the idea but today in the the cold, nasty drizzle those cupcakes were just calling my name.  The fact that there was no line out the door was just the icing on the (cup) cake. Pun intended.

So, yeah, I am only human. I can resist anything but, you know, temptation. I ran in quickly before Paul had a chance to change his mind and mine. Inside the door there was a little bit of a line but it was just long enough to let me make up my mind about what I wanted.

I knew I may not get these beauties again because of the insane lines, the price and because stuff like that goes straight to my badonkadonk, which is not exactly small these days, so I went for the dozen. I got Mint Cookies N Cream, Salted Caramel, Gluten Free Lava, Chocolate Birthday, Chocolate 3, Peanut Butter Fudge, Coconut, two Pumpkin Spice and two Red Velvet. There were about 15 girls working in the store, who looked like they’d never had a cupcake in their lives. They wrapped my cupcakes and put them in a beautiful pink box.

I could hardly wait the 30 or so minutes it took us to get home and eat lunch before we could try the cupcakes. And let me tell you, those things were not just pretty. They were deeeeeeelish! I think the Red Velvet and the Salted Caramel may be my faves.

They are very sweet. One is about all you can have at one sitting. And they are not very big. But they are tasty. The cake is good but that’s not that hard to do. It’s the frosting that’s pretty incredible. It’s light and fluffy and heavenly….

While I was at the store I noticed that they were promoting a book written by the two sisters who started Georgetown Cupcake. The book tells the story of how they started the company but it also has recipes. And guess what, I’ll be buying it as soon as it’s out on Nov. 8 because I have to figure out how to make that frosting. I just have to!

Passed the QEP!

I am greatly relieved to report that my personal narratives (short essays) somehow made it past the Qualifications Evaluation Panel(QEP) and I am moving on to the next step in the process of becoming a US Diplomat, the Oral Assessment (OA).

Needless to say, I am very excited to have made it this far but I also know that unless I make it all the way, none of it really matters. Now I have to figure out how to prepare for the OA.

The OA, in case you were wondering, is an interview on steroids. It’s an all-day affair that starts at 7 a.m. and may last up until 6 p.m. It includes a group exercise, a structured interview, a case management exercise and an exit interview. More information on each of these components of the OA as well as sample questions/scenarios can be found here. 

At the end of the OA, you know if you have passed or not and if you are one of the few that pass, you get to go home with a conditional offer of employment. It’s conditional because you still have to get medical and security clearances and pass the final suitability review. If you pass the final suitability review, you get to hang out on the hiring register, where everyone is arranged according to their scores from the OA. That’s the list of candidates from which the department makes the hiring calls. There are actually five different registers - one for each of the five career tracks in the Foreign Service (Consular, Economic, Management, Political and Public Diplomacy). You pick your track at the very beginning of the process, when you register to take the written test (FSOT). I picked Management.

If you know a foreign language or are a veteran, you can get extra points, which would improve your position on the register. The higher you are on the register, the more likely you are to get called. But again, there are no guarantees you will get called because you can be on the register for a maximum of 18 months. New people are constantly being added to the register and their scores may be higher than yours, in which case you will get bumped down in your position on the register. If you don’t get called within 18 months, your name simply drops off the register. Which means, too bad for you because if you are still interested in becoming a diplomat, you have to go all the way back and retake the FSOT and all the steps thereafter. Yeah, let’s hope I won’t have to do that but this will be my first time taking the OA and I know more than a handful of excellent Foreign Service Officers, who did not pass the OA on their fist attempt and had to start from scratch (sometimes multiple times).

So that’s where I am right now. I have scheduled my OA  - it’s on January 27. Wish me luck and if you have any advice on how to prepare for the OA, I am all ears.

Thanks!

Adventures in Hindi

So it’s been two weeks since we started Hindi and I am still loving it. I hope I don’t jinx us by saying that but so far it’s pretty awesome. That is not to say that it’s easy or that I am doing all that well. I just enjoy it. I’ve always loved languages and it is very reminiscent of the way I learned English in Bulgaria as a teenager.

Our Hindi teachers are really nice and the other students in the group are very cool too. We have 4 to 5 hours of instruction and drills in Hindi every day and then language lab time in the afternoon. But class is more than just learning Hindi because we often talk about Indian culture. We spent some time talking about big fat Indian weddings and Bollywood movies/music last week, for example.

We are finding out that they weren’t kidding when they told us to expect to gain 10 lbs each in Hindi training. At the end of our first week of Hindi the students who are learning Hindi at FSI ahead of us had an Indian feast for us. They had made/bought a bunch of  Indian treats to welcome us to Hindi – so sweet. Then last week we celebrated the birthday of one of the students in the earlier group and the engagement of another with cake and ice cream respectively. So, oy do I need to exercise!

We are making progress with Hindi for sure, though it may be in fits and starts sometimes. We know almost all the letters of the Hindi alphabet (yay) and are starting to read. We can now hold very basic conversations and d0 s0 multiple times each day. We also spend hours and hours doing various drills. There are a bunch of sounds in Hindi that do not exist in English or Bulgarian, so it’s been hard getting my ears to differentiate them and my tongue to pronounce them correctly. Some things make no sense. For instance, there is one word for yesterday and tomorrow in Hindi. That totally baffled me at first but our teacher said it was completely logical because you would know what the speaker was referring to based on the tense they use. I guess I have to trust her on that one for now.

The word order is different than in English or Bulgarian and they use postpositions instead of prepositions in Hindi, so instead of saying “I am from America.” you say “I America from am.” That takes some getting used to but hopefully with time it will become second nature. Hopefully!!!

So, I totally feel like a kindergartener but that’s OK because some of the constructions are starting to make sense and I am slowly starting to read the beautiful filigree that is Hindi, which is such a wonderful feeling. And get this, I can now write my own name in Hindi!

It looks like this:

डानिएला

How cool is that! I even installed the Hindi keyboard on my computer. Finding each character takes me forever but who cares - I can type in Hindi, sorta, kinda, almost!

Being in Hindi class each day has made us even more excited about moving to India. We have been watching Indian movies, listening to Indian music, eating Indian food, talking about India non-stop in class and outside, so no wonder we can’t wait. We got the New Delhi Embassy newsletter last week and they had announcements for trips for embassy people to Rajastan for the camel festival there and to the Taj Mahal (which I now know means Crown Palace!). It’s a bummer that we have to wait at least 8 months before we can see those places. 

_Source

I just can’t wait to get my own sari, decorate my hands with henna, take the trip to the Taj Mahal and experience all that India has to offer. I am also a little nervous because India is very much an in-your-face type of place with overcrowding, insane traffic, pollution and crushing poverty but hopefully we’ll learn to handle all that somehow. Everyone says that you either love it or you hate it. I hope it’s the former for us.

Speaking of the Taj Mahal, I recently read this article about it in the Smithsonian magazine. It’s a serious piece about the damage the amazing sight has sustained through the years but there are some neat pictures, videos and graphics that go with it too and I never tire of looking at pictures of the Taj. Thought you might enjoy them too.

Fancy Onesies for My Little Man

This post is about something fun I did last week but tomorrow is 9/11 and I can’t help but think of what happened on that day 10 years ago. The media have all kinds of stories about the anniversary and how our lives have changed in the last 10 years. I toyed with the idea of writing about where we were when it happened and how the events affected us but it’s just too depressing and I don’t want to go there. I will never forget it as I am sure no one who lived through it or was in any way touched by the events would. 9/11 and the events that followed robbed the world of its innocence  (or whatever was left of it) as far as I am concerned. I don’t have anything profound to say about it other than wishing I had a magic wand, so I could undo it. Unfortunately, have no magical powers. But enough about that.

Back to my fun project. It’s been a long time since I had done anything creative and my hands were just itching for a neat little project. I had seen several cool little onesies ideas on Pinterest but had to wait until I was done with ConGen before I could gather the necessary supplies and work on one. I ended up picking a tie onesie for Chutney that ended up looking like this:

Sure, the tie on this one came out a little fatter than I envisioned it (kinda 70s style) but isn’t he adorable in it anyway?

I made two of them using the instructions here. I used two plain white onesies and two silk clip-on boys ties I found at a second-hand store. I was going to ruin the ties to make the onesies, when I realized that I could use the back hangie piece for the onesies and still be able to use the ties for Chutney when he’s a little bit older. I guess I am cheap thrifty that way. It’s a fairly simple project but my decision to use actual tie material (silk) made things a little more complicated because silk is quite flimsy. I had to use some interfacing to strengthen the silk and the back of the onesie, so the needle didn’t put holes in either material. In addition to being flimsy, the grey-blue silk is bleeding fabric die onto the onesie but oh, well. If I make more, I’ll probably just use simple but colorful cotton fabrics. You live, you learn, right?

So here you see the ties and how I chopped off the backs for this project. Below are the two finished onesies.

 

Everybody Back To School

Today was the first day of school for everyone in our family but Chutney.

After a summer that apparently was too long and boring (not really), Nia was delighted to start third grade. She could hardly wait to meet her new teacher and classmates. Here she is all smiles heading off to school this morning:

It was also the first day of Hindi language training for Paul and I because I did get into Hindi. I am happy to report that we all survived our first day of school.

For Paul and I it was an interesting first day, though it was a little light on actual learning. We had orientations, tours of FSI and introductions to teachers, systems and services in the morning and a series of tests to determine our learning styles in the afternoon.

We started language with about 1,000 other people all learning different languages. Some were learning a language for the first time, others had quite a few under their belts. It was neat to see some of our ConGen classmates go into language training at the same time as us. Two of my ConGen classmates are even in Hindi with us, which is pretty awesome, though they both know some Hindi already.

I had started working with Rosetta Stone Hindi way back when I was pregnant but by the time Chutney came, I had hit a wall and had a really difficult time moving forward without help. After Chutney was born, Hindi sort of fell by the way side somewhere in the blur of sleeplessness.

By the time I resurfaced out of the post-partum daze, I realized that I had somehow in a hormonal lapse of reason signed up for the FSOT and ConGen (I’m a glutton for punishment, I tell you), so Hindi had to stay on the back burner a little longer.

I had applied to take Hindi with Paul but didn’t know if there would be space for me in the class until late August. But I lucked out and here I am on the cusp of mastering the Bollywood lingo. I am rather excited that I have this opportunity because it will help me when we get to India and it may be useful if/when I become a Foreign Service Officer myself. I get to learn a language and I don’t have to pay for it – pretty darn awesome, no?

Our Hindi group at FSI is rather small – only nine people right now but one of our classmates will only be with us for 5-6 weeks. The rest of us will be studying Hindi for 36 to 44 weeks, which is quite a while if you think about it. All but the classmate who is leaving in a few weeks are headed for New Delhi, so it’ll be good to get to know the people with whom we will be serving at the New Delhi Embassy/Consulate.

We are starting out in the group of nine until we figure out how to read Hindi (called Devanagari script), which apparently should take us between two and four weeks. So for now Paul and I are in the same group but after we learn to read we will more than likely be separated into two smaller groups for the remainder of language training, which is fine.

Language learning at FSI is apparently really intense but a lot of fun too. There are a lot of tests as well as cultural activities and tons of food, which is a blessing and a curse. I already gained a few pounds during ConGen and was hoping to shed them during Hindi but today we were told to expect a weight gain of about 10 lb during Hindi training! Yeah, not good for those of us trying to lose the baby weight but I do like me some Indian food every now and then. Just thinking about it makes me salivate…