Archive for June, 2007

Plugging along

Sunday, June 3rd, 2007

At the spy museum

We completed Week 5 of Orientation this week, after a nice 3-day weekend. We spent Memorial Day visiting the International Spy Museum which was a lot of fun – much of the exhibit is cool authentic “spy stuff,” like a shoe that had a microphone planted in the heel (very Get Smart-ish). It’s also very interactive – you can listen to a bugged room, pick out suspcious people in a photograph, etc. You also pick a cover identity when you go in, and get quizzed along the way to see if you maintain your cover. John and I aren’t big museum people, but we spent 3 hours there – leaving just because we were hungry and anxious to get to Kramerbooks for holiday brunch.

After that, we went to a birthday party by the pool for one of our classmates. We just intended to drop by, but ended up staying about 4 hours – lots of fun!

Classes this week were pretty good. Our large class split up into 3 smaller groups (they call it our tri-cycle). Two days were spent in a public speaking workshop – I felt pretty prepared for this because of Toastmasters, thank goodness. We spent one day learning about public speaking, then the second day, we were recorded and critiqued. John had a session on composure under fire where a hostile audience pelted him with questions about U.S. foreign policy – I’ll have this session next week – gulp.

We are all starting to get very excited because next Wednesday is Flag Day – the day we find out where we are assigned and when we will leave for post! Keep your fingers crossed for us! We bid “high” on Mexico City, Honduras, Guatemala, Venezuela, Brazil and Dominican Republic. Anyone want to predict where we might end up???!