Congratulations to John on his promotion this week! It was our first time to be considered for promotion to FS-02 and it’s pretty unusual to get it on your first time – but, of course, John did! It made for a very happy week, with lots of congratulation notes. I made the “honorable mention” list, which made me very happy, as well – but not the same as actually getting the promotion. So for now, John outranks me! Congrats! We celebrated at a nice steak house in the fancy mall in our neighborhood.
The rest of the week had a rosy glow about it in light of this good news! Saturday was especially fun – we went next door for a paella cooking class. Turns out that our neighbor Arturo (married to a Consulate employee and the only other Consulate family in our building) is a professional chef – lucky for us! We had a small group from work to learn how to make paella and then we enjoyed a meal together. Quite nice!
Cooking class
Paella – yummy!
Friday after work, Cindy and Raoul picked us up to go to our consular chief’s house for a party. It was a lot of fun, and was nice to socialize with folks outside of the office.
Tuesday, the fire marshal from Washington was in town. We loaded up into a van and went to a deserted parking lot to learn how to use fire extinguishers. It was a lot of fun, and reminded me of Thanksgiving with John’s family in Texas a few years ago when Mitch brought a bunch of extinguishers and taught us how to use them (that branch of the family needs them, given their penchant for bonfires!).
Yesterday after the cooking class, we walked across the street to the VIP movie theatre (meaning they have recliners and serve drinks) to see “Gone Girl” – it was excellent! We read the book when we were in Indonesia for vacation in 2013 and loved it, so we were happy to see a good adaptation of it. I love Rosamund Pike.
Also, John taught me a new strategy/card game for two, “Lost Cities,” so we enjoyed several rounds of it yesterday, too.
Flavie continues to get a bit more comfortable every day!