The week started out great. Last Sunday morning we drove over to Richard’s apartment for bruch with a small group of friends – good food, good conversation (Richard is an outstanding host). Then John got an email about the murder of a Consulate employee in Juarez. We immediately commandeered Richard’s computer to find details.
To our horror, the woman who was killed, Lesley, was a dear co-worker of mine in the American Citizen Services section – we had just been emailing the week before. I wish I could convey what a wonderful, beautiful person she was, inside and out.
Needless to say, all of us associated with Juarez are in shock and still trying to understand what happened…and why.
The rest of the week seems sort of irrelevant after that news. We studied a lot. Wednesday, our Hebrew class had an interesting trip to the Israeli Embassy here in DC, where we met and listened to their diplomats.
Thursday we went to two different happy hours. The first one, in Chinatown, was to meet one of the local staff from the Embassy in Tel Aviv. He seemed like a great guy, and I look forward to working with him later this year. The second one was with our A-100 classmates – it was good to laugh with them.
We also managed to squeeze in a few movies. “Stolen,” a documentary about the Gardner art heist; “The Lemon Tree,” with our favorite Middle Eastern actress; and “A Serious Man,” the Coen Brothers’ new movie, which we really enjoyed (mostly we appreciated the scenes of the boy in Hebrew class, as Pam predicted!).
Flavie continues to come out a bit more, and has even started to play again and sit in our laps some!
With Lesley at the Consulate Christmas party last December