{"id":3214,"date":"2014-08-02T22:24:43","date_gmt":"2014-08-03T04:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=3214"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:35:51","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:35:51","slug":"single-digits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=3214","title":{"rendered":"Single digits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">So now we are moving into single digits &#8211; only a few more days left in Pakistan. It&#8217;s a bit surreal. <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">The Embassy was closed Tuesday &#8211; Friday for Eid holidays. The quiet days in the office were a godsend to me and I&#8217;ve gotten a lot of work done &#8211; but still a lot to go! I picked up my replacement at the airport in the wee hours of Thursday morning and have spent some time with her doing some cross-training in the last couple of days.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">Last Sunday, we went to a great brunch at Carolyn and Konstantin&#8217;s house &#8211; Konstantin makes a mean biscuit and gravy (that&#8217;s high praise especially considering he&#8217;s a Yankee)! We, along with our other A-100 classsmates Eric and Diana were the last to leave, enjoying visiting while we can.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">Thursday night, we went to Adi and Celia&#8217;s house for cocktails with Ron, Pam, Steve, and Dave, then we all went to dinner at Pangia, a nice Asian restaurant. And back to Adi and Celia&#8217;s for coffee and a delish trifle for desert. We&#8217;ve really enjoyed getting to know all of these folks. John works closely with Adi and Ron, and Celia and Pam have been my photography class buddies &#8211; all nice people! Here we are:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3216\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/DSC_2039.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3216\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/DSC_2039-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"Dinner with good friends\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3216\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_2039-300x198.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_2039.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3216\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dinner with good friends<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">Friday evening we went to Keith and Shelly&#8217;s house for drinks and  a small get-together. We yakked and laughed with Julia for a while &#8211; she&#8217;s always so fun to talk to. Several good friends were there, and I got some last minute tips from my photog instructor Sully before he and Alexis caught their flight to leave Pakistan; they&#8217;ll ultimately end up in Costa Rica for their next tour.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">Except for Thursday when I was at the airport, I&#8217;ve managed to continue my daily gym routine &#8211; I&#8217;m really trying to keep that up; the exercise and the routine are even more important now when everything else is crashing down around me! Monica took over spin class for Meghan, thank goodness! We had a killer workout this week.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">The exercise paid off yesterday when Ron gave me a very coveted behind-the-scenes tour of the new Embassy building, still under construction! We climbed the stairs to the top of the building for a panoramic view of Islamabad on a beautiful clear day! Thanks, Ron!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So now we are moving into single digits &#8211; only a few more days left in Pakistan. It&#8217;s a bit surreal. The Embassy was closed Tuesday &#8211; Friday for Eid holidays. The quiet days in the office were a godsend to me and I&#8217;ve gotten a lot of work done &#8211; but still a lot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3214"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3214"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3221,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3214\/revisions\/3221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}