{"id":6578,"date":"2022-02-27T03:21:32","date_gmt":"2022-02-27T08:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=6578"},"modified":"2022-02-27T03:23:45","modified_gmt":"2022-02-27T08:23:45","slug":"happy-anniversary-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=6578","title":{"rendered":"Happy anniversary to us!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Amen Pharmacy and a ke-ke (very popular means of transportation)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

John and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary on Thursday – wow! We treated ourselves to delivery sushi and started watching a new season of \u201cYoung Wallender\u201d – a perfect evening for us!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had a visiting Congressional delegation (CODEL) on Monday – yep, Monday was a federal holiday but John and I were in business clothes at the Embassy to meet them. Several are members of HFAC – House foreign affairs committee. In total there were seven, including Omar from Minnesota. She and a couple of the others were very interested in my short consular briefing and asked follow-up questions about adoptions and US teens who get abandoned in Liberia by their parents \u2014 this seems to be a Liberian thing and I haven\u2019t seen it elsewhere. When they hit puberty and start getting into trouble in the US, their Liberian-born\/US-naturalized parents bring them back here to live with family. The kids are usually unhappy because they\u2019ve grown up in the US and are at a complete loss back here \u2014 and end up on the Embassy\u2019s doorstep asking for help. It\u2019s quite sad but there is little we can do (since they are minors) other than try to mediate with the family both here and back in the US. Anyway, it really caught the attention of the Representatives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other than a small thing back in 2009, John and I had never participated in a CODEL (or the Presidential delegation \u2014 PDEL \u2014 the previous week). They are planned in excruciating detail – every movement, every meeting, every contingency is choreographed- which makes for some really long video calls in the run-up to the visit. I can\u2019t imagine all the man-hours that were spent on the one-day visit. Luckily I only had to do my briefing at mid-day and didn\u2019t have other duties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Sunday, I learned that one of my cousins died in a car crash. She was about to turn 28. Mom was always very fond of her. I didn\u2019t know her much as an adult, but my heart goes out to the family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a quick chat with Jackie, Jamie, and Beth while they were at Pinnacle Mountain yesterday – it was fun to talk for a few minutes and see them all bundled up and out for a walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John and I finished \u201cInventing Anna\u201d and also got caught up on a British show, \u201cCOBRA.\u201d I really enjoyed Julia Garner in \u201cAnna\u201d – it\u2019s a great story and she\u2019s just so fun to watch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flavia in her favorite place<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary on Thursday – wow! We treated ourselves to delivery sushi and started watching a new season of \u201cYoung Wallender\u201d – a perfect evening for us! We had a visiting Congressional delegation (CODEL) on Monday – yep, Monday was a federal holiday but John and I were in […]<\/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\/6578"}],"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=6578"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6582,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6578\/revisions\/6582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}