{"id":85,"date":"2007-10-28T09:47:48","date_gmt":"2007-10-28T14:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=85"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:37:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:37:09","slug":"head-of-the-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=85","title":{"rendered":"Head of the Class"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"chris-with-noodle.jpg\" href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/chris-with-noodle.jpg\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/100_2901.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-214\" title=\"100_2901\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/100_2901-226x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"226\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><a title=\"100_2901.JPG\" href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/100_2901.JPG\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>John graduated from his Consular training (ConGen) this week as class valedictorian, so he got to wear the much-coveted purple robe. He received the honor because he didn&#8217;t miss any questions on any of the four tests. ConGen is a pretty fun course &#8211; there are lots of role-plays. We work in the land of Z, a fictitious country that has an in-depth back story. At the Zian Embassy, we get lots of &#8220;zany&#8221; characters whose names all start with &#8220;Z.&#8221; Neighboring countries are X and Y. This week I had my jail visit to visit an arrested American in our Zian jail cell (a real cell, complete with toilet, cot and stuffed rats on the floor).<\/p>\n<p>We had some great social outings this week. Last Sunday, we hosted a fun dinner party at our apartment for our friend Jim Jay, who&#8217;s leaving for his post in Lagos, Nigeria. We cooked burgers and enjoyed visiting with everyone (see photos below). Thursday night was happy hour, and then last night we went to a dinner party at Carolyn and Konstantin&#8217;s (the friends who recently got married and had their puppy Meatball be the ring bearer) where we dined on great chili and homemade mac-n-cheese.<\/p>\n<p>I also made the trek to the outlet mall yesterday with some girlfriends to go bargain hunting &#8211; successfully, I might add.<\/p>\n<p>We watched an interesting movie this week called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonyclassics.com\/jindabyne\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jindabyne<\/a>, with Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"ramona-and-jim.jpg\" href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/ramona-and-jim.jpg\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/ramona-and-jim.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-215\" title=\"ramona-and-jim\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/ramona-and-jim-300x196.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"196\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Jim Jay<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"john.jpg\" href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/john.jpg\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/john.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-216\" title=\"john\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/john-300x208.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"208\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Foreground: Jim and Kristin; Background: Marcy and Zanaida<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"chris-with-noodle.jpg\" href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/chris-with-noodle.jpg\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/chris-with-noodle.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-217\" title=\"chris-with-noodle\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/chris-with-noodle-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Chris with Noodle<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John graduated from his Consular training (ConGen) this week as class valedictorian, so he got to wear the much-coveted purple robe. He received the honor because he didn&#8217;t miss any questions on any of the four tests. ConGen is a pretty fun course &#8211; there are lots of role-plays. We work in the land of [&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\/85"}],"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=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3735,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/3735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}