criplomats

This week I was off to Hot Springs to visit Mom – John and I aren’t planning to take any time off from work over the holidays, so I figured I should take advantage of a Mexican holiday and make it a four-day weekend. Last night I had a great visit and dinner with Dail and Nancy – we sure do miss them!

Hurricane Ike blew through Hot Springs last night – I saw three trees down during my morning walk today.

Last Sunday, several TDYers arrived in Juarez, including our A-100 classmate, Cathy. John and I picked her up in El Paso, then had everyone over for dinner that night. They are all from border towns, too, so it was fun to compare stories. Cathy and I also had dinner together later in the week at Corralito’s.

Work was fine this week – no big whoop. We had a couple of brown bag lunches, and lots of applicants, as usual.

We really had a great time visiting Huey and Suzanne (and the doggies!) in San Diego last weekend! They were such wonderful hosts. Last Monday I started the day with a nice walk, followed by a manicure/pedicure, then we drove to Encinitas for lunch and a walk through a gorgeous garden overlooking the ocean. We topped off our visit with a wonderful meal on the beach at sunset – perfect! Click here to see a couple more photos.

We returned to Ciudad Juarez on Tuesday. It was a busy week because we sponsored a newly arrived officer, so we spent some time getting him settled in his new house, taking him to work and making introductions, etc. It’s hard to believe that after only 6 months here, we’re considered old hands, more or less!

Thursday night we went to the Consul General’s house to meet some of our Mexican Foreign Service counterparts, who work at the Mexican Consulate in El Paso.

We had a yummy Mexican dinner on Friday night with our neighbors Lara and Ryan. Lara is originally from Chiapas, Mexico, and is a great cook.

Yesterday was a nice break for us – we spent the whole day relaxing and had a movie-fest. We watched one really good movie, “In Bruges,” plus “The Story of the Weeping Camel,” a National Geographic documentary-ish movie about a camel and a family in Mongolia. Sounds odd, but we enjoyed it. Then we watched “Border Town,” about the Juarez femicides. (You’ll be happy to know that Jennifer Lopez solved the mystery!)

Here’s a photo with Huey and Suzanne’s doggies.

John and I are enjoying a few days of vacation in sunny San Diego with our good friends from Little Rock, Huey and Suzanne. (The real reason we came out here was to see their fabulous dogs, two mini-Schnauzers – but don’t tell Huey and Suzanne!) We flew in Saturday morning – how wonderful to see the ocean, palm trees and lots of green! We took a drive to see some sights – including a seal! – and dipped our toes in the ocean. It’s really gorgeous here.

Today we had a picnic and walked around in Balboa Park, followed by a trip to a wonderful used book store. The best part of the trip is visiting with good friends over a bottle of wine, while enjoying Huey’s efforts at the grill!

Last Sunday, John returned from his trip to Dallas to see his friend Russ. We watched “Under the Same Moon,” a rather sympathetic look at immigration with some great characters.

Monday night, we hosted John’s book club. It was a small turnout but a good discussion of Jeffrey Sach’s “End of Poverty” – the first of the book club books I actually read. The basis of the book is how to end not poverty in general, but extreme poverty – and how the developed countries of the world have the resources but not the political will to do it.

The rest of the week was just work-oriented, but we did have a fun impromptu happy hour at our house with our FSO neighbors one night. Teresa and Michael are feeding Flavie for us while we’re gone.

We took Friday off, which was great. I had a check-up with a doctor in El Paso, then dropped off the Volvo at a mechanic’s shop to have some work done. I was thrilled this week because our new neighbor Lara helped me get set up with easy pass tickets to get the Volvo over the bridge without waiting in line for hours.

Friday night we met our co-worker Beth and her husband Tom for dinner at Los Bichis – it turned out to be a celebratory dinner because she just found out that she got Frankfurt, Germany, as her second tour assignment – one of her top choices. Lots of our peers are getting their next assignments now, and so far the news is all good. John and I won’t bid until this winter, so we have a while to go yet.

OK, enough work for now. Time to get back to relaxing on Huey and Suzanne’s patio with the doggies!

Really, not a lot happened around here this week, just issuing lots of visas. The immigrant visa work has gotten a bit more routine for me, although each case is still different.

We had a meeting with the regional psychiatrist at lunch one day this week…are they trying to tell us something? Another lunch was spent with our management, talking about an upcoming inspection. John continues to do great work, helping the facilities group plan for the move to the new Consulate building.

John went to Dallas Friday night, to spend the weekend with his buddy Russ Stoker. From the phone calls, it sounds like they are having a blast. Stoker’s wife and family were out of town, so it was a bachelors’ weekend.

In John’s absence, I did a little shopping at the mall in El Paso, after dropping him off at the airport Friday night, then I had a drink with neighbors Michael and Teresa.

On Saturday, I went on an historic Juarez tour with a small group from work. We had a great tour guide, a local history professor, who took us inside some of the places we had driven by on a previous tour, like the Mission of Guadalupe (built in the 1600s and amazingly has survived) and the Customs Museum. We finished with a late lunch at a good restaurant.

Now it’s off to El Paso for a little grocery shopping before I pick up John at the airport.

This week was pretty much just business as usual, at least for me. John has taken on some new responsibilities at work, working half of his day with the facilities folks to get ready for the move to the new Consulate building in November. He really is doing great!

We had several training classes this week – what to do in case of a car-jacking, surviving terrorist attacks, rape awareness, etc. Not particularly uplifting themes, but I do have a gas-mask thing at my desk now, as well as syringes full of nerve-gas remedy.

We had our neighbors Michael, Teresa, Ryan and Lara over for dinner Friday night – it was fun. We grilled burgers and had homemade strawberry ice cream – yum yum. Ryan and Lara just moved in a few weeks ago and are super-nice.

Last night we met Caroline and Harold for dinner at Corralito’s. Today we are just reading and relaxing. I’m going to grill some ribs in a bit, and of course, there is usually a TV with the Olympics on somewhere in the house. Love that Michael Phelps!

Cousin James had surgery this week but seems to be recouperating nicely. He’ll be out of commission for a few weeks.

I forgot to mention that I re-watched a couple of Joan Allen movies recently, “The Ice Storm” and “The Upside of Anger” – both are really, really good.