criplomats

I flew home Monday night to Hot Springs; David and Alison picked me up at the airport Tuesday late morning. It’s been a working trip so far – I wanted to unpack the household goods that were delivered to the condo in August after we left for Guyana and I’m putting together a consumables shipment. This is a special allowance that we get if we are posted in certain countries where it’s hard to get pantry items, cleaning supplies, etc. or where they are not of good quality (we had this allowance in Liberia, too). I’m amassing a pile of goods that movers will pick up and ship next week.

The weather has been great since I arrived. Yesterday a big storm moved through and left wonderfully chilly temps behind – I had to bundle up to sit outside this morning to drink my coffee and watch the sun rise!

Wednesday evening I went out with Alison and PeeWee for some shopping and dinner at The Goat. I binge-watched “The Pitt” and really enjoyed it. I also re-watched “The Undoing” and “Gone Girl,” and I watched “Adolescence” and “Babygirl” for the first time.

John sent me this photo of Flavia hanging out in my closet on my shoes and it kind of broke my heart. I miss them both!

The U.S. government shutdown continued this week. John, along with his colleagues around the world, continues to work, albeit without pay for now. The goats that came through the neighborhood on Wednesday did not seem to care. Nor did Flavia.

The week was pretty normal. As I did my daily walk around the neighborhood, I started listening to “Careless People,” by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Subtitled “A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,” it’s a behind-the-scenes story of Facebook in its infancy by an employee (and former diplomat from New Zealand).

I had a fun catch-up call with Stacie in Paris on Wednesday. I worked on planning a trip to NYC in the spring, as well as a trip to the Amazon. John and I watched “The Woman in Cabin 10” this week, plus the old Inspector Linley series on PBS. Tonight we had a fun and tasty dinner at the Brazilian steakhouse near our house with Chris and his wife Mariella. I finished reading Hampton Sides’ captivating “In the Kingdom of Ice,” about the USS Jeanette and her ill-fated attempt to get to the North Pole from the Bering Strait in 1879 – 1882. It was fascinating and haunting.

We joined a few folks from the embassy yesterday for a guided city tour – it was a lot of fun to get out and see different things around the city and afterwards we had lunch together at a good spot. We stopped along the sea wall to look out over the ocean with the blue, blue sky.

Our first stop was to the city park where we fed the manatees. They are in ponds in the park because they were injured and rehabilitated; apparently there are 13 of them there and they love to eat the grass we fed them! We also stopped at a couple of museums – I was fascinated with a collection of skeletons at the National Museum, including this one:

I enjoyed seeing all of the old British Colonial architecture around town. Many of them have these wedge-shaped shutters with ledges for holding ice back in the day. The porch at the anthropology museum on the second floor was lovely and breezy due to the shutters and openings below the windows, as well.

Here are a few other photos:

Monday night, John and I went to the Amer-Indian Heritage Dinner in honor of the indigenous people of Guyana. We had traditional food and had some entertainment- it was fun!

The rest of the week was normal – walked early in the day around the neighborhood and spotted a few new birds, did some yoga with YouTube, and worked on administrative stuff. We had a kitchen and pool inspection by the embassy (since the house is designated for representational events). I had a good chat with Lea and Rachel S last Sunday, and Cathy Mc called me later in the week to catch up. I finished Kamala’s book “107 Days.”

I should say the week was normal for me — but it is not normal for John or my Foreign Service friends since the federal government shut down! John is working without pay, as is the majority of his American staff. Friends around the world are in various states of working or furloughed (or fired in July). John had to cancel two fun representational events since he can’t do things like that during a shutdown. Here’s hoping things get back to some semblance of normal soon, and federal workers can get paid for the good and important work they do.

John and I hired a driver yesterday to run a few errands. There are two malls not far from the house, so we went to buy a new mattress (we gave our old one to the movers in Buenos Aires) and I needed to pay my cell phone bill (no option for online payment). At both places, the customer service folks were super-nice but the credit card machines were all down, so we had to make a return trip to Mall #1 after lunch at Mall #2 to pay for everything. We were ultimately successful so the outing felt like a win! We treated ourselves to a good hamburger for lunch.

This week I’ve been doing homework for a “consumables” shipment — because things are so expensive here and/or hard to get, we can have a certain number of pounds of pantry items to be shipped as a separate allowance. I’ve been browsing online at Sam’s Club and Walmart to see what I can put together for a shipment this fall.

John and I are also doing some vacation planning for the spring — let me know if you have any tried and true recommendations, especially anything involving wildlife. Top on our list is a river cruise on the Amazon but we’d love to hear other suggestions.

I finished Jeff Hiller’s “Actress of a Certain Age,” as well as Lauren Groff’s “Fates and Furies.” (I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as her “Matrix.”) I started reading Kamala Harris’s “107 Days.”

I was a little social this week, starting with dinner out with John’s colleague Chris and his wife Mariella. We went to a nice Italian restaurant on the top floor of a building (around eight stories). There was a big party going on in the outdoor section with lots of very dressed up folks – when we asked the waitress what the occasion was, she said they had come for brunch and just stayed!

Yesterday I went to a morning get-together for EFMs (i.e., spouses). It was fun to meet some new folks. I rode with neighbor Katline and another EFM Annabellee; on the way home we made a quick stop by the Mon Repos market, then did some grocery shopping. This was the first time I’ve gone to a market here. It was like those I’ve seen in a lot of other countries, with a mix of fruits, vegetables, clothes, household goods, etc – plus a big does of raw or smoked meats, including whole ducks and sides of pork, as well as live animals waiting to be slaughtered.

This week I finished reading “Matrix,” by Lauren Groff. Although I didn’t think it was a topic that interested me (a twelfth-century nunnery), I found it oddly good. I’m almost finished tearing through Jeff Hiller’s “An Actress of a Certain Age,” which I am thoroughly enjoying. I loved him in “Somebody Somewhere” (I think he just won an Emmy for it). It’s an easy read that has make me laugh out laugh and tear up a bit, too. I was excited enough when it came into my Libby queue that I set a re-reading of Groff’s “Fates and Furies” aside for it.

John and I are continuing to enjoy the new “Lynley” as well as the older “Inspector Lynley” series, as well as “Unforgotten.”