Today we took the oath of office in a formal ceremony led by Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg (the second highest position at Dept. of State). The centerpoint of the ceremony is the swearing in, where we use the same oath as Congress. (By the way, at some point, my name will be listed in the Congressional Record when all the members of our class are approved by the Senate - I'll be sure and post a link when that happens!) It is an honor to serve our country and "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..." The past six weeks I have heard from so many people in the State Department, all of whom are doing amazing things to promote peace and security around the world.
In the past week, I've been learning bits and pieces about the place we will soon call home. Vilnius is referred to as the last great undiscovered city in Europe. Old town is evidently huge and parts of it were built 5 or more centuries ago. They have about 3.5 million people in a country roughly the size of West Virginia. Lithuania is a member of the European Union, although they don't use the Euro. I understand winters are particularly cold, but I'm sure that J will enjoy them, and we will enjoy having visitors in the summer! Lithuanian is actually the last living Indo-European language and was derived from Sanskrit (a dead language). It uses a modified Roman alphabet (similar to English, French, Italian, etc) not Cyrillic, which is what I learned for Russian. I'm going to a small post, meaning we'll get to know everyone well and I'll have a chance to work on all sorts of things going on at the Embassy. I'm also excited about how easy travel around the rest of Europe should be. Once we get into language training in September, I'll have a lot more to share with you.
I feel like we just got here, and yet everything changes again on Monday. I start training on how to be a political/econ officer, and in June I learn what it takes to be a consular officer (evidently, an in-depth knowledge of regulations!) I'll still be with about 30 of my classmates on Monday, but at least we will have a little more elbow room!
J and I are headed out for dinner to celebrate tonight. Tomorrow morning I'm running my first 5k, and next week I may sign up for a 10 mile run in the fall (heck, we'll be here a while, you know...).
Miss you all - talk to you soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment