Orientation

Well, for a quick update….

Orientation:

The first two days in DC were nice.  I guiltily appreciated that the government put me up in the Renaissance Hotel for two nights and gave me a $100 Visa gift card.  Orientation on the second day was pretty much a repeat of two years ago, however, I loved the keynote speaker—the ambassador to Bahrain.  Not only was he hilarious, but he was the most frank and honest diplomat I’ve ever met.  He actually made me consider taking the foreign service exam (being a foreign service officer would totally be worth it for the free foreign language training, but I just can’t imagine uprooting my life every 2-3 years and being sent anywhere in the world).  The ambassador also had learned Arabic as a second language and reiterated a point that I have been trying to convey to friends and family for a while now:

Arabic is hard, and takes longer to learn than most people realize.  Apparently, foreign language officers receiving training in the romance languages study them intensively for two months…those who are studying Russian study intensively for about four months…those studying Arabic?  They study intensively for 2 years, and even then they are far from fluent.  So, my point: yes, I majored in Arabic and, yes, I have been studying it for almost 4 years now.  But no, I am not fluent.  Nor will I be fluent anytime soon.  It’s not from lack of trying, it’s just the nature of the language.  Somewhat disappointing, but not enough to make me choose another language.

A group of us went out together for one last chance for drinks and dancing on the second night, and if it was any indicator of the rest of the summer…well, I’m super excited.

The Flight

So our flight was supposed to leave at 4:40 pm on June 1^st.  Due to what appeared to be nothing more than light sprinkles, it was delayed, and we arrived in Paris over two hours late.  Which meant that we missed our connecting flight to Tunis.  Air France didn’t have another flight to rebook us on until almost twelve hours later, so in a surprising turn of events….

I spent the day exploring Paris (again)!  I hadn’t told my bank that I was going to be in Paris, so I converted the little American money that I had left into Euros, and 25 out of 27 of us took the TGV into the city to explore.  We split ourselves up into groups, and mine started off with Notre Dame, and walked our way to the Eiffel Tower, stopping at a couple of other sites, as well as to pick up bread, cheese, and champagne for a picnic.  We ended up sprawled out under a tree with a hidden view of the Eiffel Tower, where we ate and then took a two hour nap.  This unexpected surprise ended up being quite possibly the cheapest way that someone could explore Paris: we didn’t buy a ticket there (the air line just switched our ticket and provided us with free food to make up for it), paid 9 euros each way for the train, and I paid about 2 euros to contribute to lunch (unfortunately that was all I had…).  The downside was that I had to wear my carry on—which was stuffed with several textbooks and my laptop-- all day, which made my back very unhappy.  I also ended up getting sunburned (figures), and we ended up even more tired (I got a total of one hour of sleep over the two days), but I think it was worth it.