Travel to at least two new countries and three new U.S. states. Like any good Foreign Service Officer, I will undeniably be struck with wanderlust even though I will be happy to be back in DC. I have an idea which states/countries these will be– but in the fear of jinxing myself, I won’t specify– except in the case of my upcoming trip to Argentina, for which the tickets are purchased and the leave is requested!

Start trail running . After a nasty injury and the subsequent two year heat/security/boredom induced hiatus, I look forward to hitting the roads of DC again and logging some serious miles. One thing I haven’t tried before and hope to start is trail running, which is a little bit more challenging then road running, but will be a nice addition to the training plan.

Join a CSA. Never one to do things half way, I already have the UBER CSA identified, which includes deliveries of locally sourced fruits, meats, flowers, honey and cheeses in addition to the usual veggies. My boyfriend is appalled at how much it is costing but after two years of living in Ecuador, I find U.S. food prices to be appalling generally (and I also haven’t paid rent for two years). So dammit, I’m going to treat myself!

Read more. I’ve tentatively set a two-books-per-month goal. I’ve taken a pretty long break from reading after college (during which I was reading 400-600 pages a week, plus news and research) and since then have been too focused on reading non-fiction at the expense of actually enjoying reading. So I’ve assembled a list that is a nice mix between literary classics, new fiction, and work-related non-fiction.

Cook more. After losing almost 30 pounds in two months (not by choice) earlier this year, my digestive system has been permanently angry with me, often preferring easy to digest foods (like M&Ms) in lieu of my prior diet (which never included M&Ms). I have lots of sources of cooking inspiration but I just have to do it. I am also going to recruit some friends to teach me their specialties, and put that CSA to use cooking new foods.

Send birthday cards…religiously. My friends and I are pretty dedicated mail-senders– and you can call me a luddite, but I think there’s nothing nicer than holding material sentiments in your hands on or around your birthday. In honor of this resolution, I am scouring the internet for some awesome cards. (Though Matt & Dad, my January birthdays…your cards may arrive on Feliz Cumpleanos cards, and will probably be late )

Take DC-area weekend trips. I’ve never been to Virginia Horse Country, and as a one-time equestrienne, I’d love to see what all the fuss about. Other ideas– the Virginia Gold Cup races, the Billy Goat trail, Shenandoah, Amish Country, Philadelphia, the beach in Delaware, and Baltimore– all places I have not spent enough time in. Bonus points if I can bring the dog along.

Host one get-together per month. This could be book club, game night, happy hour, what have you– but it must involve delicious food, delicious drinks, and good company (do you see how a lot of my goals complement the others?)

The other rule of resolution-making is to not make hard and fast rules. If I am too busy one month to read two books, I can catch up the next month when I’m sitting on a beach, or when it’s raining outside. Plus, I think these goals are perfectly attainable! The boyfriend would probably request to add “competently drive a stick shift in a city environment” to this list, but let’s not push our luck!!

The most exciting news is that I have made a new addition to the family…maybe not the most logical of choices, given that I will probably be paying an arm and a leg to house him in DC, BUT he has made the last few months quite enjoyable and I think he will make a very sturdy specimen to take on later tours:

It’s a puppy, of course! He was picked up from the streets by a local rescue organization that one of the local employees volunteers for. I offered to foster a dog until it was healthy enough to be adopted, so this one came to live with me after spending a week at the vet’s. When he was found, he was eating rocks to try to nourish himself. He was very scared, very hot, and very mange-y. He was on multiple vitamin supplements twice a day…and after realizing what a happy and intelligent creature he was, I knew I wasn’t going to let anyone else have him.

It’s amazing what a few months of tender loving care makes. After about 6 weeks of bathing/scrubbing and dousing him with extra strong chemicals, it looks like the mange (which is actually caused by an insect which burrows into the skin and causes the dog to scratch his hair out and eventually skin off) is all gone. For the next 4-6 months he’ll be taking supplements to help stimulate his hair growth. You can’t tell clearly from the pictures, but on his belly, haunches, and tail he is mostly bald or has only spotty hair.

The neighbors were alarmed at first (because here I was, walking around a wealthy neighborhood with a bald and skinny mutt) but I think he’s quickly become a crowd favorite. In addition to playing with a rope that Matt brought him, he enjoys chasing his Shiba Inu friend, listening to birds, catching iguanas, and eating imported dog food…hey, just because he’s a mutt doesn’t mean he can’t be spoiled!

It also turns out that dogs are useful tools for diplomacy…I’ve met more of my neighbors in the last 3 months than in the 18 months proceeding!

So, after a month of home leave, I am proud to say I start my next job in the Europe bureau in June 2012!

I was excited about my top 5 or 6 positions, but it is a huge relief to be assigned to be assigned domestically. There were only two DC jobs on my bidlist, but I made sure to clearly articulate my family concerns (because yes, single ladies have family concerns too!) as the reason I wanted to go back. Both the boyfriend and I are glad that we will have two years together before having to decide between breaking up or one of us quitting.

Hopefully I’ll still get some overseas trips with my new job (I don’t really know anything about it), if not I will be visiting all my newly disperse friends/colleagues

I’ve found the logistical challenges as a single to be the most daunting– that much is evident as soon as you transfer to your first post. I’ve never wished so fiercely I could clone myself so that I could be attending ConGen training with one body and running around doing fool’s errands (trying to jailbreak a certificate of origin from a car dealer, sitting with packers, stocking up on a two years’ supply of postage stamps and peanut butter, etc.) at the same time. I imagine the logistics are only worse for people bringing pets, single parents, or single people going to posts where housing is not provided.

As I continue bumbling along this adventure not single so much as geographically alone, I’ve learned that just as we prepare contingency or disaster plans in consular sections, it is equally important to have contingency plans ourselves. After a volcanic eruption, a 7.1 earthquake, and a day of civil unrest that shut down the country, I realized I didn’t really take the time to prepare for a disaster since it was “just me.” I had no canned food, no bottled water, and no gas in my car. (I feel like FS people with kids are probably not this negligent.) One time I cut my finger (badly!!) while chopping garlic and realized I had no band-aids. I showed up to work the next morning with my finger wrapped in toilet paper and duct tape until I could sheepishly ask my boss (a well-prepared mom!) for a band-aid. I still don’t have bottled water, but I do now have a first aid kit, canned food, and a (recently) full tank of gas. I’m learning.

Then, six weeks ago, I had the misfortune of being admitted to the hospital. This is crappy in normal circumstances, but there’s nothing like driving to the hospital with the Consulate nurse and being asked “I know you’re single, so who’s your best friend?” That, and the massive dehydration, was enough to send me into tears as I contemplated who I would burden with my illness. How do you pick between the colleagues who have been working nonstop all day, are sick themselves or have a new baby at home? I’ve been here for just a year, and now I’m being forced to identify a “best friend”? Hospital visits are precisely why we have families!

When I arrived at my hospital room after a few hours in the ER getting pumped full of fluids, the Consulate nurse told the hospital nurses, “She doesn’t have family so make sure you help her.” Then the guy came by to drop off blankets for the non-present family members who were not staying with me. Needless to say, there are few things worse than unexpectedly being admitted to the hospital and realizing that you are in for a long night alone, hooked up to an IV, communicating with doctors and nurses in your non-native language and wearing the same clothes for more than 24 hours. Home was suddenly very far away. And then I realized my cell phone battery was almost out. And I didn’t have my parents’ cell phone numbers programmed into it anyway, since I only called them on Skype. So I called my boyfriend and cried, and we felt helpless because we were far apart. (Meanwhile, my mother was sending me angry emails about why I hadn’t updated her on my unfolding health crisis. She didn’t know anything until AFTER I was released from the hospital.)

What I’ve learned from the experience is, it is important for singles to think about these things before/when they arrive at Post. First of all, it is important to get over any reluctance you have to ask for help from someone, and that someone will most likely be your colleague. I can think of multiple times since being here that I have been too sick to drag myself to the grocery store and get myself food (even when my go-to sick diet is red Gatorade and water crackers. Very healthy.) If people ask you if you need help, or offer you some form of help, you shouldn’t hesitate to take it. Being independent has its limits.

The other advice I have is, know who you can call in the event you are sick and need help. I’ve had times when I’ve worried about just getting a ride to the doctor, since there’s nothing worse than having to wait for a cab at the hospital. If you anticipate you might be getting really sick, maybe pack a bag with pajamas and other necessities and leave it at your house. You may even give your emergency geographically-present contact a set of keys to your house and car (in fact, I highly recommend this) in the event you are away for a long time or need someone to go in and get something for you. This has the added benefit of being an additional person you can call when you get locked out of your car or house.

I was very lucky that I had a fine colleague and his family to come visit me late at night with magazines, a change of comfortable clothes, and some juice as well as several visits and great support from the Consulate nurse. Another colleague stopped by the hospital while he was already out for morning meetings the next day. And I received several phone calls from others offering their help or visits. All-in-all, it was an unfortunate situation that didn’t suck any more than it had to, and no act or gesture, no matter how small, went unnoticed by me.

In conclusion:
(1) Singles, don’t be afraid to ask for help.
(2) Families/Couples, we singles sometimes need your help and certainly always appreciate it.
(3) It’s good to have on-hand some nice go-to thank you gifts for the people who help you out of a bind.
(4) The restorative effects of an IV drip (or in my case 5000 mL of IV drips and heavy doses of penicillin) cannot be under-estimated.

(It’s not the clearest shot but behind the lookout post is a white Eiffel Tower…can you see it?)

Vinces is also called the “Little Paris” because during the go-go days of the cacao boom, the area filled up with Europeans seeking to capitalize on the commodity, which could be taken straight to the port of Guayaquil by the Ecuadorian railroad.

(Rail transportation in Ecuador never really took off– rivers worked just fine!)

The locals used their newly-acquired wealth to educate their kids abroad. Their destination of choice? Paris. They also used their money to build some pretty beautiful plantation houses, too. You have to use your imagination a little bit, because decades of neglect have left the houses in a state of decay. If only they could be salvaged– I love the shutters.

This town also has the most amazing jail I have ever seen. How many small towns can say that they put their criminals in a CASTLE?

Cacao has a long history in Ecuador, stretching all the way back to pre-colonial times (most famously, the Aztec empire used to dried cacao seeds as hard currency). In the late 19th century, there was a cacao boom that made many local people very rich and also brought in a flux of European seeking to secure the supply chains for their raw material. The local saying “el gran cacao” is roughly interchangeable with our “big shot,” i.e., “Tu no eres el gran cacao!” Today, Ecuador is one of the world’s most important producers of fine and mostly organic cacao. Chances are, if you’ve bought an expensive chocolate bar at Whole Foods lately, the chocolate in it came from Ecuador.

We visited a cooperative of small cacao producers in the town of Vinces, located in Los Rios, Ecuador. The cooperative is called “La Pepa de Oro” in honor of the former Aztec cacao-seed currency.

At the center of the sign is a cacao pod. I didn’t get a picture of an actual pod, but I can tell you when you break them open they’re filled with this white, slightly gooey fleshy stuff and some really hard seeds. You can actually suck the white fleshy stuff off the seeds and it’s a little fruity, tart, and bitter but not unpleasant. The pods are a little smaller than your average papaya. The pods may be yellow to red or purple– but I’ve been told the yellow pods are the good ones.

Once the pods are harvested, the farmers split them open and pull out the seeds which are covered in the white sticky flesh. Something I learned on the trip is that cacao beans are actually fermented for four days. The system is pretty ingenious– the wooden fermentation boxes are set up in steps, so one the first day of fermentation you put them in the top box. Then, on each subsequent day you open the side panels of the box and push it down to the next box. By the fourth day, it’s good and rotty, and looks like this:

The smell is pretty nasty– basically like someone who has really sweaty feet and hasn’t changed their socks in about six months. Also, all the black specks are bugs. It is pretty gross but chocolate is so delicious, I just can’t deny the results!

If you has access to a facility the way the cooperative does, you will have a big wooden platform to spread you cacao beans out onto to dry. However, it’s not uncommon in the coastal Ecuadorian countryside to see small patches of cacao beans drying on the shoulder of the road.

The color of the beans depends on all sorts of things– from the genetic strain, the way the farmer has cultivated the crops, the weather that year, etc. They are left out to dry in the sun for several days– as long as it takes to make them as dry as possible.

The cooperative had this smart little contraption that was like a roof for the drying platform that sat on rails and could cover the drying beans within seconds of drizzle starting to fall.

Once the beans are very dry, you can break them open and really smell the developing chocolate scent. At this stage, the seeds once broken open look kind of like coffee beans inside. The cooperative had a small workshop with artisan-grade machinery for refining cacao, donated by the Spanish government. From here, the beans get toasted to dry them out the rest of the way, then shucked into nibs. Once they’re at the nib stage, they get ground down and then sent through a machine to separated them into 100% cacao and “manteca de cacao” (cacao butter).

So, how does this affect you, standing in the Whole Foods aisle and wondering what kind of chocolate you should buy? First of all, when you see a label like “75% dark” that means that your chocolate bar is 75% cacao. That other 25% should include nothing but cacao butter and sugar. Bars that have any other ingredients (be they chemicals or something as benign as vanilla) are simply masquerading as chocolate. And many of the mass-produced American bars (like chocolate) may derive fat content from other oils that are not cacao butter, which is very expensive, or other nasty chemical add-ins.

After learning how to properly eat chocolate (admire the color, smell it, then let it sit on your tongue and melt) we tried a little chocolate liquor and chocolate marmalade. Amazingly, the chocolate made by this small cooperative was remarkably delicious– some of the best I’ve tried in Ecuador (that said, it’s hard to find good chocolate here because most is exported directly to the US and Europe). I purchased lots of liquor and bars as gifts, plus I got some delicious rolls of pressed cacao, which look a little like this:

If you’re interested in trying some fabulous Ecuadorian chocolate, pop on down to your local chocolate supplier and search for any of these brands: Hoja Verde, Republica del Cacao, Kallari, Pacari, Chchukululu or Caoni…or any of the other many brands that are starting to pop up…you won’t regret it!

At first, I thought it was a fluke. Hanson visited. I might have paid $40 for the novelty of seeing “MMMBop” performed live in these parts. It would be absurd, but would make a good story later– perfect fodder for dinner-party anecdotes…but even a funny story is not worth paying $100 for a round trip flight AND the ticket to bang my head to 3 1/2 minutes of mid-1990s glory. Plus, it’s not like I have anything better going on.

I couldn’t get into it when Hanson’s 21st reincarnation (i.e., The Jonas Brothers) came to Quito, mainly because I don’t think I could name one Jonas Brothers song if my life depended on it. I once saw a mob of adolescent girls surround a Jonas Brother in New York though, so clearly they must be awesome.

You really did it when THE BACKSTREET BOYS came to Ecuador and once again a once-big-name-musician neglected to stop here. I’m not going to lie people, I would have paid money to go to Backstreet Boys concert (though I probably price out of that concert at about $60) and believe you me, I probably could have sung more than a few songs.

Then I hear, last week that Ozzy Osbourne was doing a show. Let’s be honest, I don’t think you could pay me to go to an Ozzy show, but the slight was still felt nonetheless.

Just went I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I find out that MILEY CYRUS is coming to Quito next week to kick off her Latin America tour. WHAT!? You are seriously going to deny me the privilege of seeing Hannah Montana? omg!!!! you are SO cruel.

…On that note, maybe the next time a visa applicant comes in telling me he wants to go to the U2 concert in Miami, I shouldn’t be so skeptical…

Hopefully the next few weeks will be the same (i.e., fast– but I could do without the drama!)

He is a baby albatross, recently hatched on Espanola Island, in the Galapagos. The albatross is just one of the many totally awesome birds that lives in the Galapagos. From what I understand, their nesting grounds are fairly rare or difficult to see, but on Espanola there were dozens of eggs AND babies to admire…all over the place.

Albatrosses are pretty sizable birds and can fly incredibly long distances. The downside of being so huge and designed for long flights is that they kind of suck at taking off and landing. In fact, their preferred method for take-off is to find a cliff, start flapping its wings, and walk right over the edge.

For all of their awkwardness, they have amazing power and fluidity in the air. That said, I also think there is a strong argument that human adolescence is not nearly as bad as that of an albatross. I mean really, look at this thing:

They just kind of sit there, making funny noises, losing their ugly feathers, and waiting for their parents to come and feed them. Occasionally they’ll stand up but the most of the time we were there, they sat back on their legs like in this picture, looking generally bewildered and angst-y about their existence.

I love the idea of TED talks; distilling all of one’s experiences and wisdom into the “speech of a lifetime.” This is not so much a speech as a conversation or really an interview, but it’s interesting and covers a lot of ground nonetheless. And from very I sit, in my very, very low level perch, I can relate (a little bit).

She speaks about her first time at the Security Council, as the only woman in a room full of men, being empowered by the fact that she sat behind the sign that said “United States.” Coming from such a large country, she was expected to speak– and she had to “step out of herself in her reluctant female mode and speak on behalf of our country.” As diplomats, were fortunate to come from the United States– our country alone offers us levity in situations we might otherwise feel we have none.

As a young female diplomat operating in a historically machista culture, I can say that sometimes I have seen that my age and gender seem to frequently betray my position as the visa “gatekeeper” of sorts.

A while ago, I denied the visa of someone who clearly did not qualify for a US visa. It’s something I do hundreds of times a month, and I don’t think a whole lot about it. But I will never forget this case, and the email a relative of this applicant wrote to our mailbox, CC’ing every publicly available email address in the Consulate and Foreign Ministry. It was a long and hate-filled email, but one line still sits in my mind to this day:

Imagine his disillusion, Mr. Consul, when he was interviewed and denied by a secretary, instead of you, the Consul himself.

Someone from the Foreign Ministry then emailed, asking that the case be re-examined and remarking that it was clear this was not a consul’s fault, just the “secretary” who denied him. In the stress and day-to-day drudgery of this job, imagine how infuriating it is to receive a letter from someone, who on no other basis than my appearance at the window (young, female) assumed I was just a secretary, not an accredited Vice Consul who had been delegated a tremendous responsibility by her government? Say what you want about the menial nature of visa work, but this job is a matter of national security and allowing the wrong people in has potentially serious consequences. To be written off like that stings.

And it’s not the only time… I’ve been stopped at a checkpoint and in spite of the fact that my national ID card clearly states I am an employee of the US mission here, asked if my husband was a diplomat with the Consulate. (Even more insulting, my female colleague’s ID is annotated that she is the WIFE OF THE VICE CONSUL, though she herself is the employee.) I’ve had applicants, angry at the result of their outcome, demand to speak to “el senor consul.” On Fourth of July, I was asked to give a speech to a local woman’s club who thought I was a male consul’s daughter, and instead of asking me questions about my country or its independence, they wanted to set me up with their sons.

I appreciate what all of these strong female Secretaries of State have done, especially given the historically male-dominated nature of the Foreign Service. It wasn’t that long ago that the Department had to issue guidance clarifying that Foreign Service wives were not USG employees and could not be mandated to participate in or prepare for representational events, or the policy that required female officers to resign upon marriage.

That said, the fact of the matter is that a recent FLO report said that 79% of adult eligible family members (spouses/partners) were female. (Translation for my non-USG readers: this means that the overwhelming majority of married Foreign Service Officers is male.) I am always in awe of those amazing couples that contain trailing husbands. I know that that 79% contains women who also gave up jobs and careers, but for whatever reason (cultural norms, probably) there are very few men who would do the same. And I’ll be honest, I worry about a premature departure from this career because it’s hard to make such an arrangement work.

I’m very fortunate to have a female supervisor who has been a good mentor. Aside from her, however, I haven’t found there to be a particularly collegial environment up and down the ranks of female officers– though I don’t think that this mentality is unique to the State Department. In my limited time in the work force, I’ve frequently found that female executives tend to “play tough” and are reluctant to be seen as a mentor (i.e., a nurturer) to their younger female colleagues. I’ve rarely witnessed that kind of reluctance from male executives mentoring younger men. I don’t think men intentionally withhold from mentoring women, but for fear of the appearance of having an “inappropriate relationship” and what have you, they tend to err on the side of caution.

All of this is my very long way of saying that I am very proud to be a female American diplomat, I am proud that I can do my part to show that diplomats are not a homogeneous gang of gray-haired white males in striped suits. I think we are fortunate to have an ever-diversifying diplomatic corps, but there is much more work to be done, especially in the upper ranks.

And as Secretary/Professor Albright said: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”