The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2016

68 JULY-AUGUST 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL (I’m working with Maine Moms for Gun Sense on a referendum to close loopholes on background checks.) When traveling, I find freedom to engage in discussions at all levels as just an American, not as a diplomat. My advice to those planning to live abroad is try it for a year or so before shipping your household goods. You may miss all the acronyms, such as FSN, GSO, APO. You will inevitably spend days in lines in ministry corridors. (My husband is Chilean, but I cannot get permanent residency due to our dividing the year between the United States and Chile.) Foreigners also have trouble getting bank accounts; it seems we’ve been too successful in blocking money laundering. On the bright side, the greatest boost to travel since no-frills airlines is the online home-away-from-home website, Airbnb. I love it! Diana Page joined the Foreign Service in 1990, serving in Guyana, Brazil, Chile, Bosnia, Mexico and Argentina, where she retired as public affairs officer in 2011. Her memoir, Looking for Love in Strange Places: A Memoir for My Stepdaughters , was published b y Wheatmark in 2016. Expect the Unexpected BY D I ANA PAGE D espite preparing for mandatory retirement at 65 (which should be raised at least high enough to match the age to collect full Social Security ben- efits), the first few years of what I prefer to call “reinvention” were full of discov- eries and disappointments for me. I say this even though I approached the process as if I were going back to college: a freshman year for experi- menting, then the traditional overcon- fident sophomore year. That would perhaps be followed by a junior year abroad or other challenges, after which I hoped to use a senior year to focus on what lies beyond that. My husband and I expected to have our own little vineyard in Chile; instead, we ended up as tenants on an avocado farm. (“Yes, I know you thought you’d try a caber- net sauvignon, but how do you like this gua- camole?”) Hidden in a valley an hour from Santiago, the farmhouse is not glamorous, but the rent is quite economical. It also allows us to escape winter in Maine from November to April. I also expected my good health to last a long time—until the day pain developed in my knee, eventually forcing the choice between giving up walking or surgery. I chose knee replacement, but that changed my “junior year” into one of not going abroad. And despite planning many sentimental journeys, I found out that family issues—such as becoming grandparents—will defer your travel. My advice to fellow retirees: travel sooner rather than later, because you never know what’s coming. My four years of reinvention did not bring what I expected, but they brought some advantages that I never anticipated: the fun of learning how to cook whatever is in season, the pleasure of a good library that is also a community center, and the satisfac- tion of being an opinionated citizen in a lively local democracy. Diana Page with her husband in the Andes mountain range in the Atacama region of Chile, and the cover of her memoir. COURTESYOFDIANAPAGE