The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2022

46 JULY-AUGUST 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL If you have a pet, it’s essential to ensure their vaccine records are up to date and accessible. It’s a good idea to research vets and boarding facilities as soon as you touch down at a new post, in case your pet can’t travel on the same flight as you. More- over, consider not only the rules and regulations for importing/ exporting a pet into the United States, but also what is required to transit a pet through the European Union. In Moscow, when the war talk started building, the local veterinarian began making house calls to update rabies vaccines and start travel paperwork. When the invasion began and flights out of country ended, col- leagues with pets were forced to drive to the Finnish border to get their dogs out of Russia. Plan and Purge When I was medevaced from Kazakhstan in 2004 after our baby got sick, we had no idea it would be forever. We were mid- way through our assignment, with all the overflowing junk draw- ers that typically entails. Despite the fact that we’d been expelled from another country—Russia—in 2001, we weren’t prepared for a quick exit from post. Packout was a disaster, as my spouse had to manage it alone, while trying to close out his work at post, find a new assignment in D.C. and talk to his stressed-out wife, who was alone with the baby at Children’s Hospital. We were over- weight, with no time to do anything other than jettison whole boxes without even checking their contents. We learned the hard way about itemizing valuables with the insurance company and photographing everything you own. This time, when we saw what might be coming, we spent our winter vacation purging the house in advance. While at post, periodically go through your belongings. Donate or toss the things you don’t need. Shred, scan or file the papers piled on the kitchen counter. Make sure the passports and COVID-19 vaccine cards get put away properly after every trip. And while you’re at it, check that your passports and driver’s licenses are still valid. Laura Gehrenbeck says her family had many dinner table conversations about what to bring if they had to leave Kyiv, but “I was convinced at the time that we would be returning in 30 days and really didn’t give the sentimental items due consideration. I dismissively flapped my hands declaring, ‘It’s all just stuff!’” Her husband was more thoughtful about the process, remov- ing pages from the wedding album, grabbing a poem written by their daughter for Laura’s birthday from the wall, and tucking away her grandmother’s ring. He even, she says, “arranged with a friend to put a quilt I had made for his 50th birthday into their air freight. He was our hero of family memory preservation.” When the consulate and her own residence in Nuevo Laredo were attacked in March 2022, consular officer Elizabeth Baiocchi had an hour to pack up and get out with her 3-year-old daughter. She spent the night with a friend before leaving post the next day. She now faces a remote packout, with help from colleagues still at post, and she says she wishes she had “organized the Loren Braunohler and son Quinn wait to board the evacuation flight out of Kyiv in January. COURTESYOFLORENBRAUNOHLER A farewell parade at U.S. Embassy Moscow for the Gormans, who were declared persona non grata in December 2021. COURTESYOFDONNAGORMAN