The Foreign Service Journal, October 2012

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2012 81 REFLECTIONS You Want to Join the What …? BY JAMES TALALAY N ewspaper reporter spouse comes home one day, and says she wants to change careers and join the Foreign Service. The what? “It’s the State Department.” Oh. Well, then which is it? “Hillary Clinton. We get to live in a foreign country.” Spouse says not Paris. “Don’t get excited; there are 1,000 tests to take to get in.” She says the Foreign Service is in the middle of a hiring increase—good news, considering her industry is downsizing by the minute. “The Surge,” it’s called on a zillion online bulletin boards. We live in Miami; the only surge we know comes with a hurricane. Spouse passes first test, exciting! Not so fast, 999 more tests to go. Spouse passes the rest of the tests! She’s hired! What? She’s only on a list? And she might “wash out?” What kind of agency is this? Weekly list-checking takes over our lives. “Up 11 spots to 34, and they pulled 26 people from the list last month,” she says. So we really don’t know anything. We wait months, up and down, up and down the list. CNL enters our vocabulary. Like those ads promising you can make money at home: “Pass a language test and increase your score!” Remember that Russian from college? Spouse joins Russian social group, gets a tutor. I learn to say “What a nightmare!” in Russian. We meet new friends. The Foreign Service experience is already rewarding, and she’s not even hired. Spouse studies hard for six months; passes the Russian test! 1,001 tests passed! Spouse catapults up the list. Still we wait. But not long. The call comes—an e-mail, actually— and suddenly reality hits. We really are not going to live in Paris! The acronyms flood in. TA, UAB, HHE, ELSO, OBC. The waiting is over; time for action. Spouse goes to D.C. for A-100. I stay behind to take apart the life we built dur- ing the past 20 years. I have a fewmonths. I sell everything we don’t need, an embarrassing number of items. Craigslist is amazing. We begin telling friends and neighbors, a bittersweet exercise. Spouse calls with daily training updates. I have no idea what she is talking about. The bid list is out. So many great places to go! So many places we don’t want to go! OBC is nowmaking sense. Where on earth is Mbabane? I can’t even pronounce it. We study, worry and rank. Wash, rinse, repeat. I arrive in D.C. for the next life- changing event: Flag Day. A 20-second announcement that determines the next two years of our lives. No pressure. The assignments cascade forth. Spouse’s name is not called. I can now rec- ognize the Mexican and D.C. flags. Places highly ranked are called, but none with Spouse’s name. Uh oh. Are they testing her diplomatic skills? I’ve crossed off every place on the list, still no assignment. “For the position of consular officer in Chennai, India ...” Wow! Spouse goes to receive her flag, returns to seat, gives me a teary look. I give her a huge thumbs-up; the tears are for joy. Flag Day is over. Everyone in the room will be scattered all over the world, an amazing concept. Spouse shows me our details. We leave that soon?! Everything accelerates. Spouse con- tinues training. More items are discarded, our house is sold. Suddenly it’s all about consumables. Parties are thrown, goodbyes repeated. Travel orders are set; so is our arrival date in Chennai. We have one last fling in New York on our way to India: the Big Apple, where we attended college and got married. A per- fect place to say goodbye to our home. n She’s hired! What? She’s only on a list? And she might “wash out?” James Talalay is married to FSO Sarah Talalay. They are on their first tour in Chennai. James is a commercial filmmaker, and now he and Sarah are serial travelers and bloggers. You can read about their adventures at hellotalalay.blogspot.com .