Where Do I Start?

Well I'll tell you where I won't start. That major seizure event that I told you about, that's now 16 days in the past? I've written it all down in a very lengthy and detailed story of the event. I'm on the third page in Word, single spaced. I moved it from notepad because I was getting annoyed with notepad. However, we don't really have Word on this computer, so it's not registered, so I can't copy, paste, add, subtract, do anything with it. So for now the very detailed description is on hold. I'll just tell you, Malachi's fine. He started a new therapy that night that has taken full effect in his blood and we haven't seen any (and I mean any) seizure activity in about a week.

So I'll start with training in NOVA/D.C.. I love FSI, that's right Drng Adventure, I said it. I've loved it since John started there. For me it's a symbol of the beginning of a new life. John had so many good times there, and now so have I. The training was intense. It was very overwhelming, I know I just used a superlative in front of overwhelming, but I feel like I can and any other person that goes through that training would agree. Today I finally was able to put it into words - it was 40 hours of training, but it was more like 50 or 60 hours of training all crammed in. There's so much more to the job than I thought. I now have a great respect for CLO's, and will never look down on one - unless they suck (I've heard that happens).

Right now I'm a CLO Assistant (CLO/A), and my main responsibility is the newsletter, with that I also keep up the paper files, and make sure the welcome books and welcome packets are taken care of. I also make the flyers for our events, I also do the finances for CLO (yikes!), but that's not very involved. Other than that, I really don't do much. I'll take messages for the CLO, and I keep the office open on Wednesdays. But there's so much more to the job than that!

Our CLO plans our events, does all of the work for families and the area schools, is the CLO rep. on the Emergency Action Pannel (the people at the Embassy who are in charge during an emergency), helps the EFM's with employment inside and outside the mission, and more! She does so much in only 32 hours a week.

She's leaving this summer, and I've applied for the job. I feel like after training, I have so much to offer that position. I came home with almost four pages of ideas and reminders, most of them one liners, only about seven personal. I wasn't even able to touch that list at work last week to organize it, hopefully I can do that this week.

I made some good connections there too. One of the Co-CLO's from Buenos Aires and I hung out the last two nights doing a bunch of shopping and eating at Chipotle (both nights). I wanted to take her to Dogfish Head Alehouse, but the wait was already 45-60 minutes by the time we got there. I passed around a piece of paper at training one day and got everyone's contact information, and then put it together in Excel when I got to work on Wednesday. We now all have 23 connections we didn't have before.

I had so much fun being in the States, and being at job training. But I learned, as John did when he went to Thailand by himself last August, that home is where our family is. I couldn't wait to get home on Saturday morning. That's a whole other story...have you looked up MIA yet? You should.