And I'm proud to be an American

This is the first blog post of Serenity Now (…Insanity Later), entry by Keith. There is so much to say, but I’ll try to keep it short-ish. First, to catch you up in case you missed it, I took a job with the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Service Officer back in October, 2010. Since then we were assigned to Kathmandu, Nepal and I went through lots and lots of training. I speak Nepali now. Kinda. I’m a Political Officer, but this time around I’m doing my Consular tour. In a nutshell that means I work on, among other things, immigrant visas, non-immigrant visas, adoptions, refugee resettlement, fraud prevention, and, most importantly, supporting American Citizens in Nepal. Elyse continues to work on brain stuff.

Now here we are in the ancient and exotic city of Kathmandu, home of Hindus and hippies. Most of the hippies have left since their influx in the 60s and 70s, but we can still visit “Freak Street.” We’re in a big valley at about 4,500 feet above sea level and are exactly 9 hours and 45 minutes ahead of Eastern Standard Time. I’m still not sure where those other 15 minutes went. We’ve got a nice furnished apartment, not far from our new Embassy, and soon will have a gas guzzling SUV. I find it ironic that we had to leave the States to become more stereotypically American. We now have this big SUV, are members at BJ’s wholesale club and yesterday, for the first time in our 7+ years together, we made a barbecue chicken dinner and ate at the dining room table. Now we’re watching Wheel of Fortune on the Armed Forces Network. (Do Pat and Vanna sleep in formaldehyde? Because they look the same as they did when I last watched in 1989.) In my previous experience in developing countries, when faced with a few questionable options, you initially go with what you know. Especially when what you don’t know can give you the “Kathmanpoos.” Hopefully in a year we’ll be eating water buffalo momos while watching a classic Bollywood musical. For now, in week two, we’re easing our way into the water. Although, that water has been distilled, bleached and boiled.