For years I kept journals -- in composition, spiral bound, and French graph paper books. This blog is an attempt to get back to writing and documenting the world around me using photos, newspaper headlines, and other articles.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Girl talk

I had such a fun evening.  I met up with Mary after training today.  I first met her at the ELP graduation in Baltimore back in June.  I can't remember what office she works for exactly, but she is working on a project involving FSI, Passports, CA and training.  She comes over to FSI once or twice a week.  Originally we were going to meet for lunch, but something came up. Instead we headed out for coffee at 5:00.  The thing we have in common besides working for the State Department is that both our husbands are from Turkey.  The first half of our time together we kept asking, "Does your husband do this...?" or "Is this a Turkish thing, or just a husband thing?"

During the second half of the evening we talked about career, the structure of Passports, our own leadership styles, our experiences in the ELP, Federal service, good mentors, and the good fortune of having a great supervisor.  I enjoyed talking shop with someone outside of my normal group who has political savvy within my Department.  She drove us into DC and dropped me off at Trader Joe's before she headed off to her Turkish class.  That is one advantage of big city living -- access to language classes at universities.

This week is going to test my patience with the heat, I can already tell.  This morning the weather graph showed the possibility of 101 on Friday.  I have to go into DC to have a medical clearance physical that day.  Not the afternoon I want to be traipsing around from subway to E street. 

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