Here goes nothing!

Okay, so this is my first time out in the blogosphere and I am ready to see what it is all about.  I have many friends who blog and who have (and continue to) actively encouraged me to do the same, so I decided to roll the dice and see what happens.


I am not sure what this blog is going to become over time but for now I am going to use it as means to preserve my memories and experiences overseas, both personal and professional.  For now, this blog will be very "Seinfeldesque" as it will mostly consist of my musings on the mundane details of expatriate life, from my point of view.  So if you are looking for a political blog, or an analysis of U.S. policy towards Country X, or a scathing op-ed on my views of the latest scandal (i.e. WikiLeaks), then this is not the blog for you, however if you are interested in learning a little bit more about life outside of the contiguous 48 states, then you may have come to the right place.


As this is my inaugural blog post, I have decided to dedicate it to my Grandmother, (who I recently lost less than a month ago), who I was very close to and who I absolutely adored.  My Grandmother was the center of our family, the one we all turned to for advice and good conversation, she was as sharp as a tack even up to the end and was also the memory keeper in our family.  During the late 50's and early 60's, she lived the expatriate life overseas (in Indonesia and Brazil respectively), while my Grandfather worked as a contractor for USAID and extensively traveled the globe throughout her life.  As the oldest grandchild and her namesake, it is my privilege to carry on her legacy and love of traveling through this blog and my life overall.  Grandma, I love you and miss you so much, ... more than words can express, this is for you.


In case you were wondering about me a little bit, I am a mid-level Foreign Service Officer (FSO), wife and mother of an almost 2 1/2 half year old ball of non-stop kinetic energy and 5 months into adding another member to our family.  I have lived and worked overseas for the last 7 years and have traveled a great deal prior to that during my college years.  Currently, I am in the second half of a long-term language training program in Arabic, which is designed to make me "professionally proficient" in Modern Standard Arabic before I move on to my next assignment somewhere in the Arab World, where a working knowledge of Arabic is essential.

I will post my first substantive blog when I return from a holiday party :-)