El Senor Is Eight Months Old (Almost)

El Senor is thriving here in Ciudad Juarez. In a couple weeks, he will be eight months old! I can't believe it. He is sleeping really well (fingers crossed), and eating well. He can roll over from his stomach to back, but refuses to do the reverse. In fact, he basically refuses to do anything that requires him to be on his stomach, which doesn't bode well for learning how to crawl. I'm sure he'll get the hang of it someday. For now, he's just focusing on chowing down on solid foods, like avocados, carrots, apples, and bananas. 

His hair basically sticks straight up all the time, so I tried putting in some hair gel the other day. Looking pretty dapper, if I do say so myself.

Luckily, he has an assortment of awesome hats to cover up his head, including this sweet lid that Grandma Becky brought back from Istanbul.

He's also making friends with some of the other kids at post. Here he is working the room at a recent St. Patrick's Day party.

In short, El Senor is doing pretty well. Just wanted to give everyone a quick update to let you all know that the littlest Peterson is living the dream, along with his parents, here in Ciudad Juarez.

Movin' On Up to ACS

Every once in a while, here on the blog, I try to shed a little bit of light on the Foreign Service, and what it is exactly that we do all day. I have already talked about a lot of the other intricacies of this job, including how to get hired, Flag Day, and what it's like to move all around the world every couple of years. But in case any of the readers who stumble across this blog have more general questions, here are the basics:

The U.S. State Department is separated into two groups, the Civil Service and the Foreign Service. As the names suggest, the Civil Service employees mostly live and work in Washington, DC. The Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) live mostly overseas, spending generally 2-3 years in one post, before moving on to another in a different part of the world, occasionally returning for an assignment in DC as well. Currently, there are approximately 7,500 FSOs working throughout the world.

FSOs staff all of the embassies and consulates overseas. Embassies act as the official representative of the US in a particular country, and the ambassador is always located at the embassy. Consulates are generally a bit smaller, and are usually more focused on visas-related issues. Whether a nation has more than one US institution generally depends on the size of the nation and the amount of ties it has with the US. For example, Romania just has an embassy. Spain has an embassy with one consulate (Barcelona). Mexico has an embassy with nine consulates (Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Hermosillo, Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Merida). 

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, FSOs must select one of five career tracks (or "cones") that will define their career. Although you can work in a job outside of your cone, it is generally expected that you will spend most of your overseas tours working in your cone. The cones are: Political, Economic, Management, Public Diplomacy, and Consular. Political officers focus on meeting with members of the local government and working on reports tied to political issues. Economic officers do the same thing, but with an emphasis on economics as opposed to politics. Management officers (which is a bit of misnomer), are not automatically managers of other officers. Instead, they keep an embassy running through human resources, housing, and facilities maintenance. Public Diplomacy officers organize events to help promote US interests and strengthen ties in the host country.

Which brings us to my own selected cone: Consular. Consular affairs consist of three major responsibilities: Non-Immigrant Visas (NIV), Immigrant Visas (IV), and American Citizen Services (ACS). NIV involves all people who want to travel to the US for reasons other than living there permanently. In Mexico, anybody who would like to come the US for shopping, tourism, study, work, etc., must first obtain a visa. I spent the first nine months of my time in CJ working on these. IV involves all people who are planning to immigrate to the US, usually because of some family relationship (e.g. they are married to a US citizen). I have spent the last three months in CJ working on these.

Finally, we have ACS. It involves some activities like issuing passports, replacing lost passports, and issuing birth certificates to US citizens born abroad. However, it also involves more unique responsibilities like visiting US citizen prisoners, searching for missing US citizens, providing death notifications, visiting hospitals, etc.

ACS is what inspired me to write this blog post in the first place. After a year at post, I have been selected to spend a six-month rotation in the ACS unit on the second floor of the Consulate. I am incredibly excited to be working in this unit, as I think it involves some of the most interesting work available in the Foreign Service. As cliche as it may sound, I joined the Foreign Service for many reasons, but first and foremost, I want to help people in trouble overseas. I am sure this opportunity will no doubt provide countless bizarre stories (as was the case in both IV and NIV), but hopefully, it will also allow me to do some good here in Mexico.

Anyway, for any FSOs who may be reading this post, I recognize that this is an incredibly simplified explanation of the work we do in the Foreign Service, but hopefully everybody else found it at least somewhat interesting. Hasta luego!

Chico's Tacos Is the Worst Thing I Have Ever Eaten

I'm trying my best to give you a bit of local culture while I live here in the Borderland. I'm sure a lot has been written about Chico's Tacos, which is a famous El Paso institution. It is perhaps the most divisive issue among El Pasoans; you either love it or you hate it. I figured I should give it a try at least once while living in the great metropolis that is Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, especially after it was recently selected as one of the top 35 places to get tacos in the entire United States.

I'm sure this will greatly upset my brother-in-law, but let me state unequivocally that this is one of the worst things I have ever eaten in my life. That photo above is literally the most appetizing image I was able to capture. Let me paint a picture for you. Take three corn torillas and fill them with some sort of weird, flavorless mystery meat. Roll up those tacos and deep-fry them. Then dip all three of them into some sort of boiling hot tomato water (not salsa, literally tomato water), and pour some crappy cheddar cheese on top.

Under the right circumstances, something like this could be delicious, but this is terrible. It tastes awful. Even worse, there is no effective way to eat these. They bring it to you (boiling water and all) in a paper tray, and give you wimpy plastic utensils that couldn't possibly cut through a deep-fried tortilla. So instead, you have to fish through the lava-hot tomato water with your fingers, and take a bite, immediately shooting the hot liquid all over yourself and the table. I thought, surely I'm not eating this correctly since I'm not a local, but I looked around and literally every other table/shirt in the restaurant is covered in steaming tomato water.

How can you live like this, El Paso? This taco is a crime against nature! Review: Negative three out of five stars.

What's El Senor Been Up to Lately?

Some of you may be wondering how El Senor has been doing in the last few months, especially since it's been a while since my last blog updates.  Our little man is almost six months old!  It's unbelievable how much he's changed.  Here's a quick recap on what El Senor has been up to lately...

 Rockin' a sweet bunny sweater

 Working on sitting up and rolling over

 Falling in love with Sophie the Giraffe

 Practicing standing up

 Looking good while taking selfies

And thinking about trying solid foods.  Seriously, that cookie in mom's hands looks real good.  El Senor will be trying solids in a couple of weeks, although it may be a while longer until he works his way up to cookies.  Hang in there, little man! 

Happy Birthday, Sarah!

Happy birthday to the best wife and mother in the world!  Sarah's birthday was a few weeks ago, so I feel a little bad for posting this so late.  Overall, Sarah wanted a low key birthday, so I did my best to oblige. 

I made Sarah some of her favorite food, including a ribeye steak (medium rare, because she's awesome like that), potatoes au gratin, creamed spinach, and roasted mushrooms. 

 

 And for dessert, homemade funfetti cake.  Happy birthday, sweetheart.  You're the best!

December 2013 Recap

Hey folks!  It's time for Christmas in review!  I recognize that it is February, but better late than never.  It has been a pretty busy time for the Petersons, so sorry for the long pause between updates.  We had a great December, although it was definitely very busy.

It started off with a Christmas party at the Consul General's house here in Juarez.  The traditional Christmas food in Juarez is tamales, so I had about 15 of them, then we went home.  Not a bad party.

Not to be outdone by my boss' Christmas tree, Sarah and I managed to pick one up at the Wal-Mart here in Mexico.  I recognize that we will not always be able to get a live tree in our line of work, so I figured we should take advantage of the opportunity when we have the chance.  On the plus side, you can buy live Christmas trees in London as well, so the whole fake Christmas tree dilemma is something we won't have to worry about for at least a few more years.

Later in the month, we went to the Consulate's so-called "Winter Gala," or as a I like to call it, Consulate Prom.  Fun fact about the Foreign Service: every embassy in the world holds a Marine Corps Ball to celebrate the birthday of the Marine Corps.  We do this because Marines provide security at all embassies overseas.  However, we don't work at an embassy; Sarah and I work at a Consulate.  Hence no Marine guards, and no Marine Corps Ball.  To make up for it, they have the Winter Gala instead, which is an excuse to get dressed up and hang out with your friends.

After that, we had a small pre-Christmas morning with just me, Sarah, and El Senor.  El Senor was apparently a pretty good boy this year, because his grandmothers saw fit to shower him with gifts upon gifts.  Look at all those presents.

By far his favorite, however, was this green ribbon.  I'm sure he'll get around to playing with the actual gifts sometime soon.

After that, it was time for the moment Sarah and I had been dreading for some time: taking a newborn on a cross-country flight.  Unlike some babies, El Senor will literally NEVER go to sleep unless he is in a dark room by himself.  Which means trying to get him to fall asleep on a plane, then in a connecting airport, and then on another plane, is virtually impossible.  In all fairness, however, he was a trooper, and did really well.  Nice work, little guy!

El Senor had a great time visiting Sarah's family back in Virginia.  He finally got to meet his great-grandmother and his uncles, along with Santa (after 90 minutes of standing in line).  Again, what a trooper.  On the plus side, El Senor got yet another giant pile of presents, so I think he forgave us for the whole 12-hour travel day. 

That is, until we took him out for some family photos one chilly East Coast afternoon.  This was his first time in actual cold weather in his entire life.  El Senor was not amused.  All in all, however, we had a very exhausting, but very enjoyable holiday season.  Hope you had a good one as well!

Getting Caught Up on British Slang

I need to memorize these phrases by the time I get to London in 2015, so I better get started now...