People often ask what exactly Seth does. Nope he isn’t a CIA agent. He is currently the chief of the American Citizens Services Unit of the Embassy. He issues passports to babies born abroad, takes care of details related to death of Americans in Switzerland, meets with disgruntled Americans, takes care of issues related to American’s in prison in Switzerland, preschool talks on diplomacy and things like that. In addition to Americans in Switzerland he takes care of Americans in Iran. Previously he was issuing non-immigrant and immigrant visas.  Basically, he is doing lots of different things and working hard…so your tax dollars are not being wasted!

The Embassy is about 15 minutes from our home which has been a super duper perk of living in Bern.  Seth is able to hop on a tram that takes him about a block from the Embassy. You can’t ask for much more than that in terms of ease.  Here are a few pictures I took back in the summer when I was going to post some pictures of the Embassy…then life happened and here we are in a new year. oops.

Last week Seth went to school with Jackson and was the parent of the morning, sharing about his occupation.  Jackson was proud as a peacock as you can imagine. He sat in the front of the room with Seth and acted as the host for the presentation. I just can’t imagine where he gets some of these personality traits?! At Jackson’s preschool he showed them passports and special lights to detect fraud. The kids enjoyed getting to try them out. Seth said throughout the presentation Jackson added in his 2 cents, often completely irrelevant but at least he had a captive audience. Following Seth’s presentation Jackson and his class made passports with their teacher as their craft.

Not sure the kids were impressed with the suit and tie but you do what you gotta do to represent the good old United States of America abroad. Up next in July is a position in the newly named Foreign Assistance Office in DC.