During my training, many people talk to us about State-related issues.  Whether how to fill out a voucher or what our Myers-Brigg personality is and what that means when working in a team or hours upon hours of diplomatic history.  Most of them are interesting, but I’ll probably forget all about them in a year or two.  And then there are really cool and important speakers who really make your week.

Starting two Fridays ago, the run of memorable people started.  First, on Friday Amb. Christopher Hill spoke to us in a classified briefing about North Korea (he’s the US main negotiator with NK).  On Monday, we went to the CIA and had another classified briefing and got to tour a little of the Agency.  On Tuesday, we got to go on another classified tour of the Operations Center at the State Department (they monitor worldwide events and update senior DOS officials).  (They also have the phone numbers of thousands upon thousands of world leaders, including the King of Thailand and Bono).  Following the tour, Undersecretary Karen Hughes (Bush’s old Texas adviser) spoke to us about how her bureau is reaching out to the Arabs/Muslims.

Then, on Thursday, Secretary of State Condelezza Rice spoke to my class for 45 minutes about how she’s transforming the Department’s mission and what role we’ll be playing in it.  It was really cool because it was just our orientation class along with a few other newly-hired employees.  It was definitely a rare treat.  In fact, we were told some employees go their whole career and never hear the secretary speak.

So that’s been my week.  Definitely some memorable moments.

Only 2 weeks left.  The first 5 weeks have gone both quickly and slowly.  But what seems really crazy is we’ll find out on Thursday where we’re headed.  We’ve both got ideas of where we could be going, but we know we also need to be prepared for some unexpected posts.  I think it would be considered bad form if I have a disappointed look on my face as I cross the stage with a flag of Whatastan.  Kristen has offered the other wives money to start crying at the flag ceremony if she ends up in tears from the shock of an unwanted post.

In other news, we went to a small group Bible study for the first time on Thursday.  It was a great mix of couples, both young and old, and one couple is due a few weeks after us.  And, oddly enough, almost all of them had ties to Texas.  A few of the couples had lived in Dallas or gone to school at SMU.  We really enjoyed the group and are planning to continue attending.  We found the small group through the church we’ve decided to attend, McLean Presbyterian, which we also like.

And today we were tourists and went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.  The Hope Diamond along with other precious gems really caught Kristen’s eye.  She was quite reasonable though, and only requested just one or two of the diamonds or rubies.  We saw a magnificent diamond necklace given to Marie Antoinette by Louis XVI for the birth of their first child.  Kristen not so subtly reminded me of the tradition of giving a gift to your wife when the baby is born.  But she quickly talked me out of buying the necklace from the museum.  She’d be perfectly satisfied with a smaller, less flashy gem.  We’ll see.

By the way, it’s really, really cold here.