Long Time No Update

Sorry for the 2+ weeks hiatus there.  It’s hard to update over dialup, and there’s no time when I’m at work to post even a quick update; the next time I hear someone say government employees are lazy, I’m going to punch that person in the mouth since I’ve never worked this hard in my life.  I get to work by 7:30 every weekday morning and hit the ground running.  Admittedly, I usually leave no later than 5, but the days are very full of U.S. citizens needing services from the embassy.  Wikipedia says there are more than 250,000 U.S. citizens living in the Philippines and at any given time, some percentage of them are on drugs they shouldn’t be, not taking the drugs they should, in jail, getting arrested, or wanting to vote, and they visit or call the embassy for help with their situation.   No two days have been the same so far, and the section is short staffed at the moment, so it’s been a roller coaster of a learning curve but I’m enjoying myself so far.

In other news, Steve and I went to the beach last weekend!  It was good to get out of the smog and hang out on the beach, and the Columbus Day holiday meant we could spend two nights in the resort’s little thatched huts.  There wasn’t any air conditioning, but fans and mosquito nets made for a surprisingly comfortable setup.

Also, our air baggage arrived, all 450 pounds of it!  We now have nonstick pans for our egg-scrambling, which is a big improvement, as well as the additional toiletries I’ve been missing.  The 3700 pounds of stuff we last saw in Atlanta has arrived also, but won’t be delivered until we are in our permanent housing, probably at the end of October.    The rest of the stuff we had in Virginia will be longer than that, which is sad because the hand mixer is in there, and it’s hard making cookies without one, to say nothing of the cake I’d like to try to bake.